The Book Barge

Gentleman & Player loves bookshops, and second hand bookshops in particular.  G&P also loves canal boats.  So, you can imagine the suffusion of joy that inhabited every fibre of G&P’s being when on the BBC web-site there was a wee four minute documentary about ‘The Book Barge’, a second hand bookshop…on a canal boat.

That’s right, for those of you who find the environment of a traditional second hand bookshop just too stressful, there is a place where you can browse for literary bargains in the relaxing environment of the riverbank or canal.
The documentary reveals that the people who visit the Book Barge often end up paying for their book by offering the owner a bed for the night or a meal or both.  I think the hosts get the better of that deal, as they not only get a slightly-foxed copy of ‘Rural Rides’ but get to tell all their friends for the next three years about the night they gave a ‘stranger’ hospitality. 
Owning a second-hand bookshop is, as has been remarked upon before here, an indication of eccentricity, as it tends to lead to carpet slippers being considered business attire and opening hours being from ‘when I feel like it’ to ‘when I feel hungry/thirsty/sleepy’.  However, putting eccentricity on a barge makes it adorable, and so socially acceptable.
The only way in which the story of a second-hand bookshop being based on a barge could possibly be improved is if the owner also solved literary-themed crimes.  Maybe Sunday evenings?  I smell format!  Somebody get me ITV3 and tell them I have their first original afternoon drama series ready.  They can get that river-cruise company to sponsor it.
It also makes one wonder what other business models can be adapted to the barge model.  Pub is the obvious one, and how wonderful if it could be the riverbank that was tethered to the pub on the boat, rather than the more traditional arrangement.  It could be like one of those dreadful ‘party boats’, but with a fine selection of real ales and, best of all, no room for morris dancers.
The proprietor (can we say ‘skipper’, I think we can) of the Book Barge acknowledges that she does not shelve her books by subject.  This is an approach to stocking the shelves of a second hand bookshop that G&P heartily endorses.  G&P holds the view that a good bookshop is not stocked, it is curated, and taking this further would like to propose that while stocking by subject in a sort of half-arse Dewey-decimal system may be appropriate for a behemoth like The Book Barn (indicating a corporate warehouse-sized discount bookshop that occupies three postcodes, rather than a bookshop in a barn, possibly also occupied by horses, pigs, and other animals with a literary connection, which is an excellent idea), true second hand bookshops adopt the serendipity method. 
The curation method is to place books in proximity that, although not of the same subject, complement one another so that in choosing one book and looking the regulation six inches to the left and right of the now empty space on the shelf to see if there is anything else of interest, the browser will see a book on an entirely different subject that will be of interest.  For instance, any ‘Star Trek’ or ‘Doctor Who’ novel would be shelved in proximity to ‘Cooking for One’, and any book about Hitler would be shelved next to, well, frankly, more books about Hitler – one thing you soon realise about people who read books about Hitler, they rarely have just one book about Hitler.
The serendipity method is curation by instinct rather than design.  People need to know about the hidden meanings in pub signs, and they also need to know about the Opium Wars, they just don’t know they need to know it.  But one visit to a serendipitously stocked bookshop, and they leave on the path to enlightenment, and probably also with a novel by Jilly Cooper.
One question though.  The proprietor has written a book about her experiences; ‘The Bookshop that Floated Away’, but it’s a new book.  So can she sell it?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27065292
http://thebookbarge.co.uk/

e publishing

It’s called a Kindle because it’s the next best thing to burning books!  Centuries of traditional type and publishing have given us everything from the Bible to Penguins – the books, not the bird or the biscuit.  Ten minutes with electronic publishing has given us fifty fucking shades of fucking grey and fucking fan-fucking-fic.  Time was when you wanted to read filth discreetly you wrapped a copy of the Times around your Razzle and the only thing fans produced were scary shrines and purple-printed fanzines advertised for sale in the back of the NME. 

And what of the second-hand bookshop?  These are among the greatest places on Earth, what will happen to them without any second-hand books?  And what about the smell, slightly musty, slightly academic, wholly bookish?  What about the proprietors of these magical places?  Do you know how hard it is to find a job in retail that enables you to open and close when you want to and to wear carpet slippers on the job? And what about their smell, slightly musty, slightly academic, wholly bookish?  Do you know why so many wannabe writers complain that they could paper their walls with rejection letters from publishers?  I’ll give you a clue, it’s not because editors, agents and publishers are all sadists.  Time was when self publishing was rightly described as vanity publishing and was the only way the otherwise unprintable memoirs of retired men with forthright views about foreigners saw the light of day.  Now, any idiot with an iPad and a few hours to waste can publish their ‘original’ moody bloody vampire novella.

