Shopping

Leaving my office this afternoon, I thought I'd try again to do a bit of shopping. I desperately need new shoes (my current pair has a growing hole in the side of one). I hate shopping though and, just as on several other recent occasions, as soon as I walked in to a store, the revulsion at the combination of crowds and consumerism caused me to turn on my heel and fight my way back out. Ignoring other shops, I worked my way down to Charing Cross Road, where the bookstores of London congregate.

I was on a quest to find a copy of Kerouac's "Pomes All Sizes" to check the layout of one of my favourite little Kerouac poems (see companion post containing "Perm"). I did eventually, to my surprise, find a copy of it in Foyles. I resisted the temptation to buy it, so as not to insult my existing copy (a battered gift with a perfect inscription) which sits neglected in my parents' attic. As consolation, I picked up another City Lights Pocket Poet Series of Kerouac poems along with Seamus Heaney's "Seeing Things".

In one of the many used bookstores, I bought a copy of "Mr. Midshipman Hornblower". I've yet to read any of the series and I'm sure that Horatio on his own cannot rival the perfect friendship of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, but I always find it comforting to sail the high seas at the same time as the captain and the doctor, even if not precisely with them.