Saturday 25 July 2009

Unhealthy Obsession

The other day I was waiting in my favourite breakfast cafe for a friend and two strange and slightly compulsive things have happened.

1. I spent 15 minutes cleaning - the cafe has an upstairs area that consists of two rooms 1 playroom with toys and books and cushions on the floor and another dining area, with old mishapen chairs, adult books, and general flotsem that seems to fill chill out areas.  Last week Andrew and I went there for breakfast and it was chaos up there books toys and old plates everywhere.  Now one of the things we like about up there is its a place where people let their kids go wild, but I still want some sense of order so I don't feel like I am eating my breakfast in a hovel.

So while I was waiting for my friend I started tidying, I had no intention of doing much, just chucking a few toys back in the play space and making room on the dining table, but 15 minutes later I had stacked the books in order, refilled the sugars and moved the furniture so that the room was set out as I like it ... So slightly compulsive :)

2. As I was tidying the books I found a copy of John Wyndams - Day of the Triffids, and I wanted to take it home - ok its not as bad as it seems, the cafe is happy for you to take books home and I have often taken a few old books in there so its not stealing.  The issue is that I already have 4 copies of Day of the Triffids.  It seems that I have a Day of the Triffids obsession, every time I see a new version I want it and this one was one I didn't have, but it was covered in plastic, had the first 3 pages missing and a few ripped pages, still it took me the 3 hours we were there to decide whether to take it or not, I decided to take a copy of Rozencrantz and Guildenstren are dead instead, I still wonder if it might have been to much to take both...

Sometimes my strange ways even seem strange to me *grin*

5 comments:

Kristie said...

I am *ALWAYS* cleaning up when at the cafe LOL.

Kim said...

It's Pride and Prejudice for me. I already own 4 copies - I just keep buying more!!

Catriona said...

I own at least five copies of Frankenstein (there are two different editions of the novel, 1818 and 1831, but it's still excessive), either four or five copies of Matthew Lewis's The Monk, and at least four copies of Dracula.

The best I can say for myself is they are all nineteenth-century texts, but they're not the kind of texts I work with, so it's not much of an excuse.

I also don't know how many copies of Little Women I own--at least three.

On the grounds that it doesn't count if they're different translations (and it doesn't), I also own three different sets of Dante's Divine Comedy.

Bibliophilia slips into bibliomania pretty readily. I wouldn't worry about your John Wyndham obsession: it seems perfectly normal from where I'm sitting (which is admittedly behind a wall constructed from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein).

Buffy Stun-Hers said...

Somehow i knew you women would get me :) in fact if i would have picked my 3 friends that i knew would comment, i could have said exactly, treena will have loads of obsessive books (can everyone say Vampire boarding school novels) Kim has many of my obsessive behaviours, lets call it genetic *grin* and K and i love the same Cafe, and it constantly needs cleaning lol

Catriona said...

Oi! My obsession with vampire boarding-school stories is (firstly) perfectly normal for someone who own (according to Delicious Library) 140 girls' school stories and (secondly) not something that requires any explanation.

I mean, they're vampire stories.

Set in boarding schools.

Which part of that is not totally awesome?

Trust me: I have a Ph.D.

;)

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