The next morning in the salesroom I wait nervously for Lot number 278. I have my card at the ready. On arrival you register your details at reception and they provide you with a bidding number on a card. This is what you raise to the auctioneer’s attention when you want to place bids.
Wondrous items abound but I’m transfixed by the possibility of owning The Speaking Picture Book. The auction is in full swing. The salesroom is heaving. Rogers Jones’ employees hold phones to their ears; their faces tensed up with concentration. They bid on behalf of what I imagine to be wealthy dealers in locations rather more exotic than Colwyn Bay. It creates a buzz of excitement. Prices rocket. The gavel is thumped down with theatrical glee.
We are up to Lot 30 when a couple of middle aged men push down to near the front where I anxiously stand. Almost immediately one of them begins to bid with reckless extravagance, or so it seems to me. Spending thousands of pounds on furniture, jewellery and old grandfather clocks, his budget seems limitless. He wasn’t at yesterday’s evening ‘viewing’. In his hand is an unblemished catalogue, with nothing scribbled down in the way of notes and prices. I get the impression that he is in the business of making instantaneous assessments. Lot 278, by chance, is displayed on a table within three metres of us. Minutes before the auctioneer comes to it, the Big Spender steps up to give it the once over. The ‘viewing period’ is clearly over but the auctioneer tolerates this minor disregard for convention.
As with most of the items, the auctioneer talks up the book in his pre-bid spiel. And suddenly, we’re off. ‘Let’s start at £250.’ Nobody bats an eyelid and the price drops to £80 before anyone will offer a starting bid. It is me. Two other people also express interest and the bidding reaches £210 before they drop out. My heart beats hard. The auctioneer is appealing for more bids. ‘This seems cheap to me. Going…’ Damn. The Big Spender lifts up his card. The bidding advances in £10 intervals. Trying to out bluff my competitor, I hold the card aloft, not bothering to bring it down after my bid. But he does the same. The price races to £350, my top bid figure or so I’d thought. Breaking this promise to myself, I go to £420 before conceding defeat.
The auction ends and the Big Spender is swigging from a can of Coke while counting cash with his colleague. Strangely, I feel like congratulating him. I want to tell him about the book’s history but all I say in parting is ‘That’s a nice book.’
‘Aye,’ he replies in a thick Glaswegian brogue. ‘I just liked the look of it.’
(Distance travelled: 40 miles. Profit: None. Fact learned: Knowledge is power, but it can be trumped by big money.)
Four Months Later, Another Auction in Colwyn Bay
This isn’t the antiques sale, rather the general household. They’ve made a mistake. Intensive rummaging of four boxes of mixed books has produced nothing but dust and disappointment. But then I come across Lot 56, assigned to a box of old children’s books, most of which are in a sad state of disrepair. Amongst these and in fairly good condition is the classic The Square Book of Animals by William Nicholson. It is what it says. It has a marvellous symmetry about it, even its publication date — 1900. It is a picture book of British animals explained in rhymes by Arthur Waugh. A £15 bid allows me to leave with the box and all the books therein.
Later that evening, I type up the following description: William Heinemann 1900, First Edition Boards VG Some shelf wear and corner wear. Complete with 12 plates by Nicholson. Offsetting of plates to facing text pages, otherwise, clean. Two plates with a small brown spot in margin.
In 1897 Nicholson made a woodcut of Queen Victoria which established his name with the public. During the same year he worked upon An Illustrated Alphabet for the publisher William Heinemann. It was reasonably successful commercially, but more importantly, it provided Nicholson with an opportunity to develop his talents as an engraver. There is something immensely appealing about his work. I’d like to keep The Square Book of Animals but my finances preclude ownership. It reminds me of the format of my first alphabet books. John Burningham’s ABC with an apple, birds, etc., through to xylophone, yacht and zoo. One letter on each page is shown in both upper and lower case, along with a relevant word. On the facing page is a simple illustration in pastel colours. The Square Book of Animals is an ancestral version of the format.
Its appeal is widespread. It soon sells.
(Distance travelled: 40 miles. Profit: £400. Fact learned: Fortune can follow a rummage.)
Closing Down Bangor Bookshop, January 2007
My retail experience in Britain is drawing to an ignominious end. The philosophy had been the more books the merrier. Nine months ago a shipping container’s doors had been flung apart to reveal 8 foot by 8 foot by 40 foot of emptiness. Drunk on the space and its book hoarding potential, I’d put down the deposit to rent it. I’d filled it with thousands of books and in the course of the last three months, I’ve emptied it of thousands of books. I open shops and later close them. Like Sisyphus, condemned by the gods to ceaselessly roll a rock to the top of a mountain (whence the stone would fall back of its own weight), I am forever buying and selling. I buy with ease but sell with difficulty, which is why the floor of the shop is now strewn with paper and print. I’ve given up any attempt at classification. People don’t seem to mind the chaos. Over the years I’ve amassed all types of books including those that have little chance of selling. They are getting a last opportunity to find new homes and readers in my closing down sale.
I’ve also brought into the shop the Headington Circulating Library, with its biographies of knighted naval captains and Sabatini’s and other books popular in the 1930s. Reflecting on the curious charm of the ragged remainders of the ‘Headington Circulating Library’, a customer called Ken, a modern day Socrates, is reminded of a passage in one of Lamb’s ‘Elia’ essays. Charles Lamb, he tells me, was much given to bringing home ‘tattered tomes’ from the stalls in St Paul’s churchyard two hundred years ago.
‘How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves and worn-out appearances, nay the very odour (beyond Russia) if we would not forget kind feelings in fastidiousness, of an old Circulating Library ‘Tom Jones,’ or ‘Vicar of Wakefield.’ How they speak of the thousand thumbs, that have turned over their pages with delight! — of the lone sempstress, whom they may have cheered (milliner, or harder-working mantua-maker) after her long day’s needle-toil, running far into midnight, when she has snatched an hour, ill spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in spelling out their enchanting contents! Who would have them a whit less soiled? What better condition could we desire to see them in?’
An indefatigable reader and collector of books, Ken has a house that has long been considered a hospital for old or unfashionable books. It is having a wing added; a hospice for terminally damaged titles.
Bangor, 2008
An English priest with a scholarly obsession with Dickens is inspecting the twelve volume Pilgrim Edition of the author’s letters. Delighted by their condition, the cash is soon splashed and I am informed that: ‘The undertakers still only use cash you know.’
I feel relief that no offence is taken by a copy of The God Delusion nestling on the bookshelf. I don’t want atheism to scupper the deal.
Djemea el Fna, Main Square in Marrakesh, 1993
In Marrakesh a man is shouted at for having the temerity to embrace his girlfriend at midday. He walks off, shrugging shoulders. Ramadhan means that there are no troupes of acrobats. There is, however, no shortage of other performers; a whole carnival of musicians, clowns and street entertainers. In fleeing a carefree snake charmer, I find myself accosted by Ramad who, after requesting and being denied money, is pleased just to chat. Over a coffee he tells me that his father is a maker of djellaba coats. Times are bad. ‘La Misere partout. It was particularly bad during the Gulf war. The poor,’ he says in hushed tones, ‘are completed emasculated and people are wary of openly discussing politics. You end up in a big bag and are never seen again,’ he says. There is a sudden blast of music. ‘Rai from Algeria,’ Ramad explains, gesturing to a nearby hall. We enter, and inside youngsters are dancing as if their lives depended on it. There is a real edge to the atmosphere that is absent from London nightclubs. It might come with knowing true desperation.