Real life: buying books before it’s too late

As well as buying vinyl records, I have begun collecting three-dimensional books constructed of paper that you hold in your hands and operate manually by turning their pages over. I buy them from bookshops.

There are a few of these emporiums scattered across the country. My favourite one is called My Back Pages in Balham, and it has just put up a sign saying that it is closing down. This means I have only weeks to ransack its cramped shelves to loot them of all the books I have ever seen in there that I want to own. I contemplated telling the nice Irish man who runs it that I will order a lorry and simply take away the lot.

Every time I walk past and see the Closing Down Half Price Sale sign I look at all the beautiful, forlorn hardbacks in the window and feel like I need to rescue them, as if they were unwanted puppies at a dog home.