For the past two months I have been slowly gathering the materials with which to hunt the vicious Signal crayfish, grey squirrel of our waterways, a scourge of riverbanks, fish stocks and native species of crayfish. To do this I have followed the instructions of George Monbiot, and last week I put the finishing touches to my free ticket to a meal. There is bait in a bowl on the kitchen table, and tomorrow – if my courage holds out – I shall be wandering down to the banks of the Kelvin at dusk armed with net, chicken wings (for the crayfish), bread and cheese (for me) and whisky (for the cold). All well and good, but what, I hear you ask, has this in connection with buying a book? I shall tell you.

The art of buying an elusive book that you have only heard of as being extremely good is an adventure. One might spend months hunting through second-hand books shops for it, and the longer it takes the more imperilled the act of reading (my current prey is volume one of the Encyclopaedia of Gardening by John Claudius Loudon – if you spot it please tell me, wherever you are). This is because the effort and desire for the tome in question has the danger of increasing our expectations of the content to a level far beyond that which it can yield. And so, on finding the text, it is often my experience that there has to be a cooling-off period before reading should commence to avoid that nagging sense of disappointment. I fear that this has happened between me and the cray. What happens if, tomorrow night, I walk home empty handed? Such time will have been spent gathering bicycle rim, netting and rope in expectation of the Great Catch, only to have my hunting spirit quashed. I will have cracked open the dream and discovered only the runny mess of reality. A cooling-off period would, naturally, be the best course of action were this a book, and possible only because there are others to read in the meantime in order to take my mind off it. This diversion is not possible in this case. I cannot distract myself with any comparable outside activity – odd looks and worse would be thrown my way if I were to spend my time in Kelvingrove park creeping up on squirrels, I imagine, and so the only resort is to swallow my pride and do it. I can only hope that the Kelvin is well stocked with the aggressive shellfish, all willing to throw themselves at my bait and thence into the pot.

Music

#1 Valen-whines?: Click here> to open the TYPE 14/02/2010 spotify playlist to hear what we want you to listen to.

• 1. Moondog – Trees Against The Sky
• 2. Casiotone For The Painfully Alone – Jeane, If You're Ever In Portland
• 3. Sunset Rubdown – The Empty Threats Of Little Lord
• 4. Cab Calloway – St. James Infirmary
• 5. The Ink Spots – Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall
• 6. Phil Ochs – William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park And Escapes Unscathed
• 7. Fats Waller – Ain't Misbehavin'
• 8. Kroke – Time
• 9. Billy Bragg – Remember The Mountain Bed
• 10. Daniel Johnston – Crazy Love
• 11. Lightning Dust – I Knew
• 12. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth
• 13. Moderat – A New Error
• 14. Trio Ivoire – Kano
• 15. Portico Quartet – Zavodovski Island
• 16. Kocani Orkestar – Siki, Siki Baba