‘And that’s another thing’ he said, with some finality. Harry paused and took a sip of his pint. ‘Have you heard of Iain M.Banks? He’s a science fiction author.’
‘No.’ I replied, considering the wonderful colour of the beer in my glass.
‘I think you’d really like his books.’ He continued.
Like I have time to read books, I said to myself thinking of the dreaded tax return and the pile of unsorted receipts weighing my future down with the impending pain of a financial penalty if I didn't do it, and this unwanted work had to be done the next day.
The next day it seemed to me that before I could start sorting out my accounts I should have to tidy my desk. I didn’t have space to sort out my receipts and anyway it wouldn’t take long. Once the desk was very tidy I realised that I needed to sort out the drawers under the desk. They had never been very well organised and now the process of tidying the desk had meant that I had lots of things to put away in their proper places.
After I had sorted all the drawers and made small labels for each drawer which described their contents I thought that I might be able to start the process of sorting my receipts. I quickly realised that, once the receipts were sorted, I would have to input them into a spreadsheet. Clearly I would have to design a suitable spreadsheet first so that I could then input the details and thus save myself some time. After I had spent several hours designing a spreadsheet I decided that actually I’d rather do it all by hand. I’d write the totals down on that nice old fashioned special bookkeeping paper. That would be good. And I was sure I had some, somewhere.
It transpired that I didn’t have any so I got dressed and went out to W.H.Smith, to buy some. Wouldn’t take long. Then I could really get cracking on the accounts.
In W.H.Smith the name of that author Harry had mentioned came to me. Banks. Iain something. K? B? No, M. That was it. Iain M. Banks.
Surface Detail, Iain M. Banks. Thick book, I thought as I paid and left the shop.
When I had finished the book I looked on the internet and saw that Iain M. Banks had written quite a lot of books. I bought eight more Iain M. Banks books from Amazon for a penny each, plus postage. Still, it was very cheap I thought. The unwanted work could always wait a little bit longer.
Now I have only two books left. I shall have to buy some more soon.
Maybe I should order them now so as to have an uninterrupted supply?
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