Have I Gone Mad

or was it the Book Cannibals?

Hazel is always banging on about positivity.

Be positive, darling!

And enthusiasm.

Be enthusiastic, darling! It’s what your readers want to see. Positive enthusiasm. Or, possibly, enthusiastic positivity.

Which is why I feel it’s my duty to break the news to my loyal and devoted readers as gently as possible.

I’ve gone mad.

I mean – we all knew it was going to happen one day – I just never thought it would be now. Today.

Today I’ve gone mad.

The good news is that my copies of The Ballad of Smallhope and Pennyroyal have turned up. The books are beautiful and there has been mass stroking. By me, obviously. My family backed nervously from the room when invited to participate in a mass stroke.

Anyway, my job – I’m only ever given the simplest tasks to do – is to sign them, and having done so, send details to Hazel who will arrange their collection.

Six boxes, I reported, with a dynamic confidence that turned out to be entirely unjustified.

Twelve hours later there were only five boxes. Not six. Five.

There are a number of possible scenarios here.

There were six boxes and I very absent-mindedly picked up a colossally heavy box of books, wandered off with it and put it down somewhere in my tiny flat and now can’t find it. This is possible, although an inch-by-inch search has failed to locate it anywhere. I’ve walked through twice but no sixth box.

The alternative is that I can’t count. As any number of maths teachers will attest.

The most likely scenario, however, is that I’ve gone mad. Seriously mad. There were six boxes in my own head but only five in the real world.

At Hazel’s suggestion I counted the books. One hundred just as there should be.

4 x 24 = 96

Plus one small box with four books.

Total 100.

Five boxes.

But there were six – I swear it.

No – it’s no good – I’m off to search again. It’s hiding from me, the little tinker. Or – and here’s a thought – book cannibals. Of course – why didn’t I think of that before? As you were, everyone. No cause for alarm – it’s only book cannibals.