Here be Books

[Vole]

I wonder if he fishes? He ought to;there's apparently scant evidence that "Dame" Juliana Berners was in fact female; "she" may have been a bloke called Julian Barnes. Rum; a book-writer carrying the name of a Boke-wright.

[Alaudacorax]

Oh thanks for that. Now I'm going to be stuck with an image of the author of The Boke of St. Albans as a cross-dressing fly-fisherman; probably with a tweed skirt, headscarf and pipe like Graham Chapman in one of the Monty Python sketches.

[Vole]

...Instead of a frail, lily-handed nun with the miraculous ability to wield a twelve-foot pole of hazel and ash...Brunnhilde x Geoff Capes? (Just don't start thinking about the glint of inquisitorial zeal in her eyes as she retrieved the chimney-dried hazel butt, the thickness of her wrist, and started to burn out the pith with a hot iron; too, too disturbing).

[Vole]

Back on track, does anyone know if the secondhand book/record shops in the Pembridge/Portobello Road area are still there? I spent a few days ( probably in the eighties) patiently sifting through the un-classified stock, and managed a "No Need to Lie" and Peter Stone's "Legering", each under a quid, for my trouble. Their labels, with the prices discounted a each stock-take, are probably ruining the dust-wrappers, but they remind me of that glorious smell of old books, and the bran-tub anticipation - so much like a fishing expedition to a new water - of overlooked bargains to be truffled out, and the hope that Serendipity will favour the prepared mind.
Abebooks may be efficient, and usually much, much cheaper, but nowhere near as much fun.