The other week I was well chuffed when I won a Roy Of The Rovers reprint album – pretty much the first thing I’ve won since a runners-up prize in Look-In one Easter back in the early 80s!
Well, today it arrived (along with – at long last – the flatmate’s WSM, but that’s another story), and whilst I’m still rather gleeful with my victory and its booty, my joy is somewhat mitigated by the condition it’s arrived in 
The spine’s wrecked, and there’s big, fat creases running through the whole book, top and bottom. Most disappointing. It was sent direct from the publishers, so either it was a slightly manky copy lurking in the publicity department to start with, or else (and let’s face it, this is the more likely reason) Royal Mail has fucked up again. It’s a modern softback edition, which is a pretty damn sturdy format, unless you really have a go at the spine (and the creases go through all 200-odd pages of glossy high gsm paper – no mean feat), and it was posted in a new jiffy bag, so I can’t see how this level of damage can be down to everyday passage through the postal system. Grrr!!!
Anyway, I look forward to reading it (if I can prise the bloody pages far enough open), and I am still grateful to DownTheTubes for the comp in the first place, and to Titan for supplying the prizes.
PS The lady friend thinks it’s weird I have “children’s comics” on my bedside shelf 
