What, no books?
The Major and I took a trip last weekend, to St Louis. We went by train.
I like train journeys. I like that you don't have to concentrate on the road, that you can stand up and walk around, and visit the friendly people in the dining carriage for a hot chocolate and a burger (calories don't count on trains). I like that you can look out of the window and daydream.

But most of all I like the opportunity to read.

I love reading, in fact it is possibly my favourite thing in the whole world. If I was told I couldn't read any more I think I would actually die. So for me, a five and a half hour train journey is the perfect opportunity. I couldn't do any of the niggly, nitpicking jobs that take up reading time normally (like cleaning or washing up) and I didn't have my computer, so I couldn't blog.

I had taken books with me, of course, but another of my favourite things to do on trains is to catch up - and I mean really catch up - on some news and comment. So I will buy a selection: a newspaper, The Spectator, Private Eye - maybe a copy of Vogue for some light relief - and read them from cover to cover. It's my train treat.

We arrived in St Louis in plenty of time - almost an hour early. The perfect opportunity to buy some reading material - maybe even a new book. But although we searched high and low, there was not one place to buy such a thing.

We were in Kansas City, a sizeable city, with an enormous and impressive station, a hangover from the golden age of train travel. Lots of trains come in and out of Kansas City - it's right in the middle, after all. But although we could have, should we have chosen, purchased a fancy bodum cafetiere, a variety of African artefacts and every sort of food type under the sun, from sushi to bagels, we couldn't buy a book. Or a magazine. or a newspaper that wasn't the Kansas City Star and wasn't several days old.

The bookstore, we were told, had closed down a few weeks ago.

It is beyond me how anyone about to embark on a potentially long train journey (and they are mostly long in these parts, they don't have high speed rail yet) would not want to furnish themself with some reading matter.

Perhaps the travellers in America are all very organised and buy in advance. But surely half the joy of a journey is agonising over which magazine to buy, and coming out of Smiths or wherever with a fat carrier bag under your arm? I just don't get it.