As for digital magazine downloads, what a shocking idea.  Every edition of the ‘People’s Friend’ had a free rain-hood stuck to the front cover. Try giving away free essential old-lady apparel as a digital bloody download.

Postcard from Edinburgh- Popping up and musicals

I'm in Edinburgh, at the festival, and so start the day with the traditional five meat breakfast: sausage, bacon, black pudding, haggis and whatever rendered fat they fry the eggs in. This sets one up for the day and is a site specific diet, just as when one is abroad one starts the day with fruit, cheese, some sort of ham or simply a fortifying glass of something cheeky depending on the circumstances.

Wandering the city we happen across the book festival in Charlotte Square gardens. This is a collection of marquees, tents and, thanks to the recent weather, the sort of duck boards used in the trenches. There are signs on occasional patches of planking that read 'hidden puddle'. The book festival is sponsored by the Guardian and features a pop-up bookshop. This means that the city is currently officially the middle-class epicentre of the planet.


The focus appears to be on children's literature. This may well be due to the success of 'The Hunger Games', possibly in itself riding the coat tails of the success of the Twishite saga. With the latter, Hollywood put pouting teens on the screen and the kids rushed to the book shop to find out what happened next. With The Hunger Games Hollywood put a smudge of dirt on a teen and the same thing happened. The teen fiction market has never been short of dystopian series (big shout out to all you John Christopher fans) and so they have fired up the printing presses with new covers for existing series and printed up a shitload of stickers reading 'If you liked the Hunger Games you'll love this'. I thought it was a stretch when I saw one on 'Jamie's Italy' but full marks for trying.

Apparently, sales in adult fiction are falling, while sales in children's fiction remain strong, despite the lure of the Playstation. Two things possibly explain this, the first is that soppy adults are buying Twilight books and not so soppy adults realise that writers of children's fiction have to be good because their audience are easily distracted and so are giving them a go, or adults are buying more non-fiction as more easily accessible non-fiction comes onto the market and is tied in with television programmes.


Bucking the trend is adult erotic fiction. I've not read 'Fifty Shades of Grey' and so don't have an opinion on it. Well, not an informed one anyway. By reputation, Fisty Shades of Shite is supposed to be appalling, but it is also a huge success and as a result publishers are dusting off their erotica and printing up those marketing stickers. So for instance, don't be surprised to see 'If you loved Fifty Pages of Bilge, you'll love this', adorning the front cover of another smutty novel with a picture of a high heel on the front cover or, if the publisher is showing imagination, the 'Woman's Realm', or a bar of chocolate.

At the pop-up bar in George Street I ask for a pint of Innes and Gunn. I am told that they only serve it in halves, 'because it is so strong'. I am told this by, and I mean no offence, a weasly undernourished English bar-man who would be better suited to selling cups of squash with the rest of his Brownie troop. As I said, no offence to the Brownies. I considered ordering two halves but as this may have been beyond his abilities, to serve as well as to carry, I comforted myself with the thought of him trying that shit on a thirsty Festival goer later in the evening.

As it was, a half was probably a sound tactical bladder management move as it was off to see 'Appointment with the Wicker Man' at the temple of shagpile, The Assembly Hall. Now, to be fair, I thought that this was going to be a straightforward, twisted, musical version of the famous book and film. Unfortunately not, it was a comedy based on an am-dram company putting on a musical production ofThe Wicker Man, with hysterical results. Quite. It may well work as a tee vee special but all in all it was a bit of a Lucas moment, when somebody takes something beloved and special and shits on it. And the thing is, a musical version of The Wicker Man would be great. I think even the great Sir Christopher Lee has described the film in such terms and you can have a sinister musical, after all, 'The Sound of Music' had Nazis, 'The Wizard of Oz' had flying monkeys and 'Mama Mia' had Colin Firth singing.

Edinburgh fashion tip - gentlemen, wear a kilt. This is an international festival and attracts all types from all corners of the world. But it's held in the capital city of Scotland and this is just about the only chance that anyone not from Scotland is going to get to wear their kilt on an everyday basis. Gentlemen who wish to make a 'statement', you can keep your Vans, your tats, your piercings, your stupid little goatee beards, your fucking fucking cargo shorts, your pony tails, your vintage look and your Buddy Holly glasses because when a bloke with a kilt walks in to the room , all eyes are upon him for two reasons. The first is that he is automatically the best dressed person in the room, the other is that everyone is doing a lightening calculation about clan rivalries and wondering if anything is about to kick off over a 200 year old dispute over ownership of a sheep.

