I'm in a doctor's waiting room (primary viral infection becoming secondary bacterial infection), and as I take Pink-half-read-book out of my bag (essential reading-while-waiting therapy), I smile because a familiar song issues from the speaker system. In world terms we were just across the road from each other. None of any of that, though I lived no great distance from Pinkbook's narrator in world terms. And no father, mother, sisters, brothers, missing or dead.

Guilt that there were no no-go areas where eighteen-year-old-me lived, no taboo subjects I couldn't examine if I chose, no tribal groups making tribal rules, no white-van men making up my mind for me, no names I dared not name. So there was guilt in that not-wanting-to-read-it feeling. One learning to tiptoe around unmentionables so that tomorrow might come, the other tramping on taboos like there was no tomorrow. One living in a no-go area 'over the road' from another no-go area, the other living in a come-and-go-as-you-please area alongside other come-and-go-as-you-please areas. One from 'over the border', the other from 'under the border', compassly speaking. It came from the suspicion that Pinkbook's narrator and I might be of a similar vintage. It's because of the amazing ability of the sun to set gloriously even upon inglorious circumstances.Īnd I'm clearer about why I had that not-wanting-to-read-it feeling.

Not that I like my mind being made up for me as a rule, though I don't like rules much either. I've wanted to read Pinkbook ever since I first heard about it, though I've not wanted to read it for all that time too, so Somebody sending it over was like my mind being made up for me by Somebody Else. The pink-covered book looks unread and I worry about creasing the spine of said pink book but I crease it anyway, and quickly. What had I thought? That it would be green? Or white? Or maybe orange? And a surprise to find the colour pink dominating the cover. Somebody gave me their copy of the Man Booker winner today because I'm down with 'flu.

The milkman anna burns