Hair Today, Books Tomorrow

I think I've mentioned this fact before, but I get most of my reading time on the bus either to or from work, or during my lunch break. This means that I rarely have the luxury of finishing up neatly at the start of a new chapter, or even at a convenient break within a chapter. The best I can often manage is furiously zipping through the last few lines of a paragraph and leaving it there. Sometimes I don't even manage that, looking up from the page to discover I'm already at my stop.

This means I had to get creative with bookmarks. My first attempt at tracking where I stopped was simply to position the end of the bookmark roughly around where I finished up. This never worked, as the marker slid from its placing as soon as I released it. Next, I attempted to macgyver a card with a slider that I could position at the point where I wanted to pick things up from, but this didn't really work either.

Finally, I hit on an ingenious idea, one so simple, I feel like I should have been using it for years.

Working in a daycare setting I'm often asked to hold on to hairclips for children that get too fed up of constantly replacing them during play. I usually clip them to my ID lanyard to remind myself to return them safely. More often than not, however, I end up finding them where I left them once I get home.

Thus I struck upon the idea of using hairclips as bookmarks. When I need to stop, I simply attach the clip to the page I'm on at the point that I've reached. Then, when I'm ready to read again, not only do I instantly know what page I finished on, but I know the exact line I read last. It works great, and even comes with its own secondary function.

I like to get immersed in a book. I fall head-over-heals into the world, and when things get tense, I get tense also. I fidget during the exciting moments, and having the hairclip conveniently to hand, I tend to snap it open and closed, back and forth in my fingers. I try to be discrete about it, muffling the snap in my hands, but I sometimes wonder if it gets incredibly annoying to people sitting nearby.

I also end up breaking the clips, like I did today to my current favourite bookmark. I may have to go shopping for hairclips tomorrow on my lunch break.

If anyone asks, they're for my wife.