After a day of gorgeous weather, the rain gods have obviously been angered and normal climatic service has been resumed. At the book festival, while 'The Guardian' was giving away a fabric bag with every purchase, 'The Scotsman' which that morning had been giving away a 'I heart Edinburgh' fabric bag containing a sachet of coffee and some shortbread (breakfast!) switched to giving away rain ponchos and instantly became the most popular paper in the city centre. Rain ponchos were much in evidence this afternoon, like some dignified, acceptable grown up version of the punk movement's beloved bin liner.

On to the rather corporate EICC to see Rhod Gilbert. Very funny, but at twenty quid for an hour not tremendously Fringy. However the audience loved him and for weary festival goers the comfy seats were much appreciated. The woman sitting next to me even took he shoes off during the show, not something one would recommend doing in a lot of the venues.

It being a Sunday night, the crowds have thinned somewhat. Dropped into 'Greyfriers Bobby' for a drink. This is a tourist pub, meaning it caters for Americans, meaning it is clean, has friendly bar-staff, has a tartan carpet, and you can find a place to sit. That and a bag of nuts was just what I needed.

Concluded at the BBC again, where a comedian was late, the show over-ran and one concluded that the BBC is saving money by hiring children as floor managers. Having said that, the girl who kept letting me in and out of the venue as I ran to the bar and toilet was very nice. I wonder if she wants to work for the BBC full time when she leaves school.

Postcard from Norfolk - A fistfull of chips

A trip out to Sheringham, via a stop in Salthouse for lunch at the Dun Cow. It’s the done thing. Sitting in the courtyard in the sunshine there was a moment of tension and trepidation introduced to this otherwise relaxed scene. We had ordered sandwiches of various types, which come with ‘a handful’ of chips. There was some conversation about just what ‘a handful’ constituted. We made the effort to keep the banter light but you could tell there was an edge to it. The expectation was that it would be the handful of the sort of chap who can palm a basketball and not, for instance, the handful of somebody just out the womb. We wanted a large hand, so that we wouldn’t have to beat the landlord to death with an example of same in order to drive the lesson home.

As it turned out, chef must either be a big bloke or have overheard our conversation, or got our note, because the handful of chips that arrived was just right.

Also lunching at the Dun Cow were birdwatchers. We had our suspicions of their pastime based on hats, beards, field glasses, vest of many pockets and stout boots but what put it beyond doubt was when they were able to correct our woeful misidentification of a little fellow pearched on the chimney, tweeting. They did very well to hide what must have been great irritation at our ham fisted attempts to Name That Bird. I think I was closest with ‘goat’.

Sheringham is the home to my new favourite bookshop. I’ve never been in to it before, always preferring to give the Brazen head in Burnham Market my custom but this time I wandered in and yes, it was because there was a sign in the window about how this was a Dickens of a good shop and potential customers were right to have great expectations of it. Who could resist?


Not me. Once over the threshold, the place is a delight. It’s like the illustration of some magical realist children’s book, a cave of books, a building made out of books. Every wall is lined, there are nooks, there are crannies, and they are all filled with books. It’s like the home of a literary hoarder and probably what my front room is going to look like in a few years if I don’t stop buying books.


As well as having a diverse and fascinating stock, the place is curated with care and humour, for instance the misery lit is opposite the children’s section. Displayed face on instead of spine on, one sees that the cover design of misery lit paperbacks are generic, there’s a title and author’s name in somber font and colour, then a black and white or sepia picture of a child looking either concerned or constipated depending on how much the publishing house was able to spring for a decent stock photograph. And they all have the same titles ‘No daddy no’, ‘Please stop mummy’, ‘Cut that out uncle Eric’, ‘Grandad you filthy fucker you could at least have washed it first’, that sort of thing.

Obviously, child cruelty must be stopped, if only to make sure no more of these bloody things are printed.

I’m also more convinced than ever that the Kindle must also be stopped, or second hand books will cease to exist. That means that in future years adults will be denied the pleasure of rediscovering ‘First term at Chalet School’, ‘Second term at Chalet School’, ‘Detention at Chalet School’, ‘In the showers at Chalet School’ and so on.

Sittin sippin browsin

I have always been a big fan of coffee shops in book shops. Somehow the sensibility seems just right, and I think I now understand why (and its not just about caffeine addiction, its far deeper than that, its about cake too) and, moreover, have finally unlocked the philosophy behind the business (and it's not just about over stimulating consumers, although it occurs that offering a couple of lines of coke on the door of Dorothy Perkins would lead to an increase in sales, although you'd have to remove the mirrors in the store to minimise paranoia outbreaks).

