I have been away from Oxford for over a week. Philip Pullman's sold-out show at the town hall seems like a distant dream.
For the past seven days I have been in the Isle of Wight, where the pace of life fluctuates between slow and totally relaxed.
I took a couple of books with me. One was Waugh's Bridehead Revisited, which I finally managed to finish, and Pullman's I Was A Rat, a great kids' story, which I
read to the boys.
But I also managed to spend some time sniffing out the island's treasures, with my first port of call the cavernous Ryde bookshop on the town's high street.
There must have been about 10 different rooms over three floors and I was just about to climb the first flight of stairs when I spotted a couple of very serviceable Kipling pocket editions.
The first was a battered Puck of Pook's Hill from 1939, in Macmillan red boards with the elephant on the front.
Not surprisingly for the wartime era there was no accompanying reverse swastika because Kipling had instructed publishers by that stage that the symbol should not be used.
Illustrations were provided by HR Millar and I thoroughly enjoyed these old English legends tucked up in my chalet in Shanklin.
A leather-bound pocket volume of Kipling's Land and Sea Tales set me back £5.50 and I also invested in a 1960s Beezer annual for my four-year-old, and a guitar book of Beatles songs for my seven-year-old, who took the opportunity to get his guitar restringed at a nearby music shop.
After getting the ferry back to the mainland, we stopped off in the cathedral city of Winchester, where the locals have taken the appalling decision to charge for entry to the cathedral.
I headed instead to worship some old editions in the specialist Oxfam bookshop, tucked away down a little side street. It's laid out over two floors and is one
of the charity's best.
After asking for some Kipling I was spoilt for choice, but limited myself to a slightly battered 1909 second edition of Actions and Reactions (featuring the reverse swastika), for £3.99, and a 1946 edition of Rewards and Fairies, a sequel to Puck of Pook's Hill. Before I could reach the door I found I had grabbed a 1960s paperback of Nabokov's Lolita follow-up, Pale Fire.
Finally, in the poetry section upstairs, while my wife was flicking through the sheet music for the Raggle Taggle Gypsy song, I picked out Ballads of a Bohemian by the Canadian poet, Robert W. Service. My father-in-law is his biggest fan and is sure to enjoy this 1921 first edition published by T. Fisher Unwin.