It was great walking away from school at lunchtime to get the bus. It felt like escaping. My leg didn’t even feel particularly bad, which made it all the better, it was like putting one over on everyone. Two buses and a train, and I was in Shrewsbury, easy as that. The train’s a little rattly local, not all that different from a bus. Most of the people who were on it had come from North Wales and had North Welsh voices and said “yes/no” at the end of all their questions just like people in South Wales making fun of them. “Shall I get us a cup of tea from the buffet, yes/no?” “Is this Shrewsbury we’re coming to now, yes/no?” Delete where inapplicable. I didn’t laugh, but it was a near thing. It’s hard when someone is just exactly like a parody.
The acupuncture went well. It turned the pain off entirely while I was on the table. That’s marvellous, it’s just so nice not to have any pain at all, not grinding away in the background even, just no pain. I lived like that for years, but it’s hard to remember. Pain oozes. Like my dream with the ballerina with the walking stick.
Afterwards I went to a cafe and had baked potato with egg salad and a tuna mayonnaise sandwich, and a double decker. I sat in a little booth with sides and read my book (Charisma, which is brilliant but weird), and felt safely alone and anonymous. It’s not as if I’m me, it’s just that I’m “person in crowd” or “schoolgirl reading book in cafe.” They got me from central casting, and when I go there’ll be another one. Nobody will notice me. I’m an insignificant part of the landscape. There’s nothing that feels safer.
Then I walked back to the station, and on the way I passed that Owen Owens where I went shopping with the aunts. It’s a department store, not just clothes, and I remembered noticing that there was a pen and paper department. I popped in to see if they had nibs for my pen. The problem with writing backwards with a fountain pen is that it destroys the nib—left-handed people have this problem too, going through nibs fast. Because I write in here a lot, and pretty much always backwards, I go through nibs. So I came in to look, and they did, so I bought one, which was good, but what was even better was I saw through that department to a book department.
Now I did know that some department stores have book departments. Harrods has one. My copy of LOTR in three beautiful volumes with the Appendices came from there, when Auntie Teg went to London. But Howells and David Morgans in Cardiff don’t—probably because they can’t compete with Lears—and I hadn’t thought there might be one in Owen Owens. Well, joy and rapture, there it was. And, best of all, to my total astonishment, a new Heinlein: The Number of the Beast, NEL paperback January 1980, how new is that! I bought it right away, not even needing to go into my put-away money to get it.
I almost started it on the train, but I was very good and not only finished Charisma but started Doorways in the Sand. Having a whole fat new Heinlein I haven’t read a word of is such a lovely feeling. Like a reward. I feel all bouncy and happy when I think of it sitting there waiting for me.
FRIDAY 1ST FEBRUARY 1980
Rabbits.
Had a severe warning from Miss Thackerly about cheating at maths. Deirdre and I had the same mistakes. She kept us behind after class and said she wasn’t going to report us this time, and she wasn’t going to ask who had copied whose work, but that if she ever caught us again we’d be looking at expulsion. I had no idea it was that serious. People copy each other’s prep all the time. Deirdre has copied my Latin loads of times, and plenty of people copy Claudine’s French. I suppose it’s a case of not getting caught. I promised Miss Thackerly we wouldn’t do it again—Deirdre was in tears and could hardly speak. Getting expelled would be awkward for me, but it would be the end of the world for her.
Letter from Daniel, with another fiver. I’ll tell him about finding Number of the Beast when I write. It starts well.
SATURDAY 2ND FEBRUARY 1980
I was almost sorry I had such a big pile of library books, though of course they were all things I wanted and had ordered. Greg was there and stamped them out for me.
“There’s a new Heinlein,” I told him.
“The Number of the Beast,” he agreed. “It’s on the top of my list of things to order for the shelves as soon as April comes.”
“It’s wrong for libraries to have limited budgets,” I said.
He snorted, and took the books from the lady behind me. I’m not wrong though. They could take the money from building enough nukes to kill all the Russians in the world and give it to libraries. What good does an independent nuclear deterrent do Britain, compared to the good of libraries? Somebody has their priorities wrong. I’m not really a commie, no matter what they call me, but I do think it might be instructive to look at library budgets in the Soviet Union.