You go to the post bix every day for a week hoping that the book you’ve ordered – Magnificent Obsession by Helen Rappaport –

Magnificent Obsession PBKhas arrived.  Finally it does, you bring it home, upwrap it, and leave it on the kitchen table to savour later.

When you come back, you find your husband – who normally describes anything you like to read as ‘rubbish’ and ‘girly’ – already 30 pages in.  He look up and, with the air of someone who’s afraid you’re about to insist on having his last Rolo, says, ‘You don’t mind if I read this before you, do you?’

I reckon a literate judge would agree that swiping someone’s new book prives ample grounds.  On the other hand Waiting For Sunrise by William Boyd which the OH has been longng for arrived this afternoon.  I finished reading Bill Slider at lunchtime…