On My Way Home

It was raining this afternoon. When I finished my teaching, a lab of which had some music students complaining why they were doing a LAN networking lab, I was really not in the mood of appreciating the walk in a cool and wet winter night. Why did we have music students doing electronic labs anyway? Universities could always mess up the right things they were supposed to be doing in one way or another. I was so thirsty but I couldn't be bothered to walk back to the student union shop. It was a wet night and the drops had no sign to calm down. I searched my wallet hoping to find a pound so I could get something from the vending machine. I was lucky. There was a big fat two pound coin. I put the coin into the machine and press the code for a bottle of coke zero. Nothing happened. The coin was not accepted by the machine. I read the instruction again. Two pound coin was supposed to be working. I tried it once more but ended with disappointment. I thought I could still make it home without the coke.

The weather had not been good for the day at all. Thankfully I was not cold. The cashmere sweater that I was wearing was bought back from China two years ago. My mother bought it for me. So its colour really suited my father well and could make me look 5 years older with no problem. But it was really warm and soft.

I was soaking. The shortcut I normally took was dark and wet, which made it not attractive at all. So I decided to walk home through the shopping mall. It is probably the only thing keeping Hatfield from a dead place. It is not very big but managed to provide some entertainments out of the quietness in this small, not modern and not traditional English town.

As I was walking through, it just hit me that I was sharing with a friend with the books we read and our desire of buying more books. We were talking about visiting Waterstone and the shop was right there on my way home. I thought I would just hop in and see what they had got to offer before Christmas.

'3 for 2', the favourite trick of Waterstone was being played again. It was such a temptation, I had to admit. I thought I should be able to afford three books with no problem at a price of two. After all, the university just gave me my Christmas bonus although I won't share the amount in case you would be laughing too loud. That would be bad for your spleen, an old Chinese saying. It was not to my surprise that then I found my self struggling to keep the goods into my budget because I picked out six books. I was attempted to buy all of them but I was concerned that I still had my grocery shopping undone yet. So I put three down, the trilogy, the fist book of which was filmed as 'The Golden Compass'. A friend of mine told me it was really good though. I got myself a Ian Rankin's book The Naming of The Dead because I saw it’s adverts on my way to Liverpool for a conference four months' ago. I thought this ought to be good. I also got myself another Bill Bryson: The Life and Times of The Thunderbolt Kids. I read his book, A Short History for Everything, before. That was fun. The last book I got was The Shadow of the Wind, for no reason but that I had seen it on the shelf for a long time.

With my proud new entertainments in hand, I walked out after paying. There is a few fast food restaurants towards my home. It was still raining. Kids were trying to hit cars that lined for the fast food take out with garbage, I reckoned. I walked faster in case they turned around to give me some trouble.
……
After dinner, I turned on the radio, got my self a warm cup of tea and opened the page of The Naming of The Dead. It was such a peace and relaxing of mind I haven't had for a while.