book house rules..

so i went to buxton with sal on saturday..indeed, i hear you cry -hurrah!- the return of the super sal saturday, no need for incriminating surnames or entirely transparent child-proof code...
the saturday returned...
having stayed up til four with da costa and the exiting hair-twists, i was weary..we made it over in time for may to do the hair, i consulted with may about the colours and all looked to be well...i set off on my own small tour of the town i have now been to twice....i remembered where everything was, i know, very unlike me, and generally mooched around....i had that lovely sensation of....being out in the really rather cold, knowing that any minute now, i shall be indoors, with coffee and cake..and hopefully a cigarette..and definitely a book....little did i know the further delights that awaited me....
i went first to catherine and pete's, and was half-sad, half-happy to find they were out...
mooching on round the hill further i found a place named scrivener''s bookshop. and oh the joy and wonder....rivalled in recent times only by the green necklace of same.
all books are second hand (i heard a lady ask the old man, mr scrivener, one assumes, -do you only sell second hand books?- -if we can help it, yes- he replied, not knowing if she could really see the tiny corner-mouth smile that gave away the humour underneath the solemnity). when i later handed over my henry james book for paying he asked if i would be reading it aloud in an american accent, as he imagined that would help......i liked the old man so much that i was a bit flustered and murmered something about that not helping and left.....in between the arriving and the buying though, i went to the first floor.....
it was named the fiction and children's floor....so i pottered...i also spied coffee cups on tables...and something like cake under a cake-covering thing..and a girl who looked so far through her book that she must surely have worked there...turns out she did, and after laughing at my gasping at her good fortune to work in such a place, she made me coffee and got me some cake and all for one-pounds-fifty-pence....i thought perhaps the day could get no better...it did..she left...and then i had the whole higgledy-piggledy room, books falling everywhere, all book-smelling and old..to my big fat self and i got the sofa and then i was in an alcove, surrounded on three sides by books, and eating my cake and reading henry james...
done, settled
and then the next thing, my head was aware of familiar things around me, colours of book spines and words jumping out at me...i looked harder and found that the three sides of books around me in my alcove were no ordinary three sides of books, but three sides of books all written by enid blyton.......well, you can imagine! -up the faraway tree- was in my hand in a flash and then it was like 1989 and i was as happy as the 1989 version of myself....or maybe more.
so there you have it. my book cost me two pounds, the hour on the sofa one pound fifty for cofee and cake. you can get to buxton with sal anytime she's due a haircut....just tell her her hair looks a mess and convince her she should go back to see may, but only ever on a tuesday or saturday ten while four because that's when the girl is there with the cake and coffee....k?
brill....
anyway it was a right special treat of a time in the book shop....and lunch was lovely with sal and her new hair..and the drive back with stoney on the i-pod in the car going over the hills was lovelier still.....
saturdays.......good thinking god...