Yesterday, my mother and step-father and their trusty sled dog came down from the frozen north, and brought something to fill up the biggest void in my life. They brought me my books.

Not all of them – just five of the banana boxes came down yesterday. I believe there’s nearly twice that still left to come. But they’re my books. My babies. And they’re old and battered, with broken spines and doggy pages, and I love them more than anything else I own.

Throughout my twenties, I moved about a lot, but my books were a steady companion through all of that. Some of them have seen seven houses across three counties and two countries. Some of them have crossed the sea to Shetland and returned at least three times, if not more. Some of them have been with me for more than twenty years.

My love of books is a funny old thing, really. I love old books, where you can smell the musty smell of aging paper. It’s a savory smell, found mostly in old bookshops and libraries. It’s the way knowledge should smell. And I love new books. The smell of glossy paper, untouched and pristine. A sweet smell, of new libraries, bookshops, and printers. Savory and sweet. Old and new.

I turned out the boxes last night, to find what was in there.

Notebooks. Half full, half empty, barely touched. Scrappy and smart. I never throw away a notebook if there is something in it still. There were ten of them in the boxes yesterday. I just want to explore them in detail.

The Guinness Books of Records. These are like onanism of the soul. Cheap thrills, ideas, thoughts, achievements, ideals. I love them. Some years I get a Guinness Book for Christmas. Some years it’s forgotten. It’s like a dictionary. Always handy to have. Couple that with Pears Cyclopaedia, and you have a beautiful collection of up-to-date human knowledge.

Fantasy. My fantasies. The worlds I lived in as a child. The Belgariad, where I killed the dark god Torak. The Spellsinger story, where I was a bard, and hung around with an otter who swore like a sailor. L E Modesitt Jr’s world of Recluse, where order and chaos were in total and constant flux, every trying to gain the upper hand. The nordic fantasies of Elizabeth H Boyer, with its Light and Dark Alfar, and Dwarves and Trolls and Dragons. All with their maps, in the front of the books – maps of worlds I know better than the map of this little globe I live on now.

Voyager. Star Trek Voyager. Seven series of the best of Star Trek (Except for those two episodes in series two). An exploration of the Delta Quadrant, with an unparalleled captain. Captain Kathryn Janeway, who I would follow to the end of the earth and back if she gave the order. People will throw themselves behind gung-ho Kirk, the diplomat himself – Picard, or even, god forbid, the stuffed shirt that was Sisko (Whose only beautifully redeeming feature was that he punched Q). But Janeway was the promise. Janeway said that even in the depths of space, without an intergalactic Federation to back you up, you can hold to your principles.

Again, it’s followed me through six houses, and been a constant in my life. There’s always a comfort when Janeway’s there to take my hand.

Voyager. That’s going to be me lost for the next few weeks. Good morning.