I worked at Oxfam, and collected books for 10p each, week after week arriving home with Marx, Engels and other more obscure philosophers and spiritualist writers. Numerous copies of the Bhagavad Gita.

Of course, I could never keep up with the volumes I would buy. I bought or acquired books with the best intentions, to be informed, to know more.

What was it now? From Howard’s End, the gathering they went to? Music and Mind, was it?

See, this is the problem. My memory. I appear to not have the ability to retain information or knowledge.

Now, what was it they went to? Lennard Baste and the character Helena Bonham Carter played. Damn it. I’ve forgotten.

Anyway, books and shelves and shelves of them. I sleep under my shelves, feel their presence while I rest. But it’s not so reassuring.

In fact, it’s more threatening. My shelves are heavy with knowledge I shall never be on top of. My shelves are out of control.

I say ‘no more’, I swear not to bring anymore to the shelves, but instead read what is there. It was my task for the summer. Unfulfilled. I am indecisive before them, not knowing where to begin.

One day not long ago, I sat and admired my shelves, and decided to do a little rearranging. I decided to move my files of media clippings and useful handouts to the shelf adjacent. I was very happy that day, with the shelves and its contents and it’s refection on my life and current situation.

I picked up the files and moved them to the adjacent shelf, as planned. The shelf bracket suddenly broke under the combined weight of the books and files. The shelf fell on my left foot and the heavy books, journals and files slid down the shelf onto my other foot. I stood there gripping what I could, not knowing what to do, feet throbbing under the weight of the books, heart racing from shock.

I stood there and thought of Leonard Bast, almost instantly. And of Forster’s depiction of crushed ambition. The punishment of the aspiring working class.

Crushed.