Bedtime Stories

Not a good day for Lucifer really...

It has been a long held ambition of mine to read Paradise Lost. I own a teeny little copy, published before the war, with miniscule print and tissue thin paper. I bought it in a charity store, just because I loved the feel of the book and the crackly smell of the leather binding. I never read it, not only because of said tiny print, but because the poetry is pretty stiff going too.
However
Sitting there in Borders this morning I picked up a copy. Roughly the size of an atlas with terrific etching style illustrations. And it just spoke to me Read me aloud, it said. Don't keep me locked in the confines of a skull. Make a noise.
So I did.
Just in case you are wondering, I did not stand on a chair and declaim it or anything, I just read it quite softly to V who lounged back in his comfy chair, sipping his hot chocolate and humoured me. And do you know? There is something truly wonderful about this poem when it is read out loud. It rolls off the tongue in a flood of polysyllables, the cadence, the sheer flipping beauty of it! And so we floated for a while on a sea of words. There must have been something about it because when it was time to go he said "Do you want that?"
(Like I'd turn down the offer of a book)
"You can read it to me some more if you like."
That's this months bedtime stories sorted out...