Reading

I used to read a lot, right from when I came back here. To furnish the dry silence with the written word, and to dissolve the pain and the absence. I read like others drink, with greed, swallowing pages upon pages endlessly, rolling my soul in the ink of the hypnotic, black and dense characters. Even now I feel this almost compulsive desire. I have less time to read now, and my body is exhausted now. Florence says that it’s normal, that the spring is a season of renewal, when you need to literally push your energy to the very depths of your body. She experiences it every year, and sees it clearly with the bairns.I’m not reading anything deep at the minute, just a few pages from an Ian Rankin detective novel, when I have the time and the energy. The book is set in Edinburgh, at festival time. It’s distracting, and it is full of imagery for me : neighbourhoods, pubs, characters with familiar expressions…