While I should be writing

The only disadvantage with a whistle stop bookshop tour on Saturdays is that the bookshops close earlier, so that it becomes quite a challange to visit three towns before closing time. I had almost resigned myself to having to visit Woodstock Bookshop tomorrow, when I found out that Rachel, the owner, only worked today.

So I did what any book lover would have done: I called a cab and asked them to get me to Woodstock as quick as humanly possible (after double-checking that it was all right for me to turn up five minutes before closing time, of course).

Woodstock is a small village just outside Oxford, and the bookshop is small and charming, located on 23 Oxford Street and run by Rachel. “I’ve worked in bookshops all my life, and then one day, I thought: If I don’t open my own shop now, I never will. I was fifty. There comes a time, I think, where you either go for your dreams, or you don’t.”
What is the best part of running a bookshop?
“Author events, definitely. I’ve had Richard Ford – have you read him?”
Yes, Canada.
“Such a great author. And Henning Mankell. My sales rep argued to them that we were right on his way, between two other bookshops, so one day I got a call asking me – Would I like a visit from Henning Mankell? Is this a hoax, I asked.”
What has been most challanging?
“Doing my returns. I used to do it too seldom. You have to return the books you haven’t sold if you run a small shop, to make room for other news, but it always felt like a failure. And well, I loved your book, but one thing I noticed was how sure Sara was when she recommended books to people. I’m always more doubtful, and many times people ask for recommendation, and you go through the process of recommending two or three titles to them, and then they look sort of sceptical and end up buying something completely different.”
That is actually how I used to buy books, before this epic bookshop tour taught me to just go for whatever they liked.

This conversation was not taking place in the bookshop. I’d been there, and I had been given tea, and we chatted while she closed up, and then she asked where I was going next and offered me a ride to Oxford.

The reason for the ride was partly because she’s a very nice person and was going there anyway, so there really was no problem and yes, she was quite sure, she had plenty of time, and so forth, and partly because I think she felt bad for the confused Swedish author carrying her suitcase and her books from time to time. “I had imagined you’d be going with a publicist?” she said, somewhat worryingly.
“Louise did want to come, but she couldn’t really justify taking three weeks off work. And everyone has been really nice, so really, it’s been no problem at all.”

She did not appear noticeably comforted by my inability to tell her where my hotel was. “Do you want to borrow my computer to check?”
Since the reason I didn’t know where it was was that I hadn’t, as yet, booked it, I naturally made some sort of excuse and assured her I would be quite fine if she could just drop me off somewhere in central Oxford, perhaps by a pub.

I’ve learned from my travels in general and the three weeks already spent in England in particular that everything usually works out great if you only have a credit card, cash and a cell phone with internet. And this being Oxford, I wouldn’t even need cash.

So in due course she dropped me off by a nice pub, having first given me a mini tour of Oxford by way of pointing out two different bookshops.

And I found a hotel close by, of course, and ended my whistle stop day by reading Chris Hadfields An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth. Great day.

Jaffe & Neale is one of those bookshops that other bookshops assumed I was going to visit, when they heard I was visiting the great independent bookshops. Me, I memorized the Schedule on a need-to-know, one-day-at-the-time basis, so I just had a vague idea where I was going in the future.

“So you’re visiting Oxford? Then you have to stop at Jaffe & Neale on the way.”
“Yes, quite likely. Let me just check my Schedule…”
“It’s a great bookshop, You really should visit it.”

And of course, Louise’s Schedule did not let me down. After Ledbury Books and Maps (and a sausage in a bun, with some great sort of relish) I carried myself and my suitcase back to the train station to get the train from Ledbury to Kingham, and then from Kingham to Chipping Norton.

And it really is a charming bookshop, full of personalized signs and light blue colour.

“Excuse me”, I said, as always consulting my Schedule. “Is Patrick by any chance in today?”
“Patrick? Here? On a Saturday.”
While not in itself surpricing that the suggested person on my schedule was not in, especially on a weekend, the incredulous tone was something of a surprice. My experience of independent booksellers are that they work all hours.
“No, no, Patrick is out crawling in the mud.”
“Eh? Well, yes, I see”, I said, even more confused. “And why..? I mean, that’s perfectly understandable, I’m sure.”
It was not understandable. Why anyone would crawl around in the mud was completely incomprehensible to me, and why anyone should do it in stead of spending time in this bookshop was an even greater mystery.
“Rugby. Every Saturday this time of year.”
That solved the question about the mud, but it did in no way explain why anyone would prefer to get mangled in the mud to books. But I guess it is good, that booksellers have a life outside the bookshop.

