(Vegetables) Chapter One: Displaying A Distinct Lack Of Narrative Sensibilities

If there was any narrative justice in the world, Morwen should have found the book in a dusty old second-hand bookshop. The type of place where old books balance precariously on every available surface, with a filing system only known by the ancient and slightly scary-looking proprietor, who watches you every second you’re in the shop, and sniffs at you disdainfully if you dare to attempt to buy a book.

It should have been bound in faded brown leather, of faintly disturbing provenance, with gilt lettering on the cover worn away by countless hands. It should have been hidden in the darkest and dustiest depths of the shop, underneath volumes of epic poetry in Ancient Greek and dry histories of the Etruscans. It should have been covered in dust, with a smell that evoked the weight of ages and its mysterious past³.

Instead, she bought it from her local remaindered book store, from a pimply young man with a name badge saying “Hello, my name is Tom”. It was not dusty, though the hardback cover was a bit battered and the dust jacket torn in the back. The only thing mysterious about it was the multiple layers of price stickers on it, marking it down from £9.99, to £4.99, to £2.99, £1.99 and finally the bargain price of 99p. Which, given it was the only book of its type on the shelf, wasn’t really all that mysterious when you got down to it.

It was called “The Art and Science of Fruit and Vegetable’s⁴” and bore a cheerful full-colour picture of a cabbage, some carrots, a red onion and a globe artichoke on the dust cover. From a quick flick through, it looked like a vegetarian cookbook.

Morwen picked it up and bought it, because it was 99p, and because she was cooking dinner that night, and fancied some new vegetarian recipes to deal with the glut of courgettes the allotment was currently producing. She also bought a set of notecards with flowers on them, an A5 ring bound sketchpad and three science fiction novels with pictures of space things⁵ on the cover (all three for the bargain price of £5). Even though she was offered a large bar of chocolate for the bargain price of ninety nine pence, she graciously declined⁶.

There were a couple of random pops, like the sound of the cork coming out of a champagne bottle, while she was paying for her books and stuff, but no one paid any heed to them⁷.

Thus laden with purchases, she went home, past several telegraph poles with signs on them about a lost guinea pig. Nothing of interest happened on the way. There were pigeons, but there always were.


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³ In other words, it should have been mysterious and evocative and slightly dangerous seeming. It wasn’t.
⁴ Yes, really. Probably why it was in the remainders shop in the first place.
⁵ Spaceships or something. Mostly physically impossible, even in zero gravity.
⁶ She didn’t like that type of chocolate.
⁷ Except for the young man behind the till. But he looked like he was permanently frazzled, so it was probably nothing.