In the charity shop

It's been hot today. Really hot. So hot that when I walked into town I was compelled to buy a bottle of water from an ice cream stand. Strangely, the stand was being run by two children who appeared to be around 10 years old. Wasn't a problem though, they were perfectly able to serve me a cold bottle of water for £1. Slightly on the expensive side, but I was hot and thirsty enough to not mind too much.

Later on, I decided to pop into a charity shop to look at second hand books. One never knows what one will find in charity shops. I suppose that isn't strictly true as you can always be certain of finding jigsaws and floral dresses. But you never what the picture will be of, or what kind the flowers will be. Likewise, you never know exactly which books will be available. It's a very different situation to visiting Waterstones, where you know exactly which books will be available (mostly the complete works of Dan Brown it seems at the moment). I didn't buy any jigsaws or floral dresses, but I did buy a couple of books.

What were the books? I'll tell you. I'll tell you now. Yes I will. First book was a short kid's novel by the normally fantastic Stephen Baxter. It's called "Gulliverzone" and looks pretty rubbish, but at 113 pages long, it doesn't promise to waste too much of my life. Second novel was "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood. It won the Arthur C Clarke award when it was released, so is probably ok. The edition I found is a fairly strange one - it's a hardback one, seemingly intended for a school library. It's got one of those really awful covers that you only see in libraries. It's most strange.

Anyway, I took the books to the counter and tendered my money to the slightly doddery old man who was serving. Then he started to reach under the counter to get me a bag, so I said, that it was ok, I didn't need a bag, thank you. However, I had only assumed that it was a plastic bag he was reaching for. It could in fact have been something else entirely. Maybe that's where he was keeping his cup of tea. Or perhaps he didn't like my manner and he was reaching for a cudgel to berate me about the head with. Or even a shotgun or a death ray. If these things had been what he was reaching for, then me saying that I didn't need a bag would have just confused him. And maybe made him angry enough to reach for his cudgel even if it had been the cup of tea that he was originally intending to pick up.

You have to be careful with assumptions. In the event, I will probably never know what he was reaching for because he stopped reaching for it when I said I didn't need a bag. I expect it was a bag. But I really didn't need one, as I had one already. I hope he wasn't too upset.

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(added 07/09/04)
Here's a picture of the book itself:



See how truly awful it is?