The link between education and refreshment was made for me in childhood, when a trip to Glasgow's museum and art gallery would culminate in a visit to the tea shop. This is Glasgow, so if I tell you that the chocolate gateau they served there actually defied the laws of chemistry by having more calories in it collectively than the ingredients contributed singly (and those ingredients were mainly butter, sugar, lard and batter, and chocolate), and that this had a direct bearing on the taste (simply glorious), then you may be assured that I am not exaggerating. These were in the days before chemical adulteration of our foods, when the term 'trans-fatty' applied to a chubby cross-dresser. Cake tasted like cake because they were made from, and made you, fat. But this was OK, because having just wandered several miles of galleries, one was quite entitled to a few thousand calories on a single spoon.

Back in the present day, it occurs to me that the sort of person who is going to have a coffee in a book shop is the sort of person who enjoys shopping for books. Moreover, they are the sort of person who enjoys spending some time sitting listening to jazz (it's always jazz in book shops, it's the law) drinking their coffee in comfy seats, surrounded by books. Chances are that this is more or less exactly what they would be doing if at home, only with less jazz and fewer books.

The coffee shop in the Waterstones (other bookshops are available) I am currently in as I sit typing this (it's okay, everyone thinks I'm working on my screenplay) is situated in the section which has all their books on art, that is, the expensive large format ones that you just want to take home and leave lying around the place so that everyone will think you are cleverer and more cultured than you really are. And sitting here, looking at the spines of colourful books, some of which have pictures of ladies and gauze inside them, there is, as the latte takes hold, a real desire to own those tomes. Not just the plump, colourful, heavyweight books with gorgeous reproductions of paintings of fruit and so on, but the undernourished, dull, cruel looking books on art criticism that take one hundred and fifty pages to grudgingly admit that despite his many faults, Van Gough could paint.

Because for a balanced reader, fiction is going to be well represented, even foreign fiction thanks to Stig (ten years ago if you asked somebody if they had read a Swedish crime novel recently, you would probably get a negative response. Get a negative response to that question today and you would not be out of order to enquire how their health is now that they are out of their coma). Likewise there are popular books on various branches of natural philosophy, many featuring handsome BBC presenters on the front wearing chinos. The same can be said for history. But art? Not so much.

Which is why you situate your coffee shop in the art section. Not only does it take the browser off the beaten aisle, exposing them to unforeseen temptation, but it ensures the coffee drinkers are not blocking access to the popular and profitable shelves of the store, usually stocked with authors with an umlatt in their name where the book covers have a bloke standing in a snowy field.

Right, coffee finished, I'm off to try and find a book on Scottish baking, and one on how to make your own defribulator.

Kindling

When I was a kid, I used to watch 'Tomorrow's World'. This programme showcased inventions that would someday change the world, or at least your front room. For instance, Michael Rodd was the first, and only, man to spread jam on a CD to demonstrate that it did not impair performance. Everyone who subsequently bought CDs and discovered that a speck of dust could cause the CD to skip like a kid with ADD and a haribo habit concluded that maybe Michael would have been better off showcasing the weapons-grade laser that must have been used to read the preserve-smeared disc, as anything that could do that could probably shoot down an ICBM, a much better use for a laser than being used to bring forth the musical stylings of Dire Straits.

They also showed an electronic book. About the size of an etch-a-sketch, each book was on a micro-chip, which you slotted into place. The text displayed in red LED of the sort then popular with digital watches. This, we were told, was the future of reading. I agreed, I had read 'The Hitch Hikers' Guide To The Galaxy' and knew that electronic books were the way forward. It never went into production, possibly because of costs, probably because it was a bit of a shit idea.

Now, of course, it appears that just about everyone has an electronic book. Kindling used to be something you chopped or collected or, if a tourist on a cottage holiday, paid too much a bagful for, now it's a description of a popular pastime.

After years of waiting for an electronic book, the kindle is an enormous let-down. Its so...grey. The screen is grey, the plastic case is grey, the text is black (there's variety for you). This is not the sort of thing that Ford Prefect would tote around. There is nothing science fiction about the kindle, it's as exciting as an iron. And you know the big selling point for the kindle? You can read the screen in direct sunlight. Whoop de fucking do because, you know, you can't do that with a book, can you? The point of an electronic something is that it should be better than the non-electronic version. The computer is better than the abacus because you can't play 'angry birds' on an abacus.

An electric book needs to have two features to make it exciting. First, it should narrate books, in the voice of Claudia Winkleman. Second, you should be able to download books from the future.

Only these would overcome the tremendous drag factor of the many things that the kindle cannot do. It's shit at providing future fodder for second hand book shops, and if you are the sort of person who derives please from a well stocked bookshelf, a slab of plastic the colour of a dead sheep lying there does not have the same effect.

