My daily dilemma

For those of you who love books, this won't need much explanation. For those of you who don't (I don't understand you and seriously doubt the possibility of us ever being kindred spirits :) ) I might need to elaborate. The problem that I have every day is this:

On the way to work I generally walk all the way, which is far enough, but on the way home I usually walk half the way and then join up with a bus for the rest of it. Where it gets totally problematic is that the bus stop is right outside a second-hand bookshop - a really good second-hand bookshop. And second-hand book shops have so many possibilities, more even than new book shops. You just never know what you might find in there.

So, I stand on the footpath in torment - badly wanting to go inside and look through the shelves, on the chances of finding that one great book, but also not wanting to miss my bus, which seems hopelessly unreliable and so comes whenever, sometimes with half an hour between. Some days I must look like a woman crazed with the way I dart repeatedly in and out just as far into the shop as I can easily get out of again.

Yesterday I couldn't resist, so I took a searching look up the street for approaching buses, then went all the way inside, into the next room, around shelves, right to the back. This is dangerous, because it means that you can't see out of this nicely pokey old shop and there is no fast escape. I wanted just a quick scan of the poetry shelf. The problem was that there was a guy standing there, hogging the whole poetry section, and he simply wouldn't acknowledge any of my body language signals and move even just a little out of the way. In frustration I tried to peer at the alphabet section I wanted, getting lost in the titles, but unable to see properly what treasures might be there.

Then I remembered the bus. I darted outside again. A girl carrying a guitar actually asked another girl standing there if she had seen my bus number go past already. That girl said yes, it just did. Unbelievable! The girl carrying the guitar obviously decided it wasn't worth waiting for the next bus and walked off. Then I had another decision: do I just walk the rest of the way home or wait for the bus - OR just go back into the bookshop?!

Twenty minutes later another bus came along, after I'd done some more darting in and out. I must have still been in holiday mode because instead of then going straight home when I alighted in my suburb, to cook dinner and do the undone weekend washing etc, I crossed the street and went into a new book shop, found the poetry section, flicked through A Book of Luminous Things for a while, without the bus angst, before finally heading home.