Blogtober - Day Eight

Today is National Bookshop Day organised by 'Books are my Bag'.  I do love a good bookshop don't you?  I worked in one for a couple of years when I was in my late teens.  It was in the centre of Nottingham and called Sisson & Parker.  I loved working there.  I didn't work on the shop floor but in the offices above dealing with book orders.  We were known as 'Q' department and each of us had a library or set of libraries we were responsible for.  Mine was Leicestershire County Council's children's libraries.  The number of times I typed out the titles of books featuring Pooh, Paddington, Biggles, The Borrowers, Professor Branestawm and the Moomins as well as many classics.  Titles I remember are 'Stig of the Dump', 'The Eagle of the Ninth,' 'The Owl Service' and one that still amuses me 'Biggles Sweeps the Desert'.

I have favourite book shops mostly in Derbyshire.  The High Peak Bookstore at Brierlow Bar near Buxton, Scriveners in Buxton and Scarthin Books at Cromford.

The High Peak Bookstore, Brierlow Bar, near Buxton.

Scriveners, Buxton

Scarthin Books, Cromford.

The High Peak Bookstore now has a cafe where it used just to have a couple of sofas and a coffee machine.  Scarthin Books has a small cafe hidden behind moving book shelves and Scriveners also used to have a make your own coffee shelf with a few chairs.  It may have changed now.

A corner of Hawkridge Books in Bakewell which specialises in books on ornithology and natural history.

Here we have only a small Waterstones.  When we first came to live in the city in the late 90s there was a huge bookshop in the centre called Webberleys.  It was one of those glorious bookshops with many departments, on many floors, with sloping, squeaky floors, winding stairs and little picture hung walkways from one room to another.  As well as books it sold maps and atlases, stationery, greetings cards, pens, pencils and inks, art materials, board games and jigsaw puzzles.  The shop closed in 2016 after one hundred odd years following the retirement of the owners.  It is much missed.

Do you have  a favourite book shop?  Or one you have special memories of?

Scenes from a Day

Scene One

I felt quite apprehensive as the youth crossed the road straight towards me. I’d seen him ambling along with that funny, slouching gait that boys of that age adopt when they are out in public. He was wearing the regulation baggy, crotch at knees trousers, cap and sweat jacket with hood. I was the only person around and he was headed straight for me. ‘scuse me, duck, is this the way to the Probation Office?’ he asked. Oh, directions, okay, I’m used to giving those; it’s a source of amusement with my nearest and dearest that wherever we are people always ask me for directions. I can be with several people but it’s always me they ask so , I can do this. ‘Yes,’ I reply, ‘just down there on the right next to the medical centre.’ I get a ‘ta, duck’ and he slouches off. Only then do I wonder if he is on probation and if so, why?

Scene Two

I’ve paid my fare and I advance down the aisle of the bus to get a seat. Simon is on the bus, we exchange greetings, as we do when we pass on the path in the local recreation ground. Today he is without Whisky his little doggy pal but chatting quite happily to two elderly ladies and listening to their woes about hospital appointments, vandalism on their estate and the general uselessness of the local council. He joins in with some nightmare tale of his own about waiting in a hospital queue for ages and ages, which sounds absolutely horrendous. Poor Simon.

Scene Three

I wait in the queue at W. H. Smith to pay for my newspaper. I have a Guardian today, hurray! I usually can’t get a Guardian from our local shop. There are three people in front of me, the assistant asks each one if they would like a half price chocolate bar, each one declines. My turn; she doesn’t ask me if I want chocolate at half price she asks me if I would like to pre-order the new Harry Potter book. I decline, as I would have done if she’d have asked if I wanted the chocolate, but I hover in the doorway, just long enough to hear her ask the person behind me if they want half price chocolate. As I wander through the shopping centre towards Debenhams, where I know I will have to test the Code Pour Femme by Georgio Armani just once more to see if will suit me you understand, I’m still pondering upon the Harry Potter/chocolate thing. Do I look like a Harry Potter enthusiast? Or do I look like a person who doesn’t like chocolate? Then I muse on the fact that probably a lot of people eat chocolate whilst reading Harry Potter. These thoughts stay with me until I get to the coffee bar and sit with my cappuccino listening to the 'in-house' radio. 'have a little patience' sing Take That, well I have lots today, but then I haven't been to the food hall at 'your M&S ' yet and the crowds in there have been known to raise my blood pressure slightly.