Worst of all is the lack of being able to annotate. I bloody hated French at school, each lesson an exercise in misery, until I opened what looked like an unremarkable exercise book, a battered hardback text book that had been through the hands of countless boys before me. This one though, was different. Some hero had, with a black biro and a tremendous surge of filthy imagination, annotated every illustration accompanying the stories of Jean, Xavier and Marie with illustrations and speech bubbles (in English) that turned even a simple trip to the bouloungerer into a pornographic festival of filth. When I turned the page to 'a visit to the stables' I had to work so hard at suppressing my laughter that I nearly ruptured something - nothing I've since seen on the internet has even come close.

Years later I was to encounter the artfully defaced book once again, this time flipping through the pages of Dickens to find that all of the illustrations had been re-captioned, with shocking and surprising results. If you want the formula for hilarity - it's using the word 'cockflicker' in the context of describing a picture of an earnest looking bloke in a top hat.

Try doing that on a kindle.

Postcard from Norfolk – Postcards and bookshops

Writing a postcard, by which I mean a real postcard rather than a self indulgent and self referential blog entry about how I such the salt off my chips before eating them, if something of an art. You have a small space in which to convey much, so there's a quandary; does one go for wit, or brevity, or both? Or does one attempt to condense a best selling travel book into the space allowed? Should one confine oneself to a weather report and, if so, how truthful should one be? Or should one simply go for something the postman will enjoy reading?

Longer than a tweet, shorter than a letter, the postcard is, along with the Christmas card, the analog version of Internet communication. Essentially, the modern craze for forwarding pictures of kittens in hats with captions heavy on the use of the letter zed is just a cheap and lazy modern incarnation of sending relatives a saucy seaside postcard.

Given the utter dominance of texting and the ability to send e mails and pictures from your smartphone,it's good that postcards continue to thrive as a edits of communication. This is, I think, because that are considered to be the same as Christmas or birthday cards, something that are sent as well as a text rather than instead of. Nothing conveys the message 'we are on holiday and you are not' like a card depicting a handful of picturesque cottages on the front and a message on the back about drinking lots of tea. I always make sure that I leave a red wine ring stain on the back of the card, I am actually thinking about having a special stamp made.

There are two approaches to postcard sending. The first is to buy a shedload on day one, go to the pub and get it all over with in one mail shot. This is environmentally sound, as it allows you to recycle the same remarks over and over to different people. The alternative is to go for the episodic approach, which means sending a postcard a day and developing a theme, such as a beer forecast, reviewing a different beach every day or, my favourite, explaining how you are developing a relationship with the pretty girl in the post card shop by buying one every day.

As much fun as sitting in the pub writing is, sitting in the pub reading is even more fun, which is why, despite it lacking a fish and chip shop, Burnham Market is fast becoming one of my favourite places to visit; one spends half an hour in the Brazen Head book shop, then repairs to the Hoste to flick through ones purchases, while drinking beer.

The second hand book shop is the home of the unexpected treat. Visiting today I picked up a Tom Wolfe book that I've never even heard of, and a NEL edition of 'Assignment in eternity'. I really do hope that you can tell a book by its cover because this one is a corker, showing a rocket blasting off from a city, in a bubble, on the moon! It is the perfect science fiction book cover. Who could resist?

It also prompted something of a revelation - I like books more than I like reading. Peering over the shoulders of people on the train I have been very impressed by the kindle e book reader. The screen can be read in direct sunlight and it is pleasingly small and looks comfortable to hold. If I liked readying, I would have one and download books to it at a reasonable price. But I like books. A book is an artefact, not a stream of electrons. Maybe I am a showing my age but surely anyone who has written a book dreams of it one day appearing in print rather than on screen.

More than that though, will there be a second hand market for e books? Even if there is, even if we end up with an on line store curated by some caring individual who groups the books in a manner conducive to e browsing that leads one to unexpected treasures, it's unlikely that inside the front cover will be somebody's name and age, or, my favourite, a slip of paper explaining that this copy of 'A Pilgrim's Progress' was awarded to somebody as a prize for growing the largest marrow in the school garden.

Kindle readers lack charm (the device, not the people). Worst of all, they lack covers - I like rockets, science fiction and cities in bubbles and I don't want to be deprived of looking at a dramatic depiction of same before opening up the book to continue the adventure.

