Preparing for new bookcases this weekend, I did a spring clean of the books that have been in the long-forgotten bottom shelf.

My mum bought this for me when I was little. Maybe she was hinting at something.

And then there were the joke books. I had a lot of these, and I recited what I knew each week to my family, a captive audience in the car during our weekend visits to my grandmother, who lived a good 45 minutes away.

These were cleverly marketed: the next volume came out every week, and you could get them from newsstands. But before I could complete my collection, the distributor went out of business or stopped bringing in the editions, and my collection ground to a halt.

When I was 16, I broke up with my first boyfriend with the textbook line: "I just want to be friends." When my birthday rolled around, he gave me this book.

Retro! 

Apologies to my 6-year-old self, but I never did become a spy. "Yes and know", however, is awesome.