Pooling our resources at Leith Victoria Swim Centre - Susan Morrison

It's more of a swim-and-blether hour, and none the worse for that. It’s a great treat. A few more sessions would be brilliant (she says, hinting heavily at Edinburgh Leisure).

She told me it would up my ironing game, and she is not wrong. It's been years since I used starch, but I’m hooked again.

She’d spotted me sticking some books on the little donation shelf at the gym. She and her friends are enthusiastic book givers-away, and suggested stocking up some of those little wooden library boxes you see around the city. There’s one in Starbank park, and another one half way up Leith Walk, at the old police box.

If I can’t see them it might get me over obsessively watching the donated books to make sure they get taken home. I panic if no-one seems to want “Motte-and-Bailey Castles of the Welsh Border: A Military Assessment”, which I will admit I bought in a moment of weakness.

One of her friends had also cleared out some books and decided to liberate them. She’d gone through a bit of a rocky time and had bought a couple of those self-help manuals. Things were improving in her life, so she thought to pass the advice on, and duly loaded up her local donation shelf with books on improving your confidence, making new friends and boosting your self-esteem.

She also included a couple of how-to guides on how to spice up things between the sheets.

She went back that afternoon, which proves it's not just me who gets nervy about people silently judging my book-buying choices.

How to widen your circle of friends was gone, but, to her surprise, how to make life sparkle in the sack was still there. Well, obviously, I said. Who’s going to wander about Starbank park with an advanced guide to slap and tickle under their arm? Bet they go under cover of darkness.