monday again, and not in an office, or suicidal. doing well.
this is around the right time of the year to glance expectantly at the ground for the first sign of dandelions. but in the past few days I have spent considerably more time staring incredulously at the sky, and this is because only last week it was all sunny springtime firmament and smoked salmon sandwiches, and over the weekend it hailed, snowed and sleeted in varyingly disgusting amounts. for a moment this morning I could not tell if those poor white, tyrannized buds huddling on the tree outside my window were really flowers, or clumps of snow. STOP BUILDING FACTORIES & DRIVING CARS & BURNING COAL UNNECESSARILY ARGH
but yesterday I was led by a wonderful boy with startling blue eyes to a kind of Eden: a HIDDEN BOOKSHOP! secreted away in the interstices between the high street and a small church. impossibly magnificent & intimate, warm wooden shelves of leatherbound tomes beckoning seductively from beyond the threshold of the shop. stepping in felt like time travel. I swilled gleefully about the shelves for hours, trying to rein my delight into some semblance of dignity, while in the outside world the snow came and went and came again, as somber and solemn as I was not.
I simply had to ask the man at the counter as I handed over my purchases: "I don't suppose you're looking for someone to work here, are you?" What I didn't add was, "I mean, don't bother about paying me or anything", although on reflection perhaps I should have.