The inevitable consquences of money in the bank and a visit to one of the best bookshops on the planet. I'll explain all at the end.

Sunday

Yes, I know, I’m here again on a Sunday. I know it’s a shock but dammit, I am buzzed. Not in a grumbly, prickly sort of way like last week when I pointlessly perpetuated the “whose phone is best” argument. Sorry about that. I don’t know why I vent on here as I know I get noticably less hits, less likes and less comments when I do so. I don’t even feel any better for it. I’ll try and remember not to do it again but the chances of noone ever pissing me off again are slim to none and my memory being what it is, I will probably forget ever typing this. How critics and commentators ever sleep at night when all they do nothing more than sour the atmos is beyond me.

None of which pointless blab serves any purpose other than to fill the world with more words, sour or otherwise.

So, I am buzzed. It might be caffeine, after all I have had 3 quite large black coffees today in two separate purveyors of such things, only one of which still calls them “black coffees”. The Americano virus spreads with little sign of abatement, despite my vigorous and intensive campaign of tutting and mild, silent sarcasm. I sometimes wonder why I bother, I really do.

By now, you might be asking yourself why I was out on a Sunday morning and you would be deserving of an answer. I was here (see below).

Plymouth Barbican

‘Twas a cold and brisk Sunday morning in Plymouth and after being in bed, eating breakfast in bed and eating breakfast in bed with someone else there are few places it’s better on to be on such a morning than Plymouth’s Historical Barbican. As is the current fashion in the world of “outside” if was f**king cold, if not colder but where would the world be without risk and adventure? As with most cities, there is some sort of unofficial competition between on-street parking machines and coffee shops to see who can charge the most for something of only little value and Plymouth is no exception. I don’t quite understand why you can only buy two hours parking from on-street parking meters on The Barbican. Considering the fact that its the most “touristy” of all the places in Plymouth, I find it strange that after two hours, the council would like you to pack up your trash and move on. It’s quite possible to spend more time than that in visiting only a few of the shops and galleries. Luckily, there are a few places, most of which are well off the tourist trail where you can park for up to 3 hours. Anything over that counts as all day and costs enough to ensure that you never darken Plymouth’s doorstep ever again.

Hey look, I wasted a paragraph on parking. Well done, Neil.

Coffee time in The Strand Tearooms

Coffee In The Tearooms

In wonderful moment of coicidence, synchronicity or simultaneousness, my phone chirped to tell me that good chum, Scott Grenney had sent me an Email. Not that amazing unless you know that I was standing outside his front door (The Admiral McBride pub) when it happened. It didn’t quite happen like that, as I didn’t check who it was from until I sat down in The Strand Tearooms about 5 minutes later, but I thought it worthy of mention.

I like it in The Strand. It’s the sort of establishment in which Captain Mainwaring and Wilson are shown drinking their morning Coffee in most episodes of Dad’s Army. Quite why the place isn’t permanently full of American tourists is very strange, situated as it is only 100 feet from The Mayflower Steps. Actually, when you consider that the steps themselves are rarely surrounded by more than two people, it’s not that surprising. Someone once told me that the place where The Mayflower dropped anchor in the states is always packed with sightseers and yet, the place where it left from isn’t. I could be very cynical about this by suggesting a sign or two at our end might help matters, but that would suggest a sense of reason seemingly absent from the general area. Indeed, the only person to have grasped the financial realities of the situation sells Ice Cream at prices high enough to give you a nosebleed, should you foolishly enquire.

After coffee, it was time to hit the shops.

The Barbican contains some of the finest collectible and book shops there are. I confidently attest to this fact, despite the fact that I haven’t been to any similar establishments anywhere else but you only have to waste five hours looking at the stuff in them to believe it with all of your heart. We all love to grumble when staff ignore us in shops but in places like these, it’s a neccesity. After years of watching people move amongst the shelves so slowly it’s hard to perceive their forward motion, it would be a foolhardy old bod who shot their conversational load too early. The first suprise on entering is they usually say “hello”. The first time I experienced this, I was briefly under the illusion that they had some of novelty door chime, activated automatically on my entrance. But no…it was the old guy behind the counter. Despite a mountainous pile of what appeared to be “stock” awaiting pricing, he was reading his Sunday Independant newspaper in a wooden chair/cushion combination probably made by someone who knew Sir Walter Raleigh personally.

