Some of the Blogs I've been reading lately have reminded me that there are still people out there interested in literature. I think a life time spent with people whose idea of what constitutes literature are the instruction leaflets you get when you buy a new fridge or TV - 'Read the Literature' before assembling, *plugging into the mains,etc, - has shamefully led me to banish most of my books, years ago, into domestic oblivion. Into the Siberia of the Middle England home. The loft.

And mine is a loft. It's not an attic, no one in their sanity would chose to sleep/eat/live there. It's so dark you fear for your health. So teeth rattlingly cold in the winter Sir Ranulph Fiennes could do his acclimatising there before one of his treks to the South Pole. And so hot in the summer it’s a wonder the house isn't ripped up from its foundations on a trajectory straight upwards like a house novelty hot air balloon.

But I need to get up there: Rachel @ www.I'vetotallyforgottendamnmyincompetancesothereisnolinkhere. com. Bollocks. I don’t even think her name was Rachel…dot.net; wants to know more about Coleridge. And I have his magnum opus, his Biographia Literaria. Somewhere - up there. Probably lying neglected in the dark, covered in a cocktail of moth dropping, dead flies and bat spit. I also have Richard Holmes' biography of the legendary druggie….Somewhere - up there. I've been to his house in Nether Stowey! I once lived just a few miles from it! Heck I practically knew Sammy C!

I have decided therefore that I will brave whatever elements there are and hoist my body into the most unfashionable room in the house. Once there I will attempt to retrieve whatever residue of a previous literary (ish) life remains. I will then try and stitch whatever tattered fragments I find onto my tattered and fragmented memory. I may then be able to rekindle some of the things I once knew of the world between: "Aarons Rod" and "Zuleika Dobson"

* Note to self: Plugging into the mains sounds invigorating - try when you feel you haven't much to loose. A shockwave jolt through the head to invest your imaginings with a mad Coleridgean druggy infused dream world, before you pass out. For good. I have a good idea for a poem, unfortunately I'll never write it, as I'm dead! Should I do surreal? Hey! Maybe I'll do surreal.