Saturday 3rd March

I resisted for quite some time, but had seen them appearing here and there, and they seemed so handy that I was tempted.  One part of me resisted because of my love for the actual artifacts that books, especially hardbacks, are, even if one is constantly running out of bookshelves to keep them on.  In the end I bought one, a kindle, for myself, last Christmas; I mean, who else was going to buy me one.  I had a little difficulty in setting it up, as I don’t have very good wi-fi at home, but even on Christmas day the very nice man at the kindle helpline showed me how to download directly onto my laptop, and then transfer the books via a cable to my kindle.  Easy as pie, and now I have an ever growing library of books loaded.  I must confess I am a bit of a cheat though.  If I really want a book I will buy it both in hardback for reading at home with little puddy-tat next to me on the sofa, and also buy the kindle edition for travelling with.  I do love to see the spines of my favourite authors on the bookshelf, and the kindle list is a poor substitute, and besides, like downloaded music, do you actually own anything if it just a collection of binary numbers which are all too easy to delete.  Yes I know a complete waste of money, but after all, why not, it is my money to waste and I don’t criticize you or anyone else for how they spend their money.  The best thing about the kindle is that you can adjust the font size to suit your own short-sightedness.  Also it NEVER forgets what page you were on, and is so handy to slip into my handbag and out again if I sit for five minutes on a bench at Parliament Hill Fields or even standing waiting for the bus – no minute is wasted.  And I have discovered there are so many of us, a secret society of kindle users who sit in Starbucks or on the tube, or on park benches – each of us engaged in our own secret world of stories.  Some have white kindles and a few pink and red ones but most are black like mine.  It reminds me of photos of Edwardian children, each with their very own slate, same colour, same size.  Plus ca change, plus ca meme.