Postcard from Norfolk - Burnham Market

Just driving over the parish boundary into Burnham Market increases your social class by several tiaras*. It is home to quite a lot of weekend people, but during the week the bustle is provided by shoppers drawn to its lovely shops, selling lovely things, at lovely and occasionally eye-watering prices. Make no mistake though, the shops are also catering for the locals. While you can buy lovely shiny twinkly things in Norfolk Living you can also buy a lovely shiny washing tub in the local hardware shop. It has to be said though, the opportunity to blow a load of cash quickly exists here.

Take Wellington boots. Wellington boots should be purchased from a tub out front of a shop. They should be plastic and be good for standard Wellington boot use until one of two things happen, either they spring a leak or, as a result of an over-ambitious or incautious paddle, they are swamped and they never quite dry out or smell the same afterwards. They should not cost a hundred quid, not even if they have little straps on the side to aid pulling up. The only time a pair of Wellington boots should cost a hundred quid is when they are attached to the hooker you are playing out your Jilly Cooper fantasies with.

It's a lovely village with lovely shops, many of which still have the lovely habit of closing for lunch. It is interesting to wander over to the door of a shop that looks like a likely place to pick up a twinkly trinket or panoramic postcard and be confronted by a locked door and a small cardboard sign explaining 'closed for lunch, back at two'.

The quality of the cardboard signs vary. The one in the stationary shop was, as one might expect, on lovely white card, while the one in the window of the counter of the post office situated in the newsagents was a classic of its kind, a flap ripped from a brown cardboard box, with the corrugation showing along the edge and the message written in biro, with each line of each letter stroked a few times for emphasis and legibility. Both signs share one characteristic, one corner so slightly discoloured from daily handling as, at twelve fifty nine, they are fetched from their resting position and popped up against the glass.

In such circumstances the only sane response is to repair to The Hoste Arms for a pint or two of lunch yourself.

When the shops are open, the shopping is good. There's a good fishmonger, a great butcher, a fabulous second hand book shop and the opportunity to buy some great clothing. One of the shops persisted in selling cashmere shorts, but my interest was in shop selling hats, appropriately, upstairs. While I was distracted for a moment with a fur lined flying helmet/deerstalker combination, the greatest temptation came in the form of a Stetson brand hat, more or less like the one Indiana Jones wears. Not sure if my eventual decision to put the hat back and back away slowly was the right one, but it was informed by the fact that I have an almost identical one at home.

Of course I should have bought it. One cannot have too many Indiana Jones style hats.

The village is the home of the Brazen Head book shop. If one were to picture a second hand book shop, this would be the image called to mind. At the front of the shop are the old childrens' books, Rupert the bear annuals and Enid Blyton, then through to penguins and on to genres, upstairs for non-fiction. Books stacked up higgildy-piggledy, newish, oldish, antique. Careful browsing yielded a really rather nice Pan edition of an M. R. James book, and a book by Tom Woolf that I'd never heard of. The 1970s cover of the Tom Wolf book is of a pair of ladies legs, crossed. Nothing quite like a cover like that to suggest to everyone on the train that you are reading vintage porn.

Books in one hand, laptop in the other, it was time to sit outside the Hoste and have a refreshing pint of lunch. It was another very mild day, though not so crowded as everyone was now back at work. It used to be that one sat outside the pub to enjoy the fresh air but now, of course, one has anti-smoking laws and the tables outside are where all the puffers come to indulge their filthy little habit, secure in the knowledge that anyone drinking at lunchtime is unlikely to look down on anyone indulging a craving.

The tables were thankfully free of smokers, who were presumably in the pub getting their fix from the secondary smoke of the wood fire, and I sat there reading and poncing off the pubs wi-fi in the traditional manner before a few spots of rain drove me inside.

As per usual, there was a dog owner in the bar, unusually the dog in question was a pug. Is there any dog as ridiculous as the pug? This example was one of those with a one-dimensional face. Eyes, nose, mouth, all occupied a totally flat plane. Even its tongue did not poke out or loll, but curled backwards like an unblown party streamer, it had that asthmatic pug breathing that leads one to believe that the breed actually breath through their arses.

Burnham Market is lovely. It's so lovely that it makes Chipping Norton in the Cotswolds look like a sink estate. It's true that it's full of cars, and tourists and people who only occupy their second homes at the weekend, but the are real people here too, real shops and real shopkeepers with a real need to eat lunch. I think as long as it retains that, and the pub, all is not lost.

* The tiara is the unit social class is measured by. Can’t be cars or property or, god forbid, money. Comes down to this, can you wear a tiara and carry it off? Yes, congratulations, your social class is measured at one tiara and you probably have a title, some land and pretty firm views on immigration. The tiara scale is different to most units of measurement in that the vast majority of it is firmly at the minus end of the scale.

