Old friends

When I last moved home, a few years ago, I left my books in boxes. Three years ago I sorted through them. I got rid of a few, kept some and sectioned off others with the aim of creating an adventure-book library, which I planned to have at a friend's sporty store. The books sat there for a year - in boxes. I collected them and they've been in boxes in a cupboard since.

Last week I moved my books to my new home in Parys and put them on their own bookcase in our new home office. I am so delighted to have all my books together. Handling each one to place it on the shelf brought back memories of the stories and adventures, the people and when I read it.

Of course, I have colour coded my bookcase again.

In addition to books, my bookcase also has some friends collected on travels.

The challenge is always to remember what colour books are - to find them again. But the pleasure too is in searching for a book and finding other gems instead.

A close up of red-orange-yellow

A close-up of green-blue. I could do with more green... Indigo and violet also low. I've got lots of white and black.

Celliers is definitely a lot more sharing than me. He thought our books would mingle. Funny.

When it comes to books, my books are my books; his books are his books. He's welcome to take and read any book at any time; but mine have their own bookcase. I have a very possessive book 'thing'.

Where Celliers organises his book by categories (kayaking, travel - by country, mountaineering, biographies and such), mine are arranged by colour. Now that he has seen this, he's quite pleased that my books are not mingling. And he won't let me colour-code his bookcase.

"I won't be able to find anything!" he says.

Between the two of us, we have the most incredible collection of paddling, mountaineering, climbing and adventure books. It will take us many, many years to read the other's books.

My mission now is to paint the bookcase white to better show off the colours of the books. hahahaha