Dear friends,
We are feeling very stir-crazy. This is a yearly thing. February rolls around and everything is toned down to a dull grey as if the stage lights have turned off and everyone’s gone home for the night. Brief moments of sun punctuate the darkness. We feel resilient again. Then 15 minutes go by and we are back into the Thames Valley slumber of road-salt brown and overcast sameness. The other day we were visiting a collection in south London and wondered why we here in Canada choose beige as the primary colour of our tract-houses. We don’t choose an eye-popping Scandanavian yellow or red (colours that would help a lot this time of year). No, instead we choose beige, a colour that was, in this case, precisely the same as the giant pile of dirt-snow left in the parking lot by the plough. The houses blended seamlessly with this ugly pile of sludge. We then looked at our van, trashed and beaten from years of use, its floor littered with beige Tim Horton’s wrappers. The only colour in its interior came from the resplendent pile of reusable shopping bags that fill the trunk.
It was time to dream again.
So we went on a little tour of local bookshops. Of course we did. Whenever we are out of town ALL we do is visit bookshops. Sure, we visit family but that’s only to assage our Protestant guilt for pursuing pleasure. Soon after the family lunch we guzzle our Loblaws white wine and out the door we go to the closest bookstore. This past week it was to Lockwood Books in St. Thomas, where we bought some cool stuff and marveled at the JAR OF EYES that sits on their counter (see photo below). The week before we visited Britta at the Book Addict on Springbank (easily one of the best bookshops in town) and ran into Matt from Midnight Mass on Dundas (see photo below). A bit before that we ascended into MISTERIO the second floor of City Lights Books where we found a copy of Tove Jansson’s Summer Book. And even before that we visited Philip at Cardinal Books in Birr where we shook with neighbourly jealousy at the gorgeous shop he and his family have made in an old school house (see photo below).
London does not deserve this many good bookshops. Nor does it deserve this many good booksellers. We love running into our fellow booksellers. We chat about the kind and smart customers we have in common. We joke about troublesome folks selling us their bad books. We roll our eyes at the many copies of the same book that come in over and over again. Most of all we feel a connection because we have succumbed to the same dodgy vocation. Is these moments we wish we could all work together in one utopian, charming bookstore that somehow managed to contain everything and serve everyone and be the most magical, perfect place in the city. Alas, we cannot. Instead we can drive around in our shitbox van and say hi to them on a slow Tuesday afternoon.
Much love,
Jason & Vanessa
The frigid Southwestern Ontario Gothic landscape just north of town.
Eyeballs at Lockwood Books, St. Thomas!
Mattt from @midnightmassbooks took this lovely, nerdy photo of us all at The Book Addict (Springbank Drive, London).
