I remember this one assembly. I was seven, eight? And the headteacher was talking about what makes a book. I guess it must have been around whatever passed for World Book Day back then. No Harry Potter costumes for us in those days, no Elsa-from-Frozen (because-we-have-the-activity-book-actually), no, these were the days when we would take it in turns to read from the papyrus scroll, perhaps in a little pretend Shakespeare beard if our mums remembered to pluck the goat the night before.
But I remember Mr Bainbridge’s assembly as revelatory and sort of beautiful. He talked about the way imagination could blossom, then be corralled into words, and how these words could be lined up on a printing block, and there was something, I think, about growing a tree for its paper, and then, how this story was bound and protected by its cover, and how each of these little folders were impossibly precious. He inspired in me, back then, a kind of reverence for books. But lord, my admiration is nothing compared to the dislocated, swooning awe for the book as object that exists today.
