Edwards' Bookshop in Charing Cross Road, remembering Tom Lubbock & how words are like ropes across voids ...

The Old School House is full of books - wood smoke scents the pages of the novel I'm reading - I throw pine cones upon the fire whilst imagining sucking on a yellow feather - I think of Pushkin, lying on the sofa in his study, shot by the Tsar's assassin - he looks up at his treasured volumes - farewell my friends, he says - 

I love the feel of books, the texture of their pages, their subtle weight - I trace my forefinger over their magic black signs - 

I've got a Kindle, but it's not the same - I lent it to Tessa, when she crossed Anerica - 

A year ago, I read Tom Lubbock's Until Further Notice, I Am Alive - a cruel cancer ate up the language centre of his brain - his wife writes in the introduction to this beautiful memoir - he strung words together like ropes across voids  - 

I started buying books when I was boy - a classmate in the Navy School sold me a science fiction magazine, Astounding Stories - I read the thrilling stories under a Mediterranean sun - Evan Pots had written his name on the cover in a confident artless signature - 

I buy a book every week if I can - last week, I skulked in a second bookshop in Charing Cross Road - I thought I might see my pale ghost, flickering over the foxed classics - when I was a student, I used to buy books here - 

I can still remember the thrill I felt, that secret pleasure, when I first opened Confessions of an English Opium Eater - 

I went down to the low ceilinged basement, crammed with studies of the occult, feverish pulp romance, breezy children's books and the adventures of obscure explorers - 

Decorating a bolted door was a stencil of a Siamese cat - a distressed wall was decorated by bright abstracts, torn out of an art book - my eye was drawn to a collage of a young man - his white shirt had a wing collar, and he wore a mask - on his forehead were the words - ecrivez lisiblement -