Their recommendation? Alice and the Fly and Neverhome. It should come as no surprice by this time that I bought both.

I’m afraid I also took the books with the handwritten signs recommending them – a great memory for me, an annoyance to the poor booksellers who have to write them all over again.

I spent two nights in Hay-on-Wye, and then it was back to my more whistle stop-approach to visiting bookshops: I would spend the day going from Hay-on-Wye to Oxford, by way of three different bookshops and three small towns.

So I got on the bus towards Hereford, leaving right beside the old Hay Castle, and sat there looking at sunfilled lanes and fields and sheep and lamb. From Hereford I took the train to Ledbury, a beautiful town of which I saw the High street and the bookshop.

But really, what more do you need?

It was one of those sunny Saturdays that brings out the best in small town’s High streets – people walking about, stoping for a coffee, some street vendors selling stuff and a farmer selling homemade sausage in buns (impossible to resist). And then there was the bookshop, swimming in sunshine.

It was a tough choice for Lindsay of Ledbury Books and Maps, but eventually she settled on Tigers in Red Weathers.

I’m in Hay on Wye, the town made famous for their amount of bookshops, and I’ve decided to find out how, exactly, a small Welsh town gets filled with book.

The first step was naturally Richard Booth’s Bookshop. Untill a few years ago, there might have been forty bookshops in Hay on Wye, but none of the sold new books. This changed when Richard Booth sold his main bookshop.

It is always depressing for an author when we have to resort to “words fail me”, but when it comes to Richard Booth’s Bookshop, this is very much  tragically the case. Louise still thinks I only bought Richard Booths autobiography King of Books, but in fact, I bought that one at his own bookshop (apparently he couldn’t keep away). At Richard Booth’s, I bought five other ones…

Nick Jarvis of Richard Booth’s Bookshop kindly pointed me along to Pam, who’d worked at the bookshop ever since Richard Booth started it.

“It was very different then. The new owner made quite a lot of changes – very neccessary ones, too. I was with Richard almost when it started.”
So how did the town get so filled with books?
“Well, this was at a time when many people had to sell their large country houses. With large country house libraries. Richard started out with just a small bookshop – I think he’d had a friend who ran a secondhand-bookshop in his Oxford days, and that that inspired him. And then all these old libraries came up for sale, and he just… bought them. And another thing was happening at the same time: young people didn’t automatically follow in their parents footstep. Old people who kept a shop retired, and no one took over, so we had all these empty shops around and Richard, well, he just filled them with books, one at a time.”
What did people think about it?
“Well, not everyone was pleased, but in the end it did a lot of good for the town. Former employees of his opened their own bookshops, and the festival brought in quite a lot of tourism, so the other shops also benefited. When I look back at that time, and the mountains of books, I wonder: how did I ever get through them? I’ve been here quite some years. I could retire of course, but…”
Do you want to?
“Well, no.”

On my way out, it struck me that someone must surely have written about this. “Well, there’s an autobiography by Richard, but I’m not sure if we have it… I can’t see why we don’t. But try The Kingdom of Books. That’s his own bookshop.”
Kingdom of Books?
“Richard proclaimed the town’s independence once. On April 1.”

“So, you’re going to Richard Booth’s Bookshop, Hay on Wye?” the taxi driver asked when she picked me up outside of Bookish. “I have to tell you, finding a specific bookshop in Hay on Wye can be tricky. Finding a bookshop on the other hand is easy.”

I soon discovered that she was right. In the end, she just dropped me off at my hotel, where I checked in and then immediately went out again. I was going to be in Hay on Wye for two nights, so I was saving my real visit to Richard Booth’s Bookshop for tomorrow, but couldn’t resist a sort of preview.

So I walked out, followed the direction the woman at my hotel gave me, and then I just… halted.

They were everywhere. Poetry bookshops, Crime bookshops, general bookshops, small passages leading towards a bookshop, shops buying books. “Good God”, I thought, “how many bookshops can one town really need?”

And then I had a sort of existential crisis at the thought of me (me!) thinking there might be too many bookshops in a town.

But with so many second hand bookshops, did anyone even have books at home? Did the locals read?

“Well, to be honest, I think it’s mainly the tourists that buys the book”, the lady behind the counter at one of them said.
“And … and have there always been this many bookshops?”
“Many! There used to be many more of them, dear. We’re in decline. I think, right now, there’s only about twenty, perhaps. Maybe thirty. There used to be as many as forty. In the nineties, that was the golden age for bookshops. But I guess it’s the same everywhere?”
Err, yes,

I have to admit that I did not know about Richard Booth and book cities and the story behind Hay on Wye. But the next day, I decided to find out.