Epilogue: a half-happy ending

My mum is da bomb (sorry, I was watching video hits on the weekend). You may remember that, due to my sheer incomptetence and lack of life skills, I managed to lose a gift that my parents so kindly bought for me at Xmas last year. It was a voucher to Borders, one of my fave stores. It got thrown out with a boxful of Xmas wrappings. I was pretty gutted about the whole thing, especially knowing that my $100 worth of books could never actually make their way into my hands on the train, could never be stored, by author or Dewey subject number in my bookshelf at home, never gather dust lying on my bedside table, never be left lying on the coffee table to impress visitors with more money but less cultural nous than myself (Coupland called it 'status substitution', I think)(He also said to make esoteric cultural references that hardly anybody would ever get, so I guess I've just done that there). I thought about going in to Borders during my lunch breaks, finding a comfy chair and reading $100 worth of books, but I'm on flexi-time here, so that would mean staying late to make up the hours and staying here and missing the 5.13 is too miserable an existance to contemplate. Enter mum. My hero. The woman who told off Lee Brady when I was 10 because he called me a dickhead at tennis, the woman who actually seemed concerned about me, and not the expensive 4-wheeler I crashed into a vine post when I was 14, the woman who, when I was 17 and thinking of just disappearing for a few days, made me a steak sandwich full of love and homey goodness. Sure this is also the woman that confiscated my stash of nudie mags when I was 16 but I've since passed the age at which I'm legally allowed to buy more, so I can forgive her for that. So mum, who had the credit card receipt (but not the actual receipt; as you may recall, she stupidly gave that to me, so I could lose it) rang them and asked for a customer services person and told them the whole sorry story. They stated their case, that they're entitled to see their receipt before they can make a replacement, which she thought was fair enough. She didn't dispute that they are like cash and should be looked after by irresponsible sons. She said that if they could trace that card and show that it had been all spent, she could live with that. "But," she said, "the thought of that card lying unused at the bottom of a rubbish dump somewhere... well I just can't put it behind me." Borderslady told mum she'd speak to the manager and get back to her. Then, within an hour, she had a call saying they'd meet her half way and send a voucher for $50. Mum passed it on to me yesterday and I gave it to my wife for safe-keeping. I mean, it was my daughter's birthday party yesterday and I didn't want that voucher anywhere near where presents were being unwrapped. And sure it's only half what I originally had but the ex-mick in me feels that I need to be punished, and this is a good compromise. So, what's good reading at the moment, anyone?