I buy Mantel’s Wolf Hall from one of the two
charity shops I visit today looking for second
hand books or vinyl, a tome so large it has to
displace the wholemeal tin loaf purchased a few
minutes earlier at the bakery – butcher’s chorizo
bangers secured in another compartment of the
rucksack. On both those recycling reading shelves
was a single and stolen copy of John Steinbeck’s
Of Mice and Men, this year’s exam over, and there
will never be the need again to read for study so the
school like each discarding student can care less if
future generations know about George and Lennie,
how dreams are futile, loneliness, why it’s the girls
objectified, if there’s any meaning to sausage curls.