Angela, and the importance of bookshelves

This morning I walked down from the edge of town to the Lock Keeper's cafe, beside the the restoration-in-progress canal, where I was meeting Angela. Other friends of mine used to run the Lock Keeper's as a bar, where there was always something going on, even on week nights, but now it has been transformed into a clean, bright coffee shop. I took some shots of Angela, whom it was a delight to see, after several months, but the background was rather stark. I feel quite shy about taking portraits, and Angela is shy, despite being amazing-looking, so I set the camera to Drive, and then chose the best shot.

We chatted about her second book, which she is working one (her first was about Celtic Medicinal plants, but this one is more personal), and about writing groups and courses in general. Angela and I originally met in a pub, some 12 years ago, and she was a keen attender of the Wild Womens' Writing Workshop, which I used to run in Stroud. She was telling me about a man who needed to move house, but could not afford bookshelves, but was then given some floorboards to make shelves with. Then he needed something for his old house... I was rather wondering what the point was, but later the conversation came back to haunt me.

I took the no. 8 bus home, because I had acquired some heavy shopping. I stepped on board, asked for a ticket to the cemetery, and the driver looked at me and laughed, "Feeling tired, are you? That'll be your last-ever £1.20..."

Honestly, tripping down through the cemetery is the quickest way home, for those who don't like walking uphill all the time.

A nearly-blip was an old Austin car, 1968 vintage, in a driveway behind a gate, on the Top of Town/Mason Road estate, but it looked caged in. I wanted something more exuberant. Back home, my massage client came and went, and my attempt to keep CleanSteve's birthday cake-making a secret failed when he walked in at the biscuit-crushing stage. I decided to take the laptop downstairs, all the better to view my images.

As I glanced down while waiting for the pizza wheel of infinity icon to stop spinning on my Macbook, I noticed a bubble of water on the floor under the bookshelf, and a woodlouse, and a tiny snail. I leapt to my feet and tried to move the bookshelf, which left a squelchy trail of black pond water on the the floor. There seemed no option but to take all of the books out of the bookshelf and put them into a basket, which meant displacing all my massage towels upstairs, before getting behind the back of the fridge, to drain the leaking water container. Whoever invented frost-free fridges ? Nothing but trouble, that little drain at the back...

Being from the "more speed" school of manoeuvring objects, as opposed to CleanSteve, who managed to miss all this by being asleep, I had not considered the objects on top of the fridge. Unfortunately, the fly-killing ultraviolet light took its revenge by crashing to the floor and shedding its load of dead flies and moths all over me and the newly washed floor. Instant Karma's gonna get you...

Two hours later, with the bookshelf upside down in the cabin to dry out, and the dining room subtly rearranged and my white t-shirt covered in a patina of debris and dust, I wondered why I had ever thought that bookshelves were irrelevant. It is CleanSteve's birthday tomorrow ( he likes his food) and now the recipe books are all higgledy piggledy in a basket, and the 'cake' is still a pile of broken biscuits!

Later, we went down to the station to blip a steam train. I enjoyed the anticipation, but found that the moment of its arrival was ruined by my viewing it through a lens, and wondering if I was getting a good-enough shot (it was ok-ish). CleanSteve has blipped the train for today, but I decided to keep Angela, because I prefer people and trifling tales about bookshelves.