All good things ...
Five minutes drive from where I live there's a pretty little village called Penn. It's famous for several things (1) Ruth Ellis's murder victim, David Blakely, is buried in Penn Churchyard (Ruth herself - the last woman to be hanged in the UK - is buried just a few miles up the road in Amersham) as is Alison Uttley who wrote The Little Grey Rabbit books; (2) It's home to a number of popular celebs including Mary Berry, Pauline Quirke and Gabby Logan; and (3) the Cottage Bookshop.You might have seen the bookshop on your TV if, like me, you're a Midsomer Murders fan. The show is filmed all around my part of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire and the shop has featured in a couple of episodes. It also featured in an episode of Chucklevision but we'll move on, shall we?
Terry Pratchett came from this neck of the woods and based the library in his Discworld novels on the shop. It's inspired a great many people to write and to read and it's been doing that for 60 years.
I popped in this morning as I do once a week to pick up some bargains. All the books are secondhand, they're all reasonably priced and THERE ARE SO MANY - around 60,000 at any one time.
So, what's the place like? Let me set the scene: Imagine a three bedroom 18th century cottage with an extension on the back. Now imagine ripping out all the fixtures and fittings in every room. Then fill every available inch of space - on two floors - with floor to ceiling bookshelves and, when they don't all fit on the shelves, stack hundreds of books on the floor and window sills. That's the Cottage Bookshop.
I've always said that I am so very lucky to have this on my doorstep. Book shops are closing down all over the country and browsing is one of life's simple pleasures. It's also how people discover new authors. Once we had proper record shops on every High Street and I discovered many new bands that I still love to this day thanks to browsing. And bookshops performed the same function; an eye-catching cover would often lead me to pick up a book I might not have heard of. Sadly, sites like Amazon are killing the bookshops because the books are cheaper and they're delivered to your door. But equally damaging is the fact that people visit webshops when they already know what they're going to buy; there's no 'wandering around the store looking at covers' to be had on-line and browsing is slowly disappearing. And that's a tragedy.
But the even bigger tragedy is that the Cottage Bookshop is now closing. After six decades of providing secondhand books to generations of local people (and visitors - people come from hundreds of miles away to visit), the owner wants to retire and realise his assets. The business has never made much of a profit and the building itself needs a lot of work. Sadly, there's no saving it.
It's heartbreaking. But I'll be paying the place several more visits before it finally shuts its doors. And I'm going to dedicate my next novel to it, and to the ladies who work there who, unfailingly, have always seemed to be able to find the books I needed when I needed them.
End of an era.
Terry Pratchett came from this neck of the woods and based the library in his Discworld novels on the shop. It's inspired a great many people to write and to read and it's been doing that for 60 years.
I popped in this morning as I do once a week to pick up some bargains. All the books are secondhand, they're all reasonably priced and THERE ARE SO MANY - around 60,000 at any one time.
So, what's the place like? Let me set the scene: Imagine a three bedroom 18th century cottage with an extension on the back. Now imagine ripping out all the fixtures and fittings in every room. Then fill every available inch of space - on two floors - with floor to ceiling bookshelves and, when they don't all fit on the shelves, stack hundreds of books on the floor and window sills. That's the Cottage Bookshop.
I've always said that I am so very lucky to have this on my doorstep. Book shops are closing down all over the country and browsing is one of life's simple pleasures. It's also how people discover new authors. Once we had proper record shops on every High Street and I discovered many new bands that I still love to this day thanks to browsing. And bookshops performed the same function; an eye-catching cover would often lead me to pick up a book I might not have heard of. Sadly, sites like Amazon are killing the bookshops because the books are cheaper and they're delivered to your door. But equally damaging is the fact that people visit webshops when they already know what they're going to buy; there's no 'wandering around the store looking at covers' to be had on-line and browsing is slowly disappearing. And that's a tragedy.
But the even bigger tragedy is that the Cottage Bookshop is now closing. After six decades of providing secondhand books to generations of local people (and visitors - people come from hundreds of miles away to visit), the owner wants to retire and realise his assets. The business has never made much of a profit and the building itself needs a lot of work. Sadly, there's no saving it.
It's heartbreaking. But I'll be paying the place several more visits before it finally shuts its doors. And I'm going to dedicate my next novel to it, and to the ladies who work there who, unfailingly, have always seemed to be able to find the books I needed when I needed them.
End of an era.
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