Books

It's too long a story to explain how I managed to have to move all my books over and over again from room to room in a house with only me in it. But I did. Books passed through my hands I hadn't seen for so long: the copy of DH Lawrence with the deathless inscription "To good Flocy, from naughty Jim". Who knew?; piles of bibles, some apparently belonging to me, but really a great aunt with the same initials; a tiny wee booklet of haiku, some of them by students of mine; my Bismarck notes from Brian McClinton's history class, oceans of them; Attic Press diaries with built in period calendar; Aidie's story books, "Anneliya Went to the Movies" and "Anneliya Went to the Beach"; wee John's dissertation and his chapter in a big fat tome about ethics; Granny's prize for Biblical Knowledge from Bluebell Hill Primary School, Glasgow, "Northanger Abbey", amazingly; my Anglo Saxon Primer and "Dream of the Rood"; my Old Norse text books; my Horace and Ovid; Buntus Cainte and Nuala Ni Domhnaill; "Was Dir Nicht Angehoert" and rows of wee tiny yellow Reclams, "Naepfli, was Blutkoerperchen" und "Die Drei Damen K"; shivers at Borchert - "Das Brot" still gives me nightmares of sadness; Boell's "Irisches Tagebuch" with memories of wry soul searching.

Very special things like: "No Mate for the Magpie", with Frances dead before I got it read; "The March of Folly" that I tried to lend to half the Anchor bar - Cathal borrowed it; all Gráinne's poems; pamphlets and anthologies that include Ann McKay, "the hot teeth of the zip" and "Anubis on Craigavon Bridge"; loads more bibles including the one presented to me, and to each of us, as we left Friends' School. I never quite got over the fact that it is the Revised rather than the Authorised version; my wee psalter, which I unaccountably asked for as my present for stumbling through my O levels; my wee hymnbook, given to me by Grampa; all the Waverley novels, with the names given to the boats and that we can't bear to talk about because of "Fair Maid"; Conor Garrett's newspaper costing 10p or three eggs isn't there, because I gave it to him, I hope; "Lyddie", because Siún can still hop; "Die Blechtrommel", weird gift from Kevin. He doesn't know about the scissors; "Les Mains Sales", inevitable; "L'Étranger"; scruffy books from Smithfield with other people's names in them that Mammy got for going to Queen's; the story of wee John's trip to Kenya, nothing like as gripping as his letter home; a History of Friend's School; a History of Enniskillen Collegiate;