Places I used to read

In bed. Still do.

On the floor under the Christmas tree (Heidi, three volumes).

In the car, hoping we wouldn’t get there yet.

During church. Every Sunday. Every service, including during the hymns when I stayed seated not hearing the organ wheezing out the opening sounds, racing though Little Women while everyone else swayed through Open My Eyes That I May See. I was certainly seeing something. When the church goers in the pew behind may have glanced down, they weren’t going to say anything, and anyway, I got the book from my dad’s study amongst ten thousand others, most of which are now mine.  And he was the minister after all.

On holidays with relatives, ‘What’s she doing all this time?” I was reading The Wombles. I wasn’t there with relatives. I wasn’t even in Tasmania. I was with Uncle Bulgaria, putting a pin in the map and getting my true name.

At school, getting into trouble for finishing all the readers in the grade four box too fast.

During silent reading which went for a pathetic ten minutes.

On the school bus, bus pass as bookmark.

In the school library, the nerd, lurking in fiction, reading The Purple Plain by H E Bates, thinking that recess time has never been so good.

At uni, ransacking the library for books that had nothing to do with my teaching course.

Between children. With children, The Very Hungry Caterpillar still the same, during work, between jobs. Taking the slow bus to the city to get in another chapter. At the doctor, furious when the appointment is on time and can’t get on with The Hunger Games.

After work, before staff meetings. During staff meetings.

Then. My own bookshop. Reading between customers and boring them with the book. Hiding books from certain customers in case they make a better library than me. Shoplifting from my own shop. Getting home from work and reading. Reading.

Painting by Curt Herrmann