About 34 cents, if Google's currency exchange is accurate. It was the price, recently, of the movie The Shawshank Redemption at a charity shop in the center of York.
I was in town to have a morning coffee and get as much writing done on a new project as I could. I woke excited, revving those writer engines of Just Get It Down On the Page and You Can Always Revise Later! As I opened up my tiny, (miniature, really, but I love it) e-book and began where I left off in Microsoft Word, I was already relishing the second-hand book-store crawl I knew was coming.
Three hours later, I breathed deep, rubbed my eyes, leaned back in my cafe chair, downed the last of my coffee, and re-saved (for the umpteenth, yes, obsessively umpteenth) my work.
Then, it was off to the bookstores.
I found Zadie Smith's White Teeth, a novel I have wanted to read for a while, and was delighted to see it for 2 pounds. Then I found Selling Your Father's Bones by Richard Scofield, a non-fiction volume about the flight of the Nez Perce against the onslaught and terror of the Westward Expansion in America. At the next shop, I found the social justice rallying Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by R.J. Sider (had heard of this from Jim Wallis's The Call to Conversion and was excited to find it waiting on the shelf for a couple of pounds) and also Equal to Serve, about the quest for women's equality within the Church. At the last stop, I found a puzzle for Tyler, and four films, including Shawshank for 25 pence!
Last night, as Jennifer and I heard the beautiful lines about hope narrated by Red (Morgan Freeman), it was hard not to realize that when we cease to hope, we cease to live. A powerful reminder for only 25 pence (or, rather, 34 cents!).
