When I was 20 I burned a book, something I had previously thought total anathema. When I uncovered it in the box of stuff handed over when my mum moved back to the UK, I was physically sick. I couldn’t touch it, read the words, I could hardly bear to have it in my possession it was so tainted.

A friend came over that evening and made the suggestion. I was surprised at how easily I accepted it, but my love of books and obsessive holding onto them was well outmatched by my revulsion of this particular copy. So we burned it in my little patio garden, with hairspray and her zippo lighter, and I watched the flakes of charred paper rise and blow away.

I didn’t want to just throw it out, or give it to a charity shop so someone else could read it to their child, as it had been read to me once before… before other things. I just wanted it not to physically exist any more, the way I had wanted not to, and for a while my demons burned with it.

(n.b. always burn cursed objects in a well ventilated area)