Moonshine

I had a surreal experience yesterday. Wonderful, but surreal.

I visited the legendary Michael Moon's Bookshop in Whitehaven, to find some local history books for a friend.

It's a second-hand bookshop, one of those tardis-like old shops that defy the accepted laws of space and time. From outside it looks like one crowded room, hemmed in by softly snoring leather-bound volumes. Inside, the little rooms go back, and up, and on and on and on...

There are second hand books, and antiquarian books, boxes of forgotten text books, old postcards, and crackling maps. Tall shelves that seem to actually BE the walls... columns of volumes supporting the ceiling. There's the smell - dry paper and soft leather, and just a hint of dust.

And this time, to my everlasting joy, there was actually Michael Moon.

You know the type. Of course you do.

He was enthroned behind his desk in the corner, hemmed in by boxes of books and an old cash register. A fringe of white hair, cardigan... he probably should have been wearing glasses, but I can't remember if he did. In my imagination, he wears glasses. Oddly enough, he was working at a laptop that sat, slightly apologetically, in the midst of the paper world, the only concession to modern times.

I couldn't find the books I was looking for, so I asked. He told me there were only three books on that subject, and they were all out of print. When he said, only three books he probably meant in English, in recent times. But it sounded like he was saying only three books in the history of time in the universe And he didn't have to look it up in a catalogue.

He showed me some other books that might help. Then he suddenly realised that there had been another book printed on that subject quite recently, and produced that for me. I got the impression that he was intimately acquainted with every local book for the last 200 odd years. But anything published less than five years ago hadn't really registered on his radar yet...

I bought the books. I mentioned that I had been involved, very early on, in the project that produced one of the books I was purchasing.

We started to talk.

Ten minutes later, I put down my bags, took off my glasses, and sat down in the worn leather chair beside his desk.

We talked about books, about publishing, about purchasing and wholesale. We muttered about supermarkets as if the word was a curse (which, to many bookshops and writers, it is). We talked about his thirty-five year bookselling anniversary, the day before, about his status as a Master Grocer before he sold books. He was very pessimistic about the future of his shop, but his love for the books in his care spilled out.

He rescues books. Gives them a good home, cares for them, acknowledges them and reads them. He catalogues them, studies them, rebinds them, publishes and reprints them. Then, sometimes, he's forced by economic factors to sell them.

He hates parting with any of the 25,000 volumes stored in the dark rooms, he said. "But I suppose if you're a bookshop, you occasionally have to sell books."

Outside, time passed. Inside, it was subject to book-time. Slower, softer, more considered. I think we talked for an hour, in the company of a billion printed words, but it's hard to tell.

Eventually, I had to go. I shook his hand and told him it had been an honour. I complimented him on the comfort of his chair. "That's what Ian Paisley said," he replied.

Apparently he was a very "softly spoken gentleman," who browsed the theology section for hours, and then, unfortunately, had to buy some books. "But they had to sweep the place for devices before they let him in," said Mr Moon.

Can you imagine checking a shop of 25,000 books for a bomb???

Michael Moon could be a wizard. But probably he's just an alien, retired to earth in his magic shop, guarding that sourcerous resource that humans seem to have forgotten the power of - books.