LOVECRAFT

I think I must have been about fourteen years old. I was into the gloomy cosmicism of H.P. Lovecraft and had heavily plagiarised one of his short stories to create the only thing I ever had published in my school's magazine.

One half-term, I was moping around the damp border between England and Wales, trailing unenthusiastically in the wake of my parents and a family friend.

In Hay-on-Wye, we sheltered from the ceaseless rain by ducking into one of the larger second-hand bookshops, a big, dusty place that had once been a small cinema. The double-height space had been split horizontally with rickety boards, reached via wobbly makeshift staircases. I clattered around.

The thousands of books were organised by genre, but within each section there was little evidence of alphabetical ordering. For some reason, I was thinking about Lovecraft and wondering how many of his works I had yet to read. As the thought crossed my mind, a floorboard moved alarmingly underfoot. I feared for a second that the whole precarious construction of the upper level was going to come crashing to the ground floor. I reached out a hand, seeking something solid to hang onto. My fingers closed around a battered paperback that was jutting from the nearest shelf. It came away from its neighbours and I looked at it: a collection of Lovecraft short stories that I had not read.