Me on the verge of being Sultan'd Nanna Ak, dressed in her dinner lady's shallows-blue tabard, would read all day. Beside the gas fire; slurping humbugs; tweaking, smoothing and sifting her hair, seams and hems. Finishing one library book, she would immediately take another off the pile in the grate. Lots of pink on the book covers - mainly fondant, some rose, occasionally hot when, as she explained, 'The setting's off an aeroplane, all over some water, exotic.' She knew she would like a book if she turned to page seventy-six to find, say, a sultan and Moreland nanny having their first kiss. 'Listen to this, now,' she would sigh, '"The sultan's eyes were like polished cocoa". Aww, there's proper romantic.' She did worry there was no mention of the nanny having applied a brake on the pram, or of a mosquito net over baby. 'But then, none
Just a flaneur, flanning away.