Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

Before I go away, even for a weekend, I feel obliged to run round with hoover and duster… I like the thought of coming home to a tidy place. As I dust the bookshelves that take up more wallspace than anything else in the flat, I can’t help thinking that those shelves hold a lot of memories; the books on there are mainly old ones… a lot of fantasy and historical stuff as well as books from my own childhood and youth that I somehow seem to have retained.

If I go through the shelves I could, in theory, dispose of the vast majority of them really and only keep the reference books I still use. I don’t though, and I won’t unless I have to. Not because I can’t let go of them, but because they are old friends I like to revisit from time to time. Books are…