Unidentified Floating Object

Starting the day late having over slept, I wouldn’t say that it’s every parent’s worse nightmare when their child, like Martin Luther King, says I’ve had a dream, but this is a moving statement at 3am, moving mostly in as much as one has to get out of bed.

My son, not still a child apart from the in the sense that I still am, that is a Child, is very near the end of the teenage years, realising that something was amiss woke me with a cup of tea. I think otherwise I would still be asleep and have missed the bookshop altogether this morning.

The cup of tea started well, unfortunately before reality had entirely reasserted itself after my disturbed slumbers, something not unlike the fin of a small shark appeared in my cup of tea.

Fortunately I don’t take sugar, so didn’t start the day sticky and it was after all not Jaws 3 but the tip of PGs tip.

The day in the shop started with a book enquiry for “Better Sight Without Glasses” and took some time, as even with glasses everything was a bit blurry. I did, in the end, manage to find a hardback and paperback copy of the Benjamin and even a copy of “Better Eyesight Without Glasses” still with the elusive chart inside, by Bates.

This was followed by a phone call from someone writing their graduate thesis on regeneration of seaside towns, they had chosen Margate, the problem here is that the only fairly comprehensive history of Margate is “The Book of Margate” by Scurrell that sells for about £70.

This really isn’t an option for those suffering from that well know academic disease, acute skintitus, particularly virulent in Graduate Lane.

Then one in shop customer asking for that elusive book that they had apparently been looking for, for ages, I think the fact that we had one on the shelf in nice condition very cheaply threw this person so badly that instead of buying it they had to go off for a lie down or something.

Certainly a case of travelling was much better than arriving, I am finding now that with so few real bookshops of any size in southeastern England this is happening with increasing regularity.