Kindle

Addiction isn't pleasant, and it's taken me just 36 hours to crumble. 36 hours of chewing my nails and clawing at the walls and walking around school with a face like my sister's new puppy (Boston terrier. Cute, cross looking and dedicated to a life spent being carried whenever possible. My sister needs to drag him along the sea front for exercise). 36 hours of feeling panicky, and sticky, and unpleasantly anxious: as if something, somehow, somewhere, is wrong. Missing. Gone. 36 hours of feeling a bit sick, and I gave in. I've just bought a Kindle.

I don't want a Kindle. No: I want a never ending supply of English language books in a never ending library that stretches as far as I can see: much, much bigger than the stupid British library which smells of dust and weirdos and much, much more inviting than Cambridge University library which is full of the sound of people breathing too heavily through their mouths and licking their fingers so they can turn the pages over. I want my own private library: glorious and full of sunshine and books and books and books and the smell of paper and a million different stories, with a really cosy chair next to a fire, and - possibly - a sunken bath which is always ready made and yet the moisture never ruins my collection. I want a little oak ladder I can stand on and slide along the shelves with, and flowers in big pots next to the windows. I want to feel each and every page of the books that never end: because I can never, ever finish them all. To feel the immortality inside each of them, and breathe them in, and know that I can never be bored, and I can never be lonely, because the greatest minds and greatest characters and greatest places in the world - and outside of it - are all in one room. My room. That's what I want.

I don't want a little bit of grey plastic onto which I can download novels at $0.01 and then flick through with the click of buttons. That is not the fantasy. But I cannot be without books. 36 hours ago I ran out - I ended my collection with Catch 22, an epic satire - and the consequential breakdown was not pretty. At one stage I started reading the back of my box of tissues, like an alcoholic draining the last of the toilet cleaner. And then I found myself pawing at the Penny Vincenzi paperback - left behind by another teacher - before physically forcing myself to leave the house before I did myself anymore damage.

We all have our fetishes. My sister likes tv adverts: if she hasn't seen one in a few hours she gets jittery. My dad likes (men's) shoes: even when the shops are shut you have to drag him past, kicking and screaming to "just see in the window". Mum's a fan of Solitaire - it calms her down - but for me: it's books. The whole world could come to an end, and as long as I had a good collection of excellent novels I couldn't care less. I'd be escaping into a different one anyway.

36 hours of increasing desperation - of nervousness, of irritation, of genuine, obsessive stress (what do I do? what do I hold??) - and I've crumbled. Until I find my never ending library of real, paper books - and either stop moving around the world or get it to move around with me - I'll have to read from a Kindle. Another screen, which is just what I didn't want. And yet anything - anything - is better than the thought of another 36 hours with nothing to read.

Which is a shame, because that's exactly what I'll have to go through now. Hanging on Amazon's delivery service like a junkie waiting for their next shot. Hoping - shamefully - that it turns up before the weekend, even if it means missing my friend's house party because I'm at home, greedily stuffing my face on the works of Austen in a dark corner of the kitchen somewhere. Wondering if I can find another dark corner of the party and carry on when everyone else is asleep. Wondering if I can find an even darker corner and perhaps leave early in the morning so I can get home and carry on stuffing my face where nobody can see me.

Greed and obsession aren't pretty things, but you should never judge a book by its cover.

Because none of these will have one.