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The book thieves

Slowly but surely, the pub becomes home in unexpected ways.

We've lived in for a couple of years now (though you wouldn't know it from the lack of progress in decorating upstairs, all I will say in my defence is that the job takes up a lot more of your time than you ever imagine it will), and it's a very different sort of life to the one I was used to.

One curious manifestation of it now being a family home, rather than just a business with am empty flat up top, is you can't help but have life intrude on the business, be it the regulars now used to the sight of my youngest casually wandering behind the bar to pour one of his two-a-week-and-that's-it fizzy drinks or the sudden disappearance of queues for the bathroom, as we now effectively have five toilets.

One form this takes is the gradual colonisation of the pub with the spill-over from my book collection. With space at a premium upstairs, duplicates or read once and unlikely to re-read books find their way downstairs to act as a mix of diversion and decoration. Nothing cheers me more than the sight of a punter quietly dipping into a book.

Of course, people being people, there is a certain amount of, shall we say, shrinkage, which is fine, as I am incapable of passing a charity shop without browsing for books, so there's a steady supply, and I actually quite like the odd volume getting nicked, believing as I do that books are there to be read. I prefer them to be our in the world. One theft recently, though, did elicit a smile.

I keep one little rack outside the toilets, largely as a joke, but I did notice the other day that one volume had gone walkabout.

The book? Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment. 


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