Being able to read

I was in a stationery store the other day. Writers, stationery - it's a thing. Anyway, there was a gratitude diary with pages to record things you were grateful for, with a series of questions to answer. I didn't buy it - such restraint, but it did make me think. And that got coupled with reading a short story from Veronica Henry. It's called The Apple Orchard and it's currently free on Amazon with a large chunk of her next release, The Forever House in the back. The short story is a bitter sweet one, a bit of a tear jerker, actually, and features a character who is unable to read. I don't think that's a spoiler, as he says it on the first page.

It made me think about being able to read, and how life would be if you couldn't, and all the things I have read, in the last few days, starting with that short story

• Red Herrings - the magazine of the Crime Writer's Association
• Part of the Waitrose Food magazine, the Boots Health and Beauty magazine, The Garden - which is the monthly magazine from the Royal Horticultural Society and The Romance Writers' Report, which is the magazine of the Romance Writers' of America.
• Various sell by dates on items in the fridge and the instructions on the chicken I cooked yesterday.
• The train information screen at the station
• About 150 e-mails, and who knows how many tweets and F/B and blog posts
• Screeds of my handwritten notes about Cardiff in World War Two
• The first few pages of what  I hope will be the Christmas Novella - (just started to transfer it to type)
• The side of the soya milk carton to confirm that yes, I had inadvertently picked the sweetened kind
• About half of Tessa Dare's Do You Want To Start a Scandal?
• The local free newspaper
• Various party political literature for the up coming local elections, junk mail , my bank statement and credit card bill. 'I owe you how much?'

The list could go on.

The power to be able to read, and it is a power.

Something to be grateful for.