The book that found me

About 40 years ago I was working in a freight forwarding office in London's Battersea and it was a bloody awful job, with little to commend it. At the time I had been trying to read all the books by an author named Eric Frank Russell (1950s British science-fiction author who was often been confused with being American). Nearly all of the books were out of print and my local public library was the first best happy hunting ground. Unfortunately, Lambeth public libraries didn't have all of the books written by Russell and I thought I would be forced to content myself with having read as many as possible. There was one title but was rather tantalising 'Men, Martians and Machines' and my best efforts had failed to turn this up. Sometimes you can try as hard as you can to achieve an objective and still fail. I was a teenager and still getting used to failure. Anybody who thinks that filling out a Customs and Excise form on a shipment of goods is a worthwhile and rewarding job needs a checkup from the neck up and I've just finished filling out a number of these when a colleague of mine came into work much later than normal. "You like, science Fiction don't you, Nigel? I found this on the train!" Steve tossed the book onto the desk in front of me… the very same book that I had been looking for was looking up at me. At the time, I try to explain how happy I was and what a great coincidences was – but nobody really seemed interested. Over the years I have tried retelling the story to a number of people and nobody has seemed impressed… I don't know why!