Meeting My Son's Parents

I dreamed I was meeting my son's parents for the first time. To begin with I met the father- who had once been a clergyman- and then without the transition being apparent the father sort of morphed into the mother. I formed the impression of both of them that they were rather fragile, twittery people- like little birds in a nest- going, "Me, me, me, me, me..." It was only after I'd woken up that I thought, "Hang on a minute, I am my son's parents- or one of them anyway- and that was myself I was meeting..."

Books, Books And More Books

Ailz is doing a couple of courses. One about being a Quaker and one about being a Doulah (sp?). This brings books into the house- and space has to be made for the books- preferably on a shelf that's handy for her. The best shelves for purpose are the ones in the bureau she's using as her work space- so that's where they've gone, displacing (gasp!) T.S. Eliot and Tolkien.

Tolkien and Eliot are now upstairs with me- in the cupboard to the right of my desk, keeping company with Yeats and Villon and Sarah Waters and most of our art books.

More books are coming to hand because of my current hunger for detective stories. Most of these go to charity once they're read but I'm keeping the Simenons. They belong to a rather handsome set of the Maigret novels, freshly translated and published by Penguin. I like collecting things and I've decided I want to own the lot- all 75 of them- but not by shopping online because that wouldn't be nearly as much fun as hunting them down pre-owned in real world shops.

Incidentally, Simenon is the best.