I have an almost superstitious belief that if I wish for something, a very detailed and unlikely wish, then the universe will go out of its way to do something entirely different. But sometimes the universe is kinder than you anticipate.
I was hunting for a book I’d read at school for English Lit: My Bones and My Flute by Edgar Mittelholzer. It’s out of print, and what second-hand copies were available online were priced beyond my pocket.
I thought about the book I’d held in my hands as a teenager. I imagined a pile of old, forgotten books in the corner of a room, discarded because they were no longer on the syllabus. I wondered if my own book was there, the one I’d been assigned for fourth and fifth form.
I asked an old school friend who now teaches at our school whether it might be possible to find a copy of the book at the Ministry of Education’s Text Book Loan Scheme.
She messaged me a few days later. Found them!
I was ecstatic, but the best was yet to come.
She found them in the book room of our old school (our ‘new’ old school - they’ve moved location since we were students). She looked carefully. And she found them. The book with her name, and the book with mine.
It has been almost thirty years since I first read My Bones and My Flute. I have just finished re-reading the same book I held at the age of fourteen. Karen Lord, IV Physics, 82-83.