Country Life - National Map Centre

http://www.countrylife.co.uk/blogs/spectator

I shared Carla Carlisle’s shock when I learned, during a visit there last week to purchase an essential rain-proof street map of Edinburgh, that the National Map Centre was to close (Spectator, ‘Map-reading by heart’ August 24).

Every journey may begin with a single step, but prior to that the wise traveller would make a quick trip to the National Map Centre. It is here that one finds not just guide-books and globes and maps and memoirs, but a sense of adventure.

A good book shop is not stocked, it is curated. It is a pleasure to spend time there browsing and one frequently leaves not just with one’s intended purchase, but other discoveries as well. Such a store is the National Map Centre.

The National Map Centre sells not just OS maps, guides and travel writing, but huge wall-sized world maps, ideal for plotting foreign trips or world domination. These fascinate because many do not always place Great Britain in the centre of the map. The different projections of the world challenge traditional views and present a different way of looking at things. Yet this does not diminish our importance, a map is a way of finding your way home, and home is always the most important place in the world.

The National Map Centre is important also. The adventurers great and small that have started there must be countless. When it closes, the world will be a slightly darker, duller place, and that much harder to navigate.

Norfolk notes - Burnham Market

Burnham Market, home of the Hoste Arms and, I hope, at least one outstanding Christmas light bulb, is also home to lovely shops selling lovely things (including, and I can't understand why I didn't buy this, a picnic decanter! That's right, a decanter made of plastic that you take on your picnic, when you simply can't bear the thought of pouring port from the bottle yet you want to save on weight. Actually I know why I didn't buy it - I refuse to compromise on these sort of things. If one decants, one decants from crystal, or on a picnic glass is acceptable.) at great expense.

There are also a couple of book shops. One selling new books, the other, much more interesting, selling second hand books. Second hand books are a treat. Not only are can you stimulate your mind with their contents, but with certain books you can speculate about the previous owner, like did they die of an exceptionally contagious disease that incubates in Agatha Christie novels?

Unlike charity bookshops which, although excellent, rely on donations, the owner of this shop obviously spends a lot of time at everything from car boot sales to book fairs, which is why the shop sells everything from a crisp new looking Dan Brown to a foxed-to-the-point-of-hounded innocuous looking wee hardback that turns out to be a first printing of a classic that contains a rare misprint - like the entire chapter in 'The Pickwick Papers' when the Pickwickians visit a whorehouse, complete with illustrations. Quite a misprint, quite a curiosity.

Instead of a coffee shop, the space has instead been devoted to cramming in yet another book.
Or map, because the shop sells old maps also. And if you are wondering who the hell would want to buy an out of date map, can I point you towards the Ordinance Survey vintage series, or any bloke (and it's usually blokes) that have old maps of some forgotten rural shire that smelled predominantly of dung and onions hanging proudly on their walls.

The Brazen Head sells everything from the Sex and the City 2 novelisation (which surely must be worth flicking through just to see if it's annotated - wouldn't that be excellent, to see comments in the margins along the lines of 'stopped reading here, too much like self harming') to penguin classics. This is a home of curiosities, delights and the occasional surprise.

Like a paperback first edition copy of 'The Wicker Man', which I didn't even know was a novel!

Obviously I know the film. This is the movie that set my expectations of both the mentality of islanders (which I think has been proven. There's just something about living on a small island that makes the folks suspicious of outsiders, modern life and any religion that does not involve crop worship of some kind. To be fair, this sort of mentality exists in isolated rural communities too and, with bus and rail links being what they are, we shouldn't look for improvement any time soon.) and small hotels (which has not. While small hotels may finally have embraced the idea of the mini-bar, none that I know of offer a complimentary writhing naked witch in the next bedroom. Not even the self styled 'boutique' hotels. Don't get me wrong, I think the advent of the boutique hotel is a fine thing; essentially the establishment of a boutique hotel involves taking a small B&B, redecorating with a theme (taking care to avoid 'run down 70's kitch'), going to half-board, realising that a glass of fruit juice is not a starter option and beefing up the soundproofing so that the sounds of passionate lovemaking, anguished sobs or that perennial hotel favourite, the single gunshot and scream, do not disturb the other guests).

But I never realised it was a novel first. It was in very good condition and priced at a tenner, exactly the price point to make certain folk blink at anyone having the chops to ask that for a second hand paperback but for any passing cult horror film fan to be consumed with that 'I must own it' sensation.

One purchase later, it was best speed to the Hoste Arms, home of fine wines and wi fi, to ponce off of their internet connection and see if I had got a bargain or been ripped off. Fired up Abebooks and, ah, that warm glow of satisfaction. I had nabbed a rarity and paid a reasonable price. Not that any of that mattered of course. But fans of cult horror films set in remote Scottish islands and staring Christopher Lee are rather a niche market and notoriously east to exploit.

