The other day Ali and I stood in my room and had a heated discussion about discrimination. It stemmed from issues with application forms, the fact that earlier I had wandered down to Ali's dj workshop that she'd organised for the young people and also the fact that we are currently considering becoming Community Support Officers. If they'll have us.

Later that night I shut myself in my room, curled up on my bed and resolved to finished reading To Kill A Mockingbird. Since I finished my degree I have been trying to read all the 'classics' that I didn't get a chance to read during those three years when we were made to read Paradise Lost in a summer. I didn't, and then I wrote on it in the exam, but that's irrelevant. I love that I can read whatever I want. There's no one standing over my shoulder saying, 'You'd better hurry up and read that because your seminar is on Thursday.' Ok no one ever did, but the voices in my head said it. Though I do still have the ability to read a book to prove a point. In Sixth Form, my English teacher found me sitting on the picnic table in the playground during a free period and remarked that I should be reading the set text. I informed him that I would have it read by Monday, a 700 page book read three days later. So I did and proved my point. Then Corinne said last summer that she would give me a chocolate bar if I read The Waves. Less that a year later, I read it for one of my modules, fell in love with it, and Corinne still owes me a chocolate bar.
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned I wanted to read To Kill A Mockingbird and Kirst brought her copy up from home. I was halfway through it and decided I wanted to finish it this weekend. And as lay in my bed, the duvet wrapped around me and tears falling from my eyes as I frantically tried to read the pages in a desperate hope that what I'd just read was some kind of joke and that it really was going to be ok, I fell in love with literature all over again. Just like I had when I'd read In Cold Blood two weeks ago and just like I did when I did my Virginia Woolf module. And then as if to prove this love, I spent twenty three quid on Amazon.