Wednesday, 25th March
I’ve been helping at the bookshop today. I may have been spending too much time at The Resurrectory recently as Martha, the bookshop’s manager, was quite rude to me when I first arrived. “I suppose we’re of no interest to you now you have the junk shop,” she said. “You know this isn’t true,” I said to her, “The Turning Page is my pride and joy. Look at the success we’ve had.” And then I added: “Mostly thanks to you and the staff’s hard work, of course.” Being Britian’s only 24hrs bookshop does attract a lot of attention. Martha’s idea of wearing pyjamas for night shifts was a stroke of genius – something I’ve had to tell her many, many times.
8:15pm
When I was a boy my mother used to tell me that I was a ‘nice place.’ She used to tell me how, with each child born, a new place is added to the universe, a new room. “Be beautiful in your place,” she used to say. I think she was inspired by her favourite poet – Alaric Venn.
I always felt that my mother’s place must have been magical. She read so many books. She’d take us on picnics to the Lake District and she’d say, “This is my place at its best.” We would holiday in the Alps and she’d become tearful at the sight of the immense landscapes. “I’m so much more splendid than I imagined,” she once shouted. Now she has her place in the graveyard a short walk from one of my own favourite places. The Resurrectory.
Sandra was very chatty yesterday. She asked me about my first attempt at a novel Will This Man Ever? “It’s an alternative adventure story,” I told her, “and the rather naive protagonist is a young man.” Sandra seemed to like that. She went on to tell me about Samuel Beckett and Jean Paul Sartre. She stood close to me and then gave me another photo of herself. It’s a picture of her sitting on her bed in her bedsit. As she handed me the photo she asked: “Would you like to have lived in the Soviet Union in a Russian Gulag and met Solzhenitsyn.”
11.20pm
To Be Continued…
