The UK's largest second hand bookstore

‘I have a treat for you,’ said good friend C, when I travelled across the country to see her shortly before Christmas. ‘You’ll like it’, she added. ‘It involves books.’

To be precise, it involved more books than you can shake a stick at.*

This was no mere bookstore. It was instead a Giant Warehouse Stacked to the Sky. The sheer amount of books actually reduced me to round-eyed silence, and for a good few moments all I could do was pathetically poke book spines with my gloved finger, turning around every so often to look at Good Friend C with an expression hovering somewhere between dumb gratitude and awed wonder.

Books! Thousands upon thousands of books!

The next second I was gone. The last Good Friend C saw of me for at least two hours was my woolly hat disappearing around a stack of shelves.

I soon adopted the walk of the professional consummate book scanner (slow pace forward, head-at-slant, eyes flickering over book spines). Happily I began to accumulate treasure. A 1965 edition of Charles Webb’s The Graduate? Yes please. P. G. Wodehouse’s Summer Lightning? I thank you. Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange with that iconic graphic cover image? Yup yup.

Occasionally I’d bump into another book scanner; we’d apologise in hushed tones and continue on our way. And so I wound deeper and deeper into the warehouse, following shelves and stacks and piles and papers, until I came to the wild card of the warehouse: The unclassified section. ‘These books haven’t been sorted!’ the sign gleefully said, suggesting untold literary jewels might be hidden within the million copies of Giles, pet care annuals from the 1970s**, and instruction manuals for microwaves.

The way ahead looked dark and dusty. I texted good friend C to check she hadn’t expired of boredom but she was comfy in the coffee area way back at base camp. So I wrapped my scarf around me, and scurried in.

(You might get the impression from the gloves, hat and scarf that the warehouse was a little chilly. Don’t be misled. That warehouse was frickin’ freezing. I could see my breath in those lost back alleys of Unclassified.)

After a while even I had to call it a day. My Life Force urgently needed replenishing (anyone remember TV show Knightmare?). I had to find a hot coffee and a cake of some sticky description before my virtual eyeballs rolled away. Also, and more importantly; I couldn’t actually carry any more books. The Giant Warehouse had defeated me.

It’s only when you are physically surrounded by what looks like the entire stock of Amazon that you realise just how many books there are in the world. Billions of books – good books, bad books, books that surely only got published because someone along the line was squiffy. And then there are the invisible authors behind the books – hopeful authors, earnest authors, authors that dreamed big things, authors that stayed up late and got up early and typed their little hearts out, all to end up in the Giant Warehouse just waiting for someone like me to find their words again.

I love hearing their voices speak to me from the books and wonder about their lives, whether publication was the Holy Grail for them or whether it was a by-product of their academic progress, a sideline, so to speak. I wondered about the people that wrote the microwave cookbooks,  the children’s fiction epics that were swept under and aside by Narnia, the books that didn’t have the sprinkle of fairy dust needed to make them shine.

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

Book treasure rescued from the Giant Warehouse

Footnotes

* Surely you can shake a stick at anything regardless of its quantity and mass. I am quite capable of shaking a stick towards a mountain, for example. I can also shake a stick at my book collection. Apparently this saying came about because a confuddled shepherd was trying to count his sheep by waggling his crook at them, but couldn't do it because his flock was too big. I think he needed to come up with a more efficient counting method, personally.

**Old pet care books make me very sad. I can't even tell you why because then it will make you sad too. Let's think of something happier, like gambolling puppies and kittens. (Not gambling, though. Puppies and kittens are not known for their addiction to cards or pool-playing, despite what artist Louis Wain might have had us believe.)

And where is this large bookstore? Here: www.bookbarninternational.co.uk

Happiness

Happiness is being let loose for an hour or two in a second-hand bookshop, with nothing but a determination to find something groovy.


Happiness is doubled if the bookshop in question comes with bonus ladders for customers to continue searching by the rafters for the book of their dreams.

Happiness is finding a Graham Oakley book that is affordable, a Daphne du Maurier with an interesting cover (it will be the subject of a book worm review one of these days when I get my act together!), a 'photo-mag' of The Beatles filming 'A Hard Day's Night', and a 1959 edition of children's book The Borrowers Afloat.


Happiness is my cat Ginger, a beautiful boy with soft fur who likes his creature comforts as much as he likes his dinner. He is very sure of himself in the world as long as he gets regular cuddles. He has the loudest purr in London. His nickname is Mr Big Paws (AKA the Ginger Whinger).


