Unlike Amazon second hand bookshops are a thing of joy and wonder.¹ They don’t have brutal efficiency but their customers happily browse. Titles, long forgotten, catch the eye and stimulate the curiosity bud. Was that book as good as remembered? £2: 50! Why not give it whirl? And I did. And I was richly rewarded. I hurtled back to the Blair years and wallowed. Bathos, biting satire, political comment, all embedded in Adrian Mole.

Unlike Lee Child’s Reacher character, or the Simpsons for that matter, Adrian Mole is a living flawed character about whom we want to know more. The Blair *babe* Pandora is central as a counter-intuitive character. I looked for a standout quote and had to work hard because there were so many:

Try this:

“I have been very ill for the past five days. At one point…it was touch or go whether I would be admitted to hospital with severe upper respiratory infection…

I rang NHS Direct and the nurse on the end of the line said, ‘you could send for an ambulance, but why don’t you have a Lemsip and tuck yourself up and see what happens, dear?’

I chose the Lemsip option, but as I said, it was touch and go.” p221

Note

1 This was bought at The Old Pier Bookshop | Visit Morecambe Bay (exploremorecambebay.org.uk)