Getting lost in a book – it’s one of my favourite pastimes. My best memories of my dad Harry were those we spent at the library every week, gleefully returning home clutching armfuls of hardbacks to keep us entertained.
He loved sport and thrillers; I loved Peter Rabbit and The Flopsy Bunnies – I remember looking up the word soporific in the dictionary, concerned at what eating lettuce would do to me. Those leaves never seemed to make me drop off though.
I devoured Milly Molly Mandy and the Enid Blytons that conjured up the world of boarding school and games of lacrosse. In my early teens I was never happier than when I was running the book stall at jumble sales, spending my pennies on endless versions of the Pan Book of Horror Stories or the adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
When I started out as a cub reporter it felt like a big deal when I interviewed the one and only Dickie Bird at a signing for his latest book of the time (we’re talking late 1980s). ‘My dad’s a cricket umpire too’, I told Dickie. ‘To Harry, from one umpire to another’, he inscribed in the book. I like to think I nailed the best birthday present ever there.
The reading bug never goes away and these days I find it hard to resist those charity tables full of paperbacks at the end of the tills at my local supermarket – or the overflowing baskets of books outside of Oxfam. I’m not a Kindle person. I love the heft of a big new hardback for birthdays and Christmas – saving them for luxurious long weekends. My latest favourite – Kate Atkinson’s Shrines of Gaiety – full of pleasing Yorkshire references.
June is a celebration of the love of reading with Independent Bookshop Week, which recognises the passionate people who run welcoming bookshops that often become a community heart too – with their k
