It's probably fair to say that I put my three sons off reading. They had their bedtime/anytime stories for years, of course, but had to become used to my saying 'Just a minute' or 'Hang on' while I raced to the end of a page or chapter. And their father used to become hypertensive, to say the least, whenever he saw me grilling chops with a fork in one hand and a book in the other.
Still, I suppose one out of three is not too bad: my army son reads military history and biography. My eldest reads the papers sometimes, and occasionally succumbs to the charms of a particular style of book: the last I can recall was Gail Holst's Road to Rembetika, a fascinating account of the hashish inspired music that reached Greece from Asia Minor in the 1920s.
But as for my 30-year-old baby, Alexander, what is there to say? As far as I know, he has not even read my first book, in which he has a starring role, as in it I recount in dramatic detail the story of his birth, at which time I very nearly died.
He reads the Greek sports news; otherwise, he is the complete technophile, and changes his mobile phone almost as often as he changes his socks. I understand this up to a point: every so often the Kindle sings its siren song, but so far I have either put wax in my ears, or tied myself to a mast, figuratively speaking, because I value the book as object, as well as for a host of other reasons.
With Alexander's history, I didn't expect much when I showed him the marvellous present sent to me recently: a first edition of Charles Dickens' Household Words: Vol. I.
It is a thing of beauty, and was clearly designed to be a joy forever. Of an impressive solidity, it has a dark crimson and gold-embossed leather spine, and blue and beige marbled swirls with another tinge of crimson on the hard covers. Inside there is just a slight foxing on fine paper bordered in light black: every page is set in two columns.
Household Words, which appeared weekly, was edited by Dickens from March 1850 until May 1859. The title comes from the St Crispin's Day speech in Shakespeare's Henry V: 'Familiar in his mouth as household words.' And in A Preliminary Word, Dickens outlined the paper's principles, writing, among other things, that 'we hope to be the comrade and friend of many thousands of people'.
Sometimes, however, the readership was deemed not large enough, but in 1854, Dickens solved the problem when he started serialising Hard Times within its pages: circulation doubled almost immediately. Elizabeth Gaskell and Wilkie Collins also serialised novels in the magazine, which seems to have maintained a balance between fiction and non-fiction, with the latter predictably concentrating on the social issues of the day.
There are even letters from Australian colonists, while Caroline Chisholm and her migration scheme are mentioned twice.
Alexander came to call soon after the present arrived. 'Look what I've got.' To my utter astonishment, the technophile said not a word, but took the book, and opened it. Then he stroked, actually stroked the pages. He stood quite still, and so did I. Then he said: 'What a beautiful thing.'
For myself, I thought about the hands that had touched this volume and the lives that had undoubtedly been touched by it. And now, very unexpectedly, a life in the Peloponnese had been touched by it more than 160 years after its publication.
Alexander's girlfriend Nina is even more of a technophile than he is: if I want help with my mobile phone I consult Nina. She was with Alexander during the most recent visit. He had not been here long when he said, 'Mum, where's that Charles Dickens book?'
'Upstairs. Why?
'I want to show it to Nina.'
And Nina reacted as we both hoped she would.
In A Preliminary Word, Dickens had a message for technophiles: 'The mightier inventions of this age are not, to our thinking, all material, but have a kind of soul in their stupendous bodies which may find expression in Household Words.'
Right then, right now: Charles Dickens would have had much to say about post-modern technology. If only he'd had the chance.
Gillian Bouras is an Australian writer who has been based in Greece for 30 years. She has had nine books published. Her most recent is No Time For Dances. Her latest, Seeing and Believing, is appearing in instalments on her website.