disaster

I've lost my book...I hate that.

This happens semi regularly my family is well familiar with the vexed cry, 'where's my book?', sometimes substituted with, 'where's my glasses?' Book & glasses go everywhere I go just in case I get a minute to read but that means they are often abandoned as I am distracted by quotidian domestic duties.

Mum's rule of finding lost things was "go back to the last time you can remember having it and re-trace your steps" but the last time I had it was down the street...somewhere, in some shop there is a shop assistant looking at my book, admiring my beaded bookmark and wondering where the lost property bin is.

I don't know which is worse my book in the hands of strangers or all my characters in suspended animation till I can find them.