The House of Marrow: February 2011

When I was four, there was one book I was O-B-S-E-S-S-E-D with. "The Ghost Train". It was a picture book, in which the reader rides a carnival Ghost Train. One page I particularly remember was the woods. The train-track twists off between gnarled trees with scary faces. You flip-the-flap and suddenly all the trees reach their arms up and their mouths get about five times longer, as though they were about to swallow you whole.

I would get it out of the library study it, read it again and again and study it some more. When I had to return it, I would simply re-issue it again and again. I would draw my own versions of it. Then, one sad, sad day a few months later, I went to the library to issue my favourite book, and... it wasn't there. I looked and looked and looked but it wasn't there. I asked the staff for help, and there was no sign of it on their catalogue, none of them seemed to remember it either. It had completely disappeared. No trace, full on, magic, disappearance. Poof.

And I've been looking for it ever since. I trawled the internet for it, to no avail. This was the INTERNET! It had to be on here somewhere. No such luck. I begin to think I had actually imagined it. Simply a fragment of my imagination. Maybe it was a book I was born to write, and I had actually had some sort of religious experience. A prophecy. I could totally see myself writing it in the future.
But I was so sure it was real.

One day I finally located it on amazon.com http://www.amazon.co.uk/Come-Ghost-Train-Colin-Hawkins/dp/0744577942

Turned out it was called "Come for a Ride on the Ghost Train". I had been looking for the wrong book all along. I was planning on ordering it from amazon, but the shipping prices were ridiculous. Anyway, today I went into the awesome Arty Bees Bookshop, just off the coolest street in Wellington. I was looking for that book.

I found it.