Stumbled into a 2nd hand book sale in a Methodist church. Picked up two Pinter plays and M snared herself Almost Heaven, a ‘travel through the backwoods of America’ by Martin Fletcher. We reckoned that some churchgoer had picked it up thinking it was some religious tome. There were thousands of books in apple boxes. All their previous owners no doubt long-buried. Paperbacks were 40p – unless, that is, it was about God, then you got a 10p discount. He works in mysterious ways, doesn’t he? Continued the 2nd hand book theme with a trip to Oxfam. M was paranoid that, cos the church books didn’t come in a bag, it’d look like I was on the rob. Picked up a copy of Bret Easton Ellis’s The Informers – and was eyed up curiously by the man in the counter who was obviously thinking along the same lines as M.
Headed up on the walls and strolled from Monkgate to Gillygate, amongst the ‘tourists’ as we now disparagingly refer to them. Rather scary moment when we discovered a seat that had a brass plaque attached dedicating it to Peter Windass (my uncle’s name). He was 22 when he died and worked for the council, did Peter, on the walls. So we reckoned he fell to his death one slippery, windy morning. Chose not to sit on my surnamesake and moved swiftly on…