Commuters ahoy!

When did you last miss your stop because of reading, and what was the book? It is years since I've missed a stop, but this morning I did that terrible thing of realising we'd arrived, leaping from my seat, stumbling through everyone else to arrive at the doors just as they closed. No chance of pretending anything other than the truth, and I'd lost my rare-as-something-very-rare seat! Had to smile, chuckle, do body language to symbolise 'what a fool I am' and then poke my nose back into the kindle which was the root cause of it all. Gah. 

And the book? I'm reading the Crimson Petal and the White, was expecting a bit of light historical fiction, and in fact its the most porn-esque book I think I've ever read but with a blindingly brilliant narrative voice. I just love the way the narrator addresses the reader directly, switches to narrate a character's thoughts, surmises what the reader should be thinking and then switches back to ticking us off, telling us to pay attention, telling us it's about to get good...

Other reads over the weekend - Chris Mullin 'A very British coup' had me chortling at the descriptions of how the civil service works (especially Private Offices, Permanent Secretaries and No.10) but the plot seemed thin and dated, compared to Yes Minister and/or Thick of It. And I whipped my way through Love Virtually by Daniel Glattauer, an epistolary novel via email, which really made the most of the anonymity of email, and the way that we construct personalities from the tone and language of the emails we receive from people...

Maybe it's because we're Londoners...

A little girl aged 4 or 5, reading her homework book on the morning bus to school. Ribbed tights, royal blue sweatshirt, matching bands on her braids.

She was reading 'Ben and Lad' from the Ginn readers series - I remember my little bro reading it maybe 20 years. And she was really enjoying the pictures and chatting to herself about the story, doing a bit of reading in between. Her mum was lovely, interested in what little girl was saying and telling her how well she was doing.

And then the girl started to stumble - she got confused between not and no, didn't get the point of the letter 't' making it different and then got in a fluster about not being able to tell that 'hello' was the same word when it appeared later on the same page. She got tearful about forgetting the word, but wasn't going to let her mum put the book back in the bookbag.