Scene Four

As the bus pulls away from the stop, where I’d just been amused by a traffic warden gazing into the window of the nearby craft shop at a rather nice length of pink feather boa, I see said traffic warden flag down a taxi driver who is using the bus lane. The bus driver stops the bus, opens the window and shouts to the traffic warden ‘Go on, book him, and while you’re at it, stop the cops who use the buzz* lane, as well.’ He drives off in a huff muttering to himself through at least two more sets of traffic lights. I see a newspaper headline as someone reads further down the bus. '12 inches of snow expected this weekend.' Oh, no, but the sun is shining and the shops are full of wonderful spring flower arrangements for Mothering Sunday. Paul has to drive to Solihull on Monday for a training course. I suddenly want to be safe at home.

* the folk in Stoke say buzz not bus; they also say upbank instead of uphill.

A Bookish Day

Today is World Book Day and as one of my greatest passions is reading I thought I’d think about what books I have enjoyed over the years. I’ve always loved books; there were always books around the house when I was growing up. I also remember going to the library with Mum and choosing books to bring home to read. Sometimes we would go to the library in the nearest town but we also used to have a mobile library come to the village probably once a month. On rainy days I used to play libraries on the table with Mum’s books, a shoe box of cut up bits of paper as library tickets and a hot water bottle top as a date stamp. Those were the days.

I remember devouring Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and Secret Seven books. I loved Little Women and What Katy Did, also The Secret Garden, The Borrowers, The Wind in the Willows and a series of books about sisters who became ballet dancers and went to boarding school – I can’t remember what they were called though. I adored Children of the New Forest and Gamble for a Throne because I was fascinated with the English Civil War and Cavaliers and Roundheads. In my first year at grammar school we read Tiger in the Smoke. In the second year we did Jane Eyre and I came top of the class in English much to my and everyone else’s surprise. In the third year we read A Tale of Two Cities and I fell for Sydney Carton – what a wonderful literary character.

One day, when I was about fourteen, I was at home alone, feeling bored and I picked up a book from Mum’s bookcase and began to read, and read, and read; I just couldn’t put the book down. It was a wartime utility copy of Friday's Child by Georgette Heyer – I was completely hooked and from then on I read every single one of her books, I just loved them. From there I moved on to other historical novels by writers like Jean Plaidy, Anya Seaton, Margaret Irwin and the Lord Peter Wimsey novels by Dorothy L Sayers. In between then and now I have, of course read too many books to mention; I have many, many favourites including To the Lighthouse by Virginia Wolf, North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell and the wonderful A Month in the Country by J L Carr. Today, I read mostly murder mysteries by authors like Reginald Hill, Stephen Booth, Ian Rankin, Susan Hill, P D James,Val McDermid and Priscilla Masters. I particularly love Stephen Booth and Priscilla Masters because they write about places I know – The Peak District, North Staffordshire and Shropshire. They are my comfort zone. I also enjoy reading Robert Goddard’s thrillers, Alexander McCall Smith’s novels set in Edinburgh and any book by Joanne Harris or Joanna Trollope.

So today, on World Book Day, what am I reading? I have nearly finished one of Andrew Taylor’s atmospheric detective novels set in the 1950s and have to choose now between a booked loaned to me by a good friend – Rosehill, Portraits of a Midlands City by Carol Lake or The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld – the choice of the on-line reading group I’ve recently joined. Oh, choices, choices, and I haven’t even touched upon my love of book shops – especially if they have a coffee shop and lovely squishy, comfy leather chairs for browsing and reading purposes. Absolute joy.

Oh, and today is also St. David's Day and 'Tommy Comes Home' day – we collect him at five o’clock - I'll keep you posted.