The lives of books

I had some time to myself Saturday morning and went into the village for a quiet coffee. I decided to take a look in the Bookshop on the Heath. It's a wonderful old bookstore crammed with second-hand books, vintage posters and postcards and lots of other beautiful things. Not a great place to take children though as there are lots of fragile and very expensive books so it was a treat to get to browse around at my leisure.

There was a beautiful miniature collection of the complete works of Shakespeare bound in leather. I didn't even bother to look at the price. I also found some old maps of Blackheath from the 18th and 19th centuries. Our neighborhood appears at the very beginning of the 19th century but the new house wasn't built until a few years later. On the map I saw that area was still part of the orchards of the old Manor House, which is now a library. That explains why there are so many fruit trees around there!

In the end I bought three Penguin books of detective stories. My much loved Agatha Christie, a collection of Sherlock Holmes and Ngaio Marsh's Vintage Murder. On the inside cover of the last book there's an inscription that reads "Minnie Hood, Buenos Aires, 1951". There's also a sticker for Mitchell's English Book-store, Cangallo 570, Buenos Aires. I love the idea that 20 years before I was born someone was reading this book on the other side of the world and thought enough of it to bring it all the way back to England. Now, 57 years later it will be read by an American expat in London. What an interesting life this little book has had.