The keeper of the CDS

It started a few weeks ago when a friend asked me to lend her some Bruce Springsteen CDS "if you have any". I realised that both CS and I have hundreds of CDS stashed away in a drawer, and we never listen to them! I have music on iPods and hard drives and my laptop, but something always needs fixing, or some cable is missing....

Last year I bought a CD player for £10, but the CDs stayed in the drawer. After the Bruce conversation they came out, in no real order, and now I have shelves and shelves of them in full view. Often I pull out one at random to play. Those I bought at festivals, often signed by the artists, have such happy memories: the smell of wet grass and real ale: the feel of the scruffy red cinema seats in the old theatre; dancing on a shonky wooden floor; visting street markets in the drizzle; sipping frothy coffee in spiffing Cheltenham....

The papier mache cat came from Kashmir, via Bahrain. My sister and I bought it for one dinar in the fairly traded craft shop in Manama in 2007.
As for the London tube map, I like to collect the different editions when I pass through the capital. I have no real use for them, except when visiting the city. it's just a harmless past time, so far. One of Dame Ruth Rendell*/ Barbara Vine's novels, King Solomon's carpet, is set in the underworld that lies beneath the tube stations. If you are interested in the history and mysteries of the Tube, I recommend it, though the book's a real oldie. Dame Ruth died yesterday, aged 85. To my mind, her best books were written in the 1980s and 90s.