Ms X turned up at the Four Seasons that rainy day bearing me an armful of books. Everytime I meet Ms X, it rains. The first time I met Ms X, she had to buy an umbrella from those bargain bins in Takashimaya and rescue me from a thunderstorm, as I stood drenched at the front of Singtel across the road. It's very dark at the Four Seasons always, and hushed, and the air con is always deliciously cold, set so low, I feel I can breathe. This is not as common as it sounds. These are some of the treasures she thought I might enjoy: The children's classic Timmy The Tugboat, a new Thames & Hudson release, a facsimile of a book written by Ted Hughes back in the '50s, accompanied by Jim Downer’s original drawings; Rainer Maria Rilke's Selected Poems - Ms X is, has always been, a closet intellectual after all; Ms X's new interest in photography is reflected in the unlikely but marvellous book Scrapbook, a collection of unpublished and personal work by the master Henri Cartier Bresson; Lastly, The Proust Questionnaire the new book by Assouline, which brought back those glossy memories of shopping in the glamourous Assouline boutique in St Germain de Pres. I was there this time last year, how I miss Paris! Merci, Ms X, and bon voyage...
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