In the Rare Books reading room of the British Library. I get an immense thrill on receiving my first Rare Book – a gloriously illustrated first edition of Richard Marsh’s The Beetle – in a protective blue cardboard box. The lid is kept shut by thin lengths of string wound round delicate little cardboard cogs. To open any book preserved in such a way has the air of a childhood Christmas. The resulting thrill, I have to admit, is the closest I’ve come to sexual ecstasy for some time.
Directly in my line of sight in the desk opposite is a fifty-ish man with a greying beard, glasses on a string, and a slightly mucky jumper. He is consulting some enormous gilded tome. I can’t help being distracted when at one point he suddenly bangs his fist on the desk and says ‘that’s it!’ – albeit in a whisper.
Recent merchandise acquisitions: a cream-coloured tote bag by The Hidden Cameras, which Anna S thinks is a laundry bag. More bands should market their own laundry bags. Plus a promotional strip of tear-off bookmarks for ‘The History Boys’. Am pleased to find my two favourite Boys, Dominic Cooper’s Dakin and Jamie Parker’s Scripps (who to me resembles a teenage Trevor Howard), are on either side of the same bookmark.