My favourite shop is run by an oldish couple. Sometimes you get the bloke but today, it was the turn of “the missus”.

“Hello”, she chirped as I opened the door.

“Good Morning”…

“Oh is it?”, she replied and then glancing at her watch (that wasn’t there) and then staring at the wall clock (that was),”Afternoon, just…”

“Yes, just.” (I laughed).

“Yes.”, (she laughed).

We both laughed.

“Do you need any help?”

“No thankyou”, I’ll come and get you if I do.

Silence.

Oh god, that sounded a bit rude.

“We have three floors”, she said, obviously not offended by my previous abruptness.

“Oh good”, I said, in completely pointless and unneccesary reply.

Three floors. That’s one more than last time. Oh god, I’m going to be in here until the Royal Wedding.

Unlike new bookshops (which now smell of burnt coffee beans and sound like Enya), old bookshops smell of history and sound like dust. They are like the biggest cupboard in your house, full of books you never knew you had, arranged in a way that would suggest you didn’t put them there and even if you did, you have never tidied them up. Everything you pick up has been touched, read by someone else and then put back on a shelf for a while. Actually, I always like to think that the books that end up in old bookshops never actually lived on shelves. People who read books seldom get around to putting them neatly on shelves. If they did, then the 1000′s of books I looked at today would look more like they do in Waterstones. Instead, they look like they have been used, left open with the spine bent, forgotten about and then finished months after they were first bought.

Another thing I like about old books is their naivity. As much as I love an old Conan Doyle, I have an almost perverse affection for old non-fiction. Before Christmas, I bought a 1968 tourist’s guide to Cyprus because it contained photos of places I remember from living there in the late 70s. Whilst reading it, you can’t help but be aware of things that hadn’t happened yet or the things the author didn’t know. Perhaps it’s a difficult concept to get across but there is an undeniable charm in reading books written before most of the crap currently scarring the world currently had come to pass.

After almost an hour, I had a small pile of books. Once more, my long searched-for original Bradshaw’s Railway Guide had eluded me in the most depressing way possible. There were TWO copies of something with a very similar sounding name and similar looking cover on a high shelf. After a dangerous and wobbly moment on a chair with too many wheels, my spirits sunk. The old dear was possibly more disappointed me than me as the space taken up by both books was so vast, she could have stashed away most of the new stuff on her counter.

No matter however. We all need windmills to tip at and I may be lucky next time.

So what did I buy? Well, the Conan Doyle fan in me got a Sherlock Holmes Commentary by D. Martin Dakin. To most people and even to some Conan Doyle fans, it may be the driest read in the world but to deerstalker & pipe nuts like me, his factual analysis of each story (dates, people, places, train routes etc) is a bit of a treasure. Who cares what anyone else thinks anyway? Well me actually, just not as much as I used to.

I also picked up a couple of dog-eared, 1980s Star Trek fan-fiction anthologies. Not that notable perhaps, save for one thing – they used to be mine. For reasons which now baffle me, towards the end of the 80s, I sold a load of books to a shop in town for a ridiculously small amount of money. Every now and again, I spot one in a shop and buy it for about 20 times what I sold it for. It bothers me not and I rest happy in the knowledge that I supported local commerce and warmed the heart of a trekkie for 20 years or so. Time has not been kind to them and they were certainly shinier and less creasey when I handed them over all those years ago.

Gotta love that 1970's artwork

So that was my Sunday. Half of it spent bookworming and the other half spent writing about it. Life is a blast.

Or, maybe it’s just the caffeine.

LL&P folks.

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