It was, I suspect, a never to be repeated moment of paperback madness but I reckon I actually did rather better than others who indulge themselves on holiday and bring back something impractical, like an STD.

Postcard from Norfolk - Market day

What’s your favourite bookshop? Probably the bookshop I buy most of my books from is Amazon. But that’s not really a shop, is it. The mental image I have of Amazon, the vast warehouse from the final scene of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ is probably hopelessly quaint; Amazon is probably a vast network of vast warehouses, based on the moon or something, or the Isle of Man, as that’s where most of the DVDs I order from Amazon come from.

I’m not a total luddite. I’m not, for instance, wholly against the idea of coffee in a bookshop. It’s good to be able to take a stack of books to your table, have a coffee, brows, decide which one you want and put the rest, now with coffee rings and biscotti crumbs evenly distributed among the pages, back on the shelves. The day some genius puts a wine bar in a bookshop, I’m there!

But for me a bookshop sells books. Calmly, efficiently and with the minimum of fuss. The problem is that a lot of big chains are about as soulful as supermarkets (which is where you can also buy books, in between buying dog food and tampons, you can slip the latest beach-read bonkbuster into your basket). A good bookshop needs some sort of indefinable charm.


Much has been written about the perfect bookshop, most of it by Terry Pratchett in the novel ‘Good Omens’, so I won’t repeat it here. I will add though that the perfect bookshop is well stocked, has lots of books in the windows which, together with high shelving, cuts out harmful UV and, er, light, leading to the feeling of the creation of a literary womb or cave. Any hermit taking up residence would at least have plenty to read. It will be run by an eccentric proprietor who will make favoured customers tea and offer them rich tea biscuits (never digestives, as these crumble too easily having been dunked). His hours will be erratic, his footware will be slippers.

Top three fictional bookshops? Black Books, Bernard Black proprietor, from the television programme of the same name. The Eloquent Page, the science fiction bookshop run by Uncle Rogi Remillard in the novels written by Julian May. And the bookshop in ‘Before Sunset’ where Ethan Hawke meets up with Julie Delpy again. Okay, that’s actually a real store (Shakespeare and Company, Paris), but in this case it’s fictional because hey, it’s in a film.

But it brings us on to real actual bookstores. Okay, top three. In third place, Toppings and Company in Ely. Toppings is probably the last place in this dimension to be selling books at their cover price. How do they get away with it? Well, many of the hardbacks are signed by the author and come sealed in little plastic bags with an attractive band wrapped round them proclaiming ‘signed first edition’. Not something you get at Asda or Amazon. In addition, it’s a shop of great physical charm. The staircase up to the first floor is steep and twisty, but worth the climb to access the books on mountaineering – handy in the fens. Having recently moved Mrs Rochester out, they’ve opened up the attic and you can now have a coffee (free, there’s no Costa or Starbucks up there) and read a book while looking out the attic window at the cathedral lantern. The state of semi-hypnosis that this generates results in you splashing full price on books and not resenting the hell out of it.

Okay, second favourite (previously favourite). The Brazen head bookshop in Bunham Market, Norfolk. Exactly what a proper second hand bookshop should be. Crammed with books and with an enthusiastic owner. The last time I was in there he had just acquired some new stock and was looking through it, he got very excited about a ‘Biobull’ – a Gaelic bible. I should have bought the thing there and then, despite not being able to understand a word. They make their faith like granite in areas where Gaelic is spoken and this appeared to me to be just the sort of religious artefact to take comfort from in a faith emergency or vampire attack.

But my new number one favourite bookshop? It’s not a shop at all, it’s a stall. The Wednesday market at Sheringham in Norfolk is host to stalls selling everything from screwdrivers to football team themed duvet covers. Also, there’s a book stall. It’s fantastic. The chap who own it has his books lying flat on some tables in fruit boxes (if ever you need to transport your library, these are the carriers of choice) and also – and here’s the genius part – stacked up in ‘shelves’ by halving the fruit boxes and stacking them one on top of the other.

The stall sells second hand books – everything from the latest beach read that’s been read once and still smells faintly of tanning lotion where it’s rested on a baking tummy somewhere along the shores of the Med all the way to old penguins that have obviously spent a lot of time travelling in the pockets of various chaps.

The sheer variety is breathtaking, you could become ridiculously well-read by visiting once a week with a fiver. And you leave with some paperbacks in a paper bag, a lot more cheerful than you arrived and usually with a surprise buy. Now that’s a shopping success and that’s a great book stall.