I am so incensed that I only just restrained myself from starting this post with a flurry of utterly incensed exclamation marks.

£17.99 for a BOOK? What?! Why???? I. Have. No. Words. to put across how shocking it is that we will have to pay what is for me the equivalent of four and a half VERY painful, VERY boring and VERY MUCH dreaded for the rest of the week hours of standing and smiling at people and running up and down a flight of disgraceful, lethal obstacle course-esque stairs. Which leaves me exactly one and a half hours of pay to live on for the rest of week.

And what about all those poor kids who are not old enough to stand painfully and smile at people, or perhaps even to tip accidentally red wine over a posh person's £223 beige leather skirt (deceptively known in the trade as 'waiting on', for which one gets paid around £4.35 an hour, ish, if you are under 18)? Hmmm?

Imagine their little faces when they get to Waterstones and realise that despite having saved up for TWO WHOLE STUPID YEARS since the last one came out, they STILL don't have enough! Imagine the ... heartbreak. And the temper tantrums. Imagine the debt parents of big families will be driven into when each of their 7-child clan wants one NOW, or risk seven little people jumping up and down on the spot in a public place screaming their little red faces off. Perhaps even rolling around spectacularly before large displays featuring the be-spectacled Daniel Radcliff looking out mockingly with an owl perched on his little finger, knowing he could afford tens of thousands of the aforementioned ridiculously over-priced book if he wanted them.

We'll be paying three pence per page for this seventh book. Will each page be worth that much? It'd better be very very small (yet new and exciting) font. There'd better be a lot going on, per page. I imagine there will many, many disillusioned readers reaching the end of a page full of waffle and thinking 'That's three one penny sweets I could have had there. I think reading this book will be like drinking a glass of the most expensive wine there is out there.

"Come on," you will say, sniffing the wine delicately to put off the drinking "this is wine from a bunch of Holy grapes, pressed by the feet of monks from the year 129 BC. This HAS to be the best glass of wine I've ever tasted. I have to MAKE it the best glass. Oh god, SMILE and bear it and ignore the sour-grape taste. For God's sake, no-one must ever know this wine is corked!" That's what it will be like, reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We will all be so conscious of how much we've paid, that there will be a humungous effort put in to extrapulate the equivalent to the money in enjoyment levels. And no-one has much fun when they're forcing themselves.

I am contemplating not buying it until it comes out in paperback, although I know it is impossible for the world to keep quiet about the ending for much longer than all of the two hours it will take the speed-readers to get through the doorwedge of a book, perhaps even for the thirty seconds it will take some killjoy to flick to the last page.

On the other hand, I might just go to Asda.

!!!!!!