A pocket-sized universe - KG

Home in Highgate with Helen and Sam. Helen and Sam had barely moved in when I rolled my suitcase through the front door. Their bedrooms were eclectically furnished with boxes and rolled rugs and the living room was budding with sunflowers and congratulatory cards. Helen had just graduated from Oxford University and she told me one morning over bagels and warm butter that one of the most exciting things about her profession was having a new box to tick besides the archaically complicated Miss or Ms.

Helen and Sam refused apologies, accepted gratitudes, and encouraged comfortability. Their home had chocolate-coloured floorboards that were stubborn in their elegance and decadent in their sophistication. A pair of gumboots in the hallway that held the possibility of rain. A shower with a bathtub that welcomed you to melt down and stay a while if you wished. A comfy blow up mattress hugged by two windows, a leather couch and a chest of drawers and shelves filled with a kaleidoscope of books.

Sam and I met Jamesy from Dublin behind the counter of a cosy book exchange in Notting Hill. He offered Sam 1p for his scribbled submission and was making bookmarks out of laminated magazine clippings. He said he reads for at least two hours a day and could never count how many books he reads in a year because how are you supposed to measure anthologies too?

“If aliens came down to earth,” he said, “and we told them about these pocket sized things that hold entire universes - they wouldn’t believe us.”