Happiness is my cat Abigail, a beautiful girl with an inquisitive nature (see her staring past me at the window) and the gentlest paws. She goes into raptures of delight at being the highest in a room, preferably balanced around my neck. Abi is my little shadow, and where-ever I am in the house she loudly brings me her favourite toy, a long snaky piece of fluff we call The Wiggly. Her nickname is the Naughty Tortie.


Happiness is exploring somewhere new, preferably somwhere with a classic plane/car show. I will examine every car, nodding knowledgebly but if coaxed into conversation will reveal that I know nothing about cars, and my only scale for car liking is whether it will suit a wicker picnic basket. Deciding which classic car best suits a picnic basket is something that I will happily ponder for hours. I also rather like pointing my camera in the sky at these things, as you can see.


The reason for the watermark is I am debating doing something 'proper' with my favourite photography - more than likely some sort of mixed media collage thing as a bit of an Arty creative diversion when the book is done. Gosh - when the book is done! Oh fateful day!

The second-hand book hunt

I am always on the look-out for a good second-hand bookshop. Sometimes this search takes me far and wide. Yesterday it almost took me to a basement.

I’d set off with a friend in search of a second-hand bookshop I'd heard about in south-west London. This isn’t an area I tend to visit, considering that it takes nearly two hours to get to it from where I live. I am always amazed that areas can have the same ending address, such as ‘London’, but be hours away from each-other. It’s a big place.

By the time we popped up in that quarter of the city the snow was falling – freezing cold blobs soaking into scarves, shiny wet pavements, and puddles reflecting the white-grey sky. It was a chilly day for book-hunting, but we found the bookshop I wanted to see, and it was small but worth the effort. The fun started when I was asked whether I would like to visit their warehouse to see more books.

I replied in the happy affirmative, and was given a map, and told the warehouse was actually a basement in an unmarked building, and I had to ring an unlabelled buzzer and ask for the bloke in the basement. Oh, and there would be no mobile reception ‘down below’. At this point, perhaps understandably, my enthusiasm started waning.

So, with my imagination hovering between the sort of warehouse last seen in Raiders of the Lost Ark but packed to the rafters with books, and being the main item on News at Ten, we decided to leave it for another day. Curse you active imagination! I didn't fancy being in the film 'Jayne Ferst and the Basement of Doom'. I’m sure all would have been more than well, but perhaps next time I will take J along with me!

Second-hand books

‘Stop the car!’ I yelled at the weekend. For as we were driving along I had seen the tell-tale signs of a second-hand bookshop – dust smeared glass, rickety outside table, old man with a beard, and a darkened glimpse of ceiling high shelves stacked with glorious books.

To be fair, good friend J was already screeching into a parking space.

I love second-hand bookshops. My footsteps patter towards them full of hope – what shall I find? I even pause at the rickety tables, where the tomes will be so unloved they will be offered for fifty pence. Not even thieves want the books outside on the rickety table – at best they will be manuals for early word-processors. But I still look and linger, delaying the moment of stepping over the threshold, drawing maximum pleasure from my visit.

Inside I will know at a glance whether this is a good second-hand bookshop, or a bad one. Good means wooden shelves stretching to the ceiling that look as if they survived the Second World War – they will not be from Ikea, and they will nearly all be on the wonk. They will meander along around the room and through the middle, and will create tiny passageways and dead ends and will lead ever further into the shop. Good will also mean stairs covered in faded carpet that will lead to yet more books either stacked in the basement or up on the next floor. At best these stairs will be narrow and you will feel as though you risk your life when you step on them. Another good sign will be someone crouched on the floor who is so engrossed in the bottom shelf that you have to step over them to continue. A bookshop dog, or cat, is also a good sign. And nearly all will have an old man with a beard presiding over a wooden table with an ancient till, pricing up the latest batch, oblivious to the world around him.

Bad will have none of the above.

This bookshop fitted the good criteria, and even went beyond the call of duty by selling random pottery. The old man in charge was a frazzle-headed man in shorts, who looked as though he may have been responsible for some of the pottery in question. And the books! Graham Oakley’s The Church Mice! First editions of Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers! The Man From Uncle annuals! But, as with all the good second-hand bookshops these days, the only thing not second-hand was the prices. One of The Church Mice books was selling for £30, the Enid Blyton £70. I held them lovingly for a while before putting them back on the shelf. With prices like that, I might have to go back to buying books fresh from Borders.