I drop the atlas off at the shop, saying I’ll call later since the volunteer is serving customers. The following week I’m aghast to hear that the atlas has been given to BNP leader Nick Griffin. My disapproval obviously hits home. Griffin’s relationship to the shop volunteer undergoes a demotion; from friend to acquaintance. The pensioner is also embarrassed at having no money on him.
I never return to collect payment.
Ham, Surrey, 1989
In attending this adult education course, I am introduced to the exacting world of antiquarian book description and classification. There is talk about paper marks, vellum, leather binding, gilt tooling, marbled papers. I check up on Roman numerals.
Our assignment is to find an old book and classify it. From the Mind charity shop in St Margarets I buy the following book for two pounds: A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy by Laurence Sterne,
London: Longmans, Green, and Co. London, 1888. Decorative Cloth. Fine. Joseph Pennell (illustrator). First Thus. 8o. Decorative Cloth. 268 pp pale green cloth, gilt lettering on spine, original illustrated endpapers, lavishly illustrated by the authors with very nice vignettes and full page etchings, large fold-out map of their tricycle journey in imitation of Sterne’s sentimental journey.
I’m convinced that this must be worth a bomb. Steve, the course lecturer, puts me right by explaining that age isn’t synchronous with value.
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy is a novel by Laurence Sterne, published in 1768, just months before the author’s death. Three years earlier, Sterne travelled through France and Italy, and after returning decided to provide a more subjective account of his experiences, one that emphasised the discussions of personal taste and morals. Prior travelogues had stressed classical learning and objective points of view. Maybe it is also the rambling style of Sterne that I find appealing; a subconscious selection of sorts, one presaging a desire to go walkabout in Europe.
Anthony Hall, Staines Road, Twickenham, 1987
It was in Anthony Hall’s that I became truly infected. The shop specialises in Russian and East European Studies but such books bear no responsibility. It is in front of the small bookcase, crammed full with Penguin Modern Classics, that I am waylaid. For a lifetime, as it happens.
I am drawn to Penguin Modern Classics with a pale green livery. On their covers are specially commissioned illustrations, or paintings, as they say, by kind permission of the artist. Penguin no longer has a team of in-house designers, which may account for the reduced aesthetic appeal of the current Classics list.
Working as a reporter, I can keep unconventional office hours. At unshackled moments, I sneak into Anthony Hall’s. In the course of several months, the shop’s collection of Penguin Classics becomes my collection of Penguin Classics. I find myself making lists of books obtained and books wanted. I am lost. Skimming excitedly through the pages of the Book Collector magazine, I am in book list nirvana.
Fast forward twenty years to Bangor Bookshop where a customer tells me he got his diagnosis in the Hughes’ Llandudno bookshop, its renowned and much respected owner declaring: ‘You’ve got it bad, haven’t you?’
Books, and dealing in them, get into your blood, but there is normally a collecting gene already there, whether it be for books, toy trains or airliner luggage labels.
Fez, Morocco, 1993
‘Remember me. I can give you spices for your mind,’ he says. Then he laughs, realising that I will not be sampling his wares. The purveyor of ‘spices’ is content to make conversation, commercially driven or otherwise. This is typical of the Moroccans I meet. A striving to sell, followed by a philosophical grin when their pitch fails to work.
The Daily Awaaz, a bilingual (Urdu and English) British daily newspaper based in Southall, is paying some of my expenses. I am tasked with returning with pictures of Moroccan tiles. They are to be immediately recognisable aspects of Moroccan art and architecture; zellij geometric mosaics first appearing in the late twelfth century in the city of Fez.
I have travelled from Casablanca. The great Hassan II Mosque is nearing completion but I haven’t been able to properly approach it.
Mustapha clamours to capture my attention as I get off the coach in Fez. Fighting off rivals to win a coffee and vital time with a new tourist in town, he impresses me with his candour. ‘You get hassle free time and I get money and a chance to practise my English,’ went his line of patter. I explain to Mustapha the purpose, as it were, of my trip. He will help me take all the photos I need. Then, in producing a cigarette from nowhere, he sighs and proudly declares it to be his first of the day. It is Ramadhan and the day’s fast is over. His mood is one of contentment and he is not alone. The wide streets of Ville Nouvelle are filling with people at ease. Family members stroll in relaxed fashion, arm in arm. Teenagers crack jokes. Small children skip with a spontaneous joy. As in Casablanca, most women are unveiled and clad in Western dress. Boys and teenagers tend to wear jeans whereas the men favour Djellaba cloaks.
It seems that the city of Fez still lingers in the Middle Ages. As you arrive in the city and begin to walk around your senses are torn between beautiful Islamic architecture, distressing poverty, alien sounds and an array of smells. And oranges, oranges galore. To the first time visitor, the two most obvious sources of income appear to be tourism and drugs. My guidebook sternly warns of the risks involved in smoking cannabis, in spite of the air being filled with its all-pervasive sweet aroma. Mustapha confirms, however, the danger inherent in smoking. ‘Lots of arrests. Even for people like me.’ Later he talks of an unexpected benefit following the police clampdown; a marked improvement in the quality of the drug.
Towards midnight I feel a chill in the air, but this does not deter devout Muslim men from staying up all night in the cafés, playing cards and smoking, thus ensuring that everyone will know that they have abstained from sex. Over coffee, we chat late into the night. Mustapha is keen to know what I do. I explain that in addition to working for a newspaper, I buy and sell books.
The next day is a whirlwind tour of the medina, and meeting the challenge of locating, through a maze of narrow streets, the sites of famous mosques. I take plenty of photos and think my editor will be happy with them. We gaze up at the minarets and listen to the strident sound of Islam calling the population to prayer. Seven veiled women and an infant are waiting patiently outside a mosque. Having just prayed, the men exit in a charitable frame of mind. The girl gratefully receives their donations, beaming with satisfaction, though her demeanour alters when approached by a man in a green uniform. All money is removed from her begging hand and redistributed among the waiting women. The girl is confused and starts to sob.
In the afternoon it rains and the medina is soon a mass of people engaged in noisy commerce. We do our best to avoid stepping in the thickening mud and donkey shit. Enterprising kids start selling plastic bags as makeshift coats to desperate sightseers.
After a conventional tour of the Imperial City, my clandestine guide directs me towards the Kasbah. The site of an old French fort is not mentioned in the guide book. Upon arriving, I see why. Only the castle walls remain and inside you come face to face with its inhabitants, who evidently live in grinding poverty. The ruins contain a shanty town where mothers hurry to remove their washing from makeshift lines. The faces of children peer out of corrugated huts. Mustapha tells me this is where his formative years were spent.