This Eccentric Life of Bookshops

Robin Ince's Normally Weird Tour Diary - Entry 5

I propel myself to Hexham, calling first at Corbridge.

I meet Andrew, architect turned physicist, at Newcastle station.

When I am joined for short legs of my tour, I am reminded how blessed I am to live this eccentric life of bookshop and library touring. Whereas I am used to two or three destinations a day, most people are on the same route every day.

Walking from Corbridge station, I am captivated by the flowers growing from a Fram wall and the crows haunting a tractor. Men toil in the fields as if they have escaped from a Ladybird book illustration (on the return, they have gone. Have they been sucked into a 1968 copy of The How and Why Book of Ploughing and Harvesting?)

Forum Books is a former chapel. The bookshelves are pews. When doing talks, you stand in a mighty pulpit. Beneath you is a fully bodily immersive christening pool. I believe Ann Cleves may have placed a body and a mystery in it at one time.

Plenty of time before Hexham, so Andrew and I eat chips in the pub.

I am captivated by more flowers growing in the cracks as we return to the station. Andrew starts to get used to me fidgety fascination with the angles of iron and the patterns of rust.

We pop into Cogito books who will be the booksellers for the night. During the times around lockdown, they would ride their bicycles across farmland to deliver books and medication (obviously I know that books are medication, but Catch 22 doesn’t always have the same effect on arthritis as prescription pills, though I’ve heard Jilly Cooper’s Rivals once cured erectile dysfunction and Polo does wonders for colic).

Walking towards the arch by the Hexham Sweetie Jar, Andrew points out that it is set within the last masonry of St Mary’s Church.

I am meeting Kathryn Mannix for tea. We met briefly at Durham Book Festival when her first book, With the End in Mind, was published. She is a former doctor with important and compassionate views on dealing with death and the grief that follows. Her book, Listen, starts with her as a Junior Doctor being punched in the face by a woman who has just been told her husband has died. I am not sure how common this reaction is, but I met a man who told me that when a policeman came to his door to tell him that his wife had died in car crash he also punched the news giver in the face. My simplistic psychiatric understanding this is that our refusal to believe this terrible event has happened means we try to silence the speaker. Without the words, we can pretend, however feebly, that this truth is a lie.

Arriving at the venue, I apologise to Henry who will be my interviewer. This is my first event with interrogation and I know I am as bad or as good) as Slavoj Zizek or Alan Moore in terms of requiring very few questions.

I end the night with David, a fount of knowledge when it comes to railways issues, who I first got to know when he gave me advice on attempting to get to Whitley Bay after a storm. I am also accompanied by another member of the audience (apologies for forgetting your name) and her dog, who is excitably chasing an imaginary fly. I admire the moon as I walk up the hill to my hotel.

I start early for Edinburgh. As well as my two official events, a signing at Portobello Books and a talk for Toppings, I want to make impromptu visits to Lighthouse Books and The Edinburgh Bookshop. Edinburgh is truly spoilt when it comes to magnificent bookshops.

I am good, and shun most of the charity shops.

Eyeing up The Lighthouse window before entry, I see what looks like a brilliant book cover, a UFO projecting out a rainbow which engulfs two women embracing. I am sad to discover it is a greetings card, but happily buy to give to my pal, Jo. I also see an interesting, Culture is Bad for You, which chronicles cultures failure to enhance, encourage and include diverse voices. I turn it round and see blurb from Josie Long, so I must buy that too.

It is a shop full of activist energy, kind people erupting with rebellious spirit. I will be spending a lot of time here during this year’s fringe.

Above the shelves is cardboard placard “Bookselling is not a crime. Solidarity with the educational bookshop Jerusalem. #booksellingisnotacrime’

Then, on across The Meadows to The Edinburgh Bookshop, now moved and with more neon and the exotic jungle of a children’s section to climb vines into Gruffalos and Toads.

And so the seaside and Portobello Books, where I meet Jo and sign a few books for the usual sort of lovely person who haunts such book palaces. I am lured by counter books - Fusion From Alice Coltrane to Moor Mother by Alex Coles and In the Good Seats: Essays on Film. I also choose a display of books to be my author’s choice section for a week or two. These include Lucia Osborne Crowley’s The Lasting Harm (we will be talking together about each other’s books at The Free University of Glastonbury on the Saturday of the festival). Ellen Jones’s Outrage and a book of Moomin cartoon strips.

I am talking in a church for Toppings with my friend Lee Randall. She is a very reliable bibliophile and her recommendations are always excellent (another of my Portobello recommendations was Camilla Grudova’s Children of Paradise - an author I was lured to by Lee). For the last few years, I have been on the hunt for Perry Mason books for Lee as she has almost all of them, but a few remain elusive. Erle Stanley Gardner appears to be even more prolific than Simenon, maybe his gambling debts were even bigger.

Those still outstanding are The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom (1949),The Case of the Shapely Shadow (1960), The Case of the Horrified Heirs (1964, The Case of the Troubled Trustee (1965) and The Case of the Postponed Murder (1973). Another bibliophile pal, Elaine, has also come down from Inverness for the event, so recommendations fly.

After the event, Jo, Lee, Elaine and me and assembled members of the choir Jo sings with retire to the Regent Bar, one of Edinburgh’s friendliest and famed LGBT bars. We drag some of Toppings with us too. I sit and drink and talk too much, while having origami dinosaurs made for me.

At the bus stop, we get into conversation with a worried woman who has stayed too late at the bingo and is worried her bus card won’t work so late at night. The problem was, just as she was about to leave, a Johnny Cash tribute act began, and she loves Ghost Riders in the Sky, so her fate was sealed. She tells us all about her life and we tell he we’ll pay her bus fare, and so we do.

Written while listening to Tender Buttons by Broadcast and Live at The Annandale by Life Without Buildings

Robin’s next tour dates are here and you can buy a signed copy of his new book here.