Low life | 4 February 2012

Exeter airport. Check in. I’m booked on a domestic flight to Glasgow International and I’m travelling with hand luggage only. It’s a small, cheap rucksack. It contains a phone charger, a toothbrush, a plastic bottle of Head and Shoulders, a copy of the Sun, two tubs of Devonshire clotted cream, a pound of Devon cheese and three books.

The books are: a paperback biography of Robert Burns; a 1903 cloth-bound collection of Schopenhauer’s essays; and a Norton edition paperback anthology of English poetry. The Burns biography and the Schopenhauer are gifts for my hosts in Paisley, one of whom is a Schopenhauer devotee. The poetry anthology is for me to select a suitable poem to read aloud at their Burns Night supper. (I chose ‘The English Are So Nice’ by D.H. Lawrence.) The Schopenhauer cover is slightly tatty, and the spine is flapping, but it’s still a lovely thing in itself.