There are so many skirts under the table, none of these long legs are mine

Jazz and books. A little piece of heaven on Byre's Road. The shop is practically empty so I let my mind wander slowly along the shelves. There's a pretty little blue book by Stevenson. I haven't read him in ages. Treasure Island was one of my favourites as a kid. I consumed those children's penguin classics when I was in primary school. My gran gave me Kidnapped but I don't know where it is now and I know I never read past the first couple of chapters, and we only ever studied a tiny bit of Jekyll and Hyde and I can never find it when I have money in bookshops. Naturally there's a copy next to the pretty blue book today and I'm 2 quid short.

I found instead a gorgeous red book for £1.49. It was a bunch of short stories by an author I didn't recognise and fit snugly in my hands but a previous owner had mutilated it with a gaudy pink highlighter and scrawled notes in the margins. So I left with nothing.

Yesterday my head was too full. Too many ideas and I was watching everything too objectively. Forming paragraphs about the oddity of walking from one uni to the next. Weaving my way through a separate set of students. My classes this year are nowhere near as social as last year. A lot of the people are much older, look down on the little ones. There's always someone to talk to but few I'd bother seeing elsewhere. Friends from last year have different timetables, ones I know well but ditched. There's friends from high school and I love them dearly but they're reminders of all that ridiculousness. Talking about people I'd forgotten and, quite often, how much they hate me. Always like to hear that I left a mark. And then there's another set, the once a week lot mostly which is still more often than I see half of my friends these days. A set I didn't think I'd bother with since I hadn't written anything in over a year and the idea of drinking with a bunch of strangers every week didn't appeal.

My bag bumped off my ass as I picked my way through my familiar crowds. So much heavier than when I left my house the day before thanks to the addition of dead men's poetry and a hack's novel. There's the beginning of another novel safe in the back of my notebook. More paragraphs form in my head about the thrill of having someone else's writing in my bag, the very fact that my opinion would be sought. I stayed up too late last night pulling sentences apart and weighing up images in my mind. There's ink staining my fingers, my arms, the keys of my laptop, his work, my work. Thoughts flowing onto surfaces, any surface, it doesn't matter I make it my own with a sweep and a smudge with stolen ballpoints.

My diary finished last week and I have no suitable replacement or money for a suitable replacement. S'bad news.