I had wondered about the cost effectiveness of having four more shelves cut to size to add in to the bookcases I already have. It might only be a bit of wood but it needs to be the right bit of wood and be sawed exactly in the right place. I might like to think of myself as a dab hand at enjambment but sawing planks of wood isn't the same thing.
So I've been waiting for the crisis to become an emergency. I learnt that from watching what governments do. Then, eventually, I thought, no, never mind the bookcase in the back room, let's bring one shelf out of that and put it in the front room because that is the priority.
And that was when I found out that the holes aren't in the right place to accommodate two more shelves in each bookcase. In fact, there's not much to be had from even having one more shelf.
So, now, as you can see, there is room for another year or two, or maybe more's accumulation of classical CD's because the space temporarily occupied by Elizabeth Bishop will be annexed by them and she will be found space elsewhere. She might just fit on the Thom Gunn shelf and they would both like that.
One day even the Shakespeare biography books might have to go upstairs. One day Francois Couperin and Charpentier might be more important even than them.
The pop music is strewn about the lower reaches, and some of it out of picture. The imperative to order more old Joni Mitchell albums is not as strong as whatever was on the wireless last weekend, anything else Errollyn Wallen puts out or things reviewed in Gramophone, although it must be said that the future of such a subscription is always in jeopardy because, for example, however wonderfully a new recording of the Bach Partitas is said to be, there's Rachel Podger up there, a few places to the right of the Complete Buxtehude. How many versions do I need.
I have a sense that there isn't that much of the future remaining and that this brilliant tactical maneouvre delays the need for any further immediate action and will get us through much of it. I don't care where the 2030 World Cup will be held. I'm not particularly bothered where the current one is.
Heaven knows, I've almost got carte blanche to go on a spree. If anybody knows how much shelf space the Complete Haydn String Quartets take up, please let me know. I might have to buy next door after all.
