Books.

This may sound a bit odd so please bear with me.

It's actually great to be living fairly close to my parents. They adore the wee hen and he gurgles and chuckles right back at them. It's one of the reasons we moved back, so that they could know him as he grows up.

There is a side effect.

It's a benefical one.

The bookshelves at B****s Towers are loaded.

They are loaded with all those books that you thought you should have read, all those books that you might have read, all those books that you sort of thought you should have read or might have read and a few in between. Don't even get me started on The Silver Fox's study which is crammed with sporting volumes from over five decades, everything from how to tune your racing dinghy to photostudies of the 1966 World Cup Finals. In the next room and downstairs there are all the great classics (Austen, Bronte, Dickens, Tolstoy etc) as well as lots and lots of more modern fiction and biography. It's a wonderfully random selection and from time to time it's a place where a passion for books can be indulged, especially as I am currently banned from bookshops (it's a single income thing, we need to tighten our belts a bit and my book habit was costly).