My first book was yellow. On its cover was a bumblebee and the words ‘All the best things in the world begin with a b.’ I look at the words, and the words make sense, and suddenly the book springs into story. All these years later I can open that book’s hard yellow covers and I am six years old, alone at night, and making a discovery that will mean I am never alone again. There is a boy, there is a butterfly, thand there is a bumblebee. They all begin with a b, they are all found in the book, and they are all the best things in the world.

They are still there in that book waiting for me now, although I am not quite sure where there is. I haven’t seen The Bb Book for a while, although I’m sure it is around somewhere, maybe in a box under the stairs. These days the books have run amok, they fill shelves, sheds, cupboards. There are too many of them to house and my companion, B, has taken up the iPad. He says he has hundreds of books stored on it, but I just scoff. Books are for touching, I say. If you run your finger down a spine, you remember where you were when you first touched that body, the desire that kindled in you with the dust jacket, the stray thought that took form as your eyes roamed across words that became you as you read them.