WHENEVER I LIKE

It does seem to be the case that, whenever I discover something that I like, the world seems to do its level best to deprive me of it.

So that when, as for example, I recently discovered Sir Derek Jacobi's sublime audiobook readings of the various Sherlock Holmes stories, I bought one or two and had been enjoying listening to them in the car so much as I drove through the daily commute that I thought I'd order a couple more, only to find that life was conspiring against me doing so.

Again.

As ever with these things, I'd come to them rather late, because they'd been around for quite some time before I happened to stumble across them, and when I did, of course, I had still approached doing so with a certain amount of dithering.

After all, I reasoned, I'd already read the complete canon when I bought my copy of the massive Penguin paperback edition when I was in my late teens and, since I'd invested in the tappitty-tap device earlier on in the year, one of the most essential and immediate of the free downloads had been an electronic copy of the complete works, so forking out a self-indulgently large amount to get each of the individual volumes all over again didn't seem all that wise.

But I'm nothing if not a pragmatist. One fine summer day, earlier on in the year, and when there was no T.M.S. on the radio with which to fill my journeys, I decided to take a punt on "The Hound of the Baskervilles" on CD.

Now I know that all of you young (and perhaps not quite so young) whippersnappers out there might be wondering why I didn't just download the files to my tappitty-tap and bypass the problem, but I still prefer to have a tangible, physical copy of the things that I buy and, what happens to your ethereal copy if, for example, the company that you are safely storing your "cloud" copy goes into something like administration, or something else equally unlikely happens...?

Anyway, my venerable vehicle is still very much an analogue device and has a CD player in it, so it still seems to be the best option to this old fuddy-duddy as he tootles back and forth going about his business.

So, the "Hound" arrived in due course and I was, as the saying goes, "blown away" by it, and Sir Derek gives a rather wonderful performance of this fiendish tale of the grim occurrences upon the moors, and I was persuaded enough by the quality of that to order myself a copy of the "Adventures" and, once I'd woven my way through that dozen stories, it seemed obvious that the "Memoirs" should follow, and so a collection began to build, and, as we reached the Falls at Reichenbach, it was almost inevitable that I would click upon an order for the next volume, the "Return..."

At that point, I was still dithering as to whether I'd stop getting any more of them after the "Return" because both "His Last Bow" and the "Case-book" have never been amongst my favourite collections, even though there are still one or two gems amongst these later tales and I do have a rather terrifying "completist" urge with which I constantly have to battle.

Anyway, the order was put in and I began that delicious anticipatory wait that the instant gratification of downloading somehow seems to bypass, when I first got the inkling about the dreadful news coming from Bath about the company which produces these products. Because, it appeared that, in the meantime, (and of course because it's just bloody typical), the company producing these audio delights has slipped sadly into administration and it looks as if my hopeful order will now remain unfulfilled and my collection is destined to remain incomplete...

Obviously the news is far worse for the employees of that company than it is for me being deprived of another of my treats, although it's also bloody typical that they were also the same company which had produced the "James Bond Reloaded" range which I'd also happened upon recently and had found, to my amazement and surprise, that I was also rather enjoying them and had expanded my initial tentative purchase into the three or four which I'd since decided to try out as well. Once you realise that Fleming was, like Doyle, writing in different times and that the attitudes on display were of their time, modern day sensibilities shouldn't be allowed to get in the way of what are actually rather well written and cracking little adventure stories, although I am more resistant to completism in that case simply because of my own distaste for some of his racial stereotyping.

Nostalgia, you see, really isn't what it used to be...

Whatever happens to the company, and the intellectual property, and all of the thousand and one possibilities which might ensue from the disappointments of others, the moral of this tale might be that you should be very careful if you find that I like you, for no good is likely to come of it...