Reading bites

Maisie likes books almost as much as I do. I had been warned.

Take this one, last Sunday’s dinner book.

I bought and thoroughly enjoyed reading Case Histories many years ago, but it’s been pulled off the shelf because it’s this month’s Bad Girls selection.

Heard a noise just as I was going to sleep, but didn’t get up to investigate. In the morning I found the book on the dining room floor. Ah.

This is a bookmark.

These (and a small one on the cover above) are bite marks.

Jean told me Maisie likes to shred paper. 

On Christmas Day, after brunch, I sat down at the table to write out Christmas cards for the people I’d be seeing for dinner. There was one card (and envelope) left. When I got home after dinner I found the envelope on the floor with bits bitten out of it. The card itself was still on the table, unchewed. Guess she only likes certain types of paper.

The next day I was sitting in the chair reading and Maisie decided to join me. She stretched from my lap to my chest. Ahh, I thought. Then, when I turned my attention back to my book she turned her head and, before I could stop her, took a bite out of the page I was reading. And it’s a borrowed book, so when I return it I shall have to explain the bite mark.

The bookmark I’m using for Case Histories is appropriate, because it’s from an independent book store my friend Jane used to own in Vancouver. The shop was conveniently situated about halfway between the Greenpeace office and my house, so I would regularly stop in to say hello. Sometimes we’d just have a chat, sometimes I’d be checking to see if there was anything new by favourite authors and sometimes I’d walk in the door and she would immediately hand me a book and say, “Read this!” It was never a bum steer. One of those books was Behind the Scenes at the Museum, the first novel by Kate Atkinson. I’ve read everything she’s written since. So, thank you, Jane.

Further into the novel I discovered what I’d used as a bookmark the first time I read the book.

Yes, once upon a time I worked at the League Against Cruel Sports. Started off as an agency job after I left the Greenpeace UK office and turned into an offer of a full time position, which I accepted despite the low salary and it not really being an issue about which I felt any great passion, but because I really liked a lot of the people there and the ED allowed me to put the word “knickers” in the title of the first press release I wrote for them. (Something to do with a Countryside Alliance protest in Westminster.) But that’s another story for another day.