The waitresses.
For making such a fuzz about being a cold, formal people, the English sure knows how to use endearments. I’ve heard happily married Swedish couples use less in a lifetime than the average English waitress get through in an hour.
They’d heard the news about potential flooding, and prepared accordingly: emptied the floors, removed the books from some of the lower shelves. Of course, the flooding reached a bit higher than that…
“I guess in the end it turned out all right”, said Catherine, the current owner and second generation bookseller in Cockermouth. Her mom still occasionally helps out in the shop, as she does the day I visit. “We got the chance to re-do quite a lot, but in a café… you can’t really change anything once you’re open and always selling books. Of course, it didn’t really feel like it when I came saw all those books, drenched and ruined.”
“It must have been a very sad sight”, I said.
“Yes, it was. But all us shopowners here were in the same situation, so that helped. You just had to get through it.”
And get through it they did, of course. The New Bookshop in Cockermouth is a beautiful bookshop in a beautiful town.
Her recommendation for me? The Snow Child by Euwyn Ivey.
Even Mr Darcy almost pales in comparison.
I happily got on a train to head towards the Lake District, by way of Corbridge and Cockermouth. This was the day I discovered that the information on my tickets that said “Any permitted” under route might mean that any route was permitted. This might seem obvious, but for days I had been interpretting it as “any that is permitted”, which I thought singularly unhelpful and for some reason rather Brittish. So I had been wandering around asking train attendances whether or not I was permitted on this train, receiving patient replies that often contained the word “love”.
I immediately fell in love with the landscape around Corbridge, and then I fell even harder for Forum Books and Kids. It’s actually two bookshops, since they’ve recently opened their very own Kids-store, decorated with drawings of the Book Monster (!) and with a soon-to-be-garden.
More bookshops should have a garden, I feel. I can already picture kids running around in it, chasing a rabbit or a story or both.
Helen of Forum Books also sells blind dates with books; wrapped, with a short description. It is apparently hugely succesful as a gift – “That way, they can just blame me if the person they give it to doesn’t like it”. Naturally I couldn’t resist the rom com by local author – and I have been strong enough not to open it before I get back to Sweden and can make a proper date of it, so I still don’t know which one it is.
Helen’s recommendation – The Red Notebook.
Mainstreet Trading Company is run by Rosamund de la Hay and is one of those cosy, charming worlds of their own that instinctively make me think of books. For Rosamund, I think it would have to be a Lucy Dillon-novel (If she has a dog. But surely you can’t live i St Boswells and not have one?) She used to work in publishing in London, moved to St Boswell, tried to commute for a few years, and eventually opened a bookshop instead. The biggest difference? “Well, the job is a lot more physically demanding than publishing, I can tell you that.” (Books are heavy, as any bookseller knows, or any Swedish author who travels around the country picking up more of them).
Bookshops are the most important part of any town, but in the case of St Boswell, situated in the beautiful landscape of the Scottish Borders, it practically is the town. There’s a Chinese restaurant, and a deli, but since the deli is run by the bookshop it doesn’t really count.
Rosamunds biggest passion is childrens audio books, for which purpose she and the rest at Mainstreet Trading Company created their own little Book Burrows.”Children can put on an audio book and just sit and listen. Works out quite well for the parents as well, since they can have a cup of coffee at the same time” (for there is a café too, of course).
All I can say is that if my parents had ever left me in a Book Burrow, they could have picked me up weeks later without me realizing they had been gone and without me being willing to leave. “Just one more chapter”, I’d probably say.
Come to think of it, that is probably what would happen today, if anyone had the good sense to leave me in one. I tried to sneak into one, but in the end my courage failed me.
Their recommendation? A childrens audio book of course: How to train your dragon. It seems absolutely brilliant.
Ps. If you here, do not forget to drink enough tea to have to visit the toilets*
*Do you say toilets in England? I had an American teacher who felt very strongly for it: “It’s the bathroom. Toilet is so very… graphic.” Although my most strange toilet-language-barrier was probably when I tried to ask for the ladies room in Barcelona and from the stunned expression of my Spanish waiter deducted that I had just asked where the women laid. Anyway. Visit the toilets.
