Acquisitions

Now in the final, final stages of packing for our flight to sunnier climes. (I won't miss the cold.) Am happy to report that, despite deep, often urgent, temptations, I've restricted myself to the purchase of just two CDs and two books. As mentioned in an earlier post I couldn't resist buying Springsteen's Western Stars, and the plan was to avoid any further purchase of CDs, but that fell through on the same day in the rather excellent HMV in Chester. It proved impossible to resist picking up at least one offering from Stereolab from the many available, and I plumped for Dots and Loops.

My resistance to book-buying was in some ways shakier, especially given what was on offer in the big Waterstones on Deansgate in Manchester. Fifi felt the same way, but we shared the realisation that there just wasn't enough room in the luggage for everything we desperately wanted, so it turned into an all or nothing sort of situation. Well, not quite nothing. I'm carrying back a couple of slim tomes: Georges Simenon's A Maigret Christmas and Other Stories and Alice Oswald's first collection of poems, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile. I've been keen to re-acquaint myself with Simenon's great detective for a while but, somewhat childishly, I don't like the covers of the new Penguin editions at all. The Christmas Maigret has a lovely cover and it came as part of a 'buy two, pay half price for one' deal that meant Fifi could get her book a bit cheaper. The Alice Oswald needs no explanation, being bought alongside her brilliant book-length poem about the river, Dart, which I've left as a gift for John & Jeanette, relating as it does so strongly to their house in Devon.

And now I need to get on with packing and get this lot on its way.