When I told a colleague I was going for an Indian tonight he immediately replied: "Don't have a chicken tikka, have a chicken tarka - it's much 'otter."

After I stopped chuckling, I couldn't help thinking back to my childhood, when there was undoubtedly a copy of Gavin Maxwell's Ring of Bright Water on the shelf, but not Henry Williamson's Tarka the Otter.

Maxwell's book, first published in 1960, was the story of how he brought an otter back from Iraq and raised it in Scotland.

The yarn sold more than a million copies and was made into a film starring Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna in 1969.

The title was taken from a poem by Kathleen Raine who said in her autobiography that Maxwell had been the love of her life.

I know I glanced through the book when I was a kid but I'm ashamed to say I never read it properly, and now I wouldn't mind getting hold of a copy, and the sequel The Rocks Remain.

Ring of Bright Water is one of those books which I know I should have read, but never quite got round to it, and I would place The Lonely Sea and the Sky by Francis Chichester and Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee in the same category.

I was fortunate enough to be dispatched to the town of Wallingford the other day to video staff from RAF Benson marching through the market place.

The base was celebrating its 70th anniversary and when the festivities were over, I marched straight to the Oxfam bookshop to see what historic volumes I could find.

I wasn't disappointed. For £3.49 I bought Rudyard Kipling, the man his work and his world, a collection of essays about the Nobel Prize winner, which was published in 1972 by Wiedenfeld and Nicolson. The hardback has retained its dustjacket and is still in very good nick.

For £1.99, I grabbed a hymn book published the same year for pupils at St Paul's Girls School, which I presume is in London. It was printed by Enterprise Press, and features a number of my favourite hymns.

In need of refreshment, I went to Waitrose where I spotted Toby English, the owner of the second-hand bookshop a few door's down from Oxfam.

I called in at his shop and bought only a shoddy looking paperback copy of The Russia House by John le Carre, which set me back 50p. A Faber edition of Louis MacNeice's collected poems was tempting but not for £12.

I have also acquired a copy of Lorrie Moore's collected short stories. The American writer comes highly recommended by Fever Pitch author Nick Hornby in his Waterstone's writer's table selection.

I shall try to read some of my recent acquisitions at the weekend, but Philip Hensher's The Northern Clemency has me gripped.