As a Beginning...

I want to be a writer.

There. I said it. The naked ambition is satisfied. Let there be no doubt or hesitation. There is no need for any false modesty or contrived performance of humility on my part any longer. The scripted niceties are done, the words are out and the shameless rampage of ego may commence:

I want...

...to be...

....a writer.

I know the birth of that ambition well. I will concede that it would be impossible for me to imagine a world and a life without books and that I owe to my parents. There is a certain claustrophobic atmosphere in my parents house among the cacophony of books that seem to poke out of every corner of available space. Cupboards, coffee tables and shelves crushed under the weight of volumes of various sizes. It is perhaps natural therefore to want be inclined to add some words to the rolling crest of waves and tide of texts that mark the shore of experience I have been so acquainted with and habituated to. As one could take a long walk besides the beach, so you could also peruse the bookshelves and contemplate the unexpected twists and turns you may take, guided by authors through their sea of pages and words.

But the desire to be an author in my own right belongs to the pilgrimages to second hand book shops I made as a teenager as my parents would take me out on trips to the local city in Lincoln. The City centre is situated at the bottom of the hill, cut through by bridges crossing the river. At the top of the hill is the historic parts of the city, with Lincoln Cathedral and the Castle, home to one of the copies of the Magna Carta. The cobbled streets flow like a river down the hill, with the shops nesting expectantly beside it. The excitement of practically falling down "steep hill" as the street is named was always followed with the breathless crawling pace of returning to the summit for the car journey home.

At the bottom of the hill, you have the two Waterstones bookshops. Each is neatly painted with their black store front, the ever hopeful proprietors set out the pristine window displays as if the books were porn stars seeking to entice customers by letting them have a guilty glimpse at their latest titles and best selling authors. One of these stores was originally an Ottackers but then surrendered its dark green colour scheme to the Waterstones black. The WHSmiths is not far from the second Waterstones, next to the Halifax Bank and opposite the McDonalds. So on most of these trips I would venture out and visit each of these three bookshops. You become aware of how standardised these shops are, often having exactly the same titles arranged in the same spaces. This is not to insult the books themselves, but the conformity of their presentation and selection necessary for the stage managed experience of a corporate bookshop. Clinically presented to appeal to any audience and any appetite without giving offence, yet devoid of mystery or eccentricity. I typically head straight for the history section, knowing the route up the stairs and turning to the right almost like sleepwalking and might then glide over to politics, religion and philosophy depending on what is my fancy for that day. Waterstones does have it's black bookshelves, the cafes on the second floor and those black leather chairs that seem to swallow you like quicksand, inducing a split second of fear as you sink deeper in to their sinister embrace than you were expecting. Even before you set foot in the store, you are almost certain what you are getting and you could just as easily find it on any browse on Amazon. It's not their fault, as they sell not for love of books but for love of money. With a certain numb disappointment, I come down the stairs, glance at the McDonalds through the window, momentarily to fantasize about cheeseburgers and head for the exit.

But then there were the second hand bookshops at the top of the hill. They were easily recognisable by their hanging panel signs shifting in the wind, the cracked paint store fronts and sagging shelves in the overcrowded windows displays. With the clang of the bell as you swing open the door, you cross the threshold in to the unknown. Gone are shiny paperbacks and in come the ripped dust jackets, the yellowed pages, the smell of dust, damp and old paper hanging in the air. The tidy shelves give way to an organised carelessness of novels and tracts, arranged by an oddity of sizes and shapes, piled one on top or another almost at random. The excited mumbling of caffeinated crowds at Cafes is replaced by the eerie silence, narrow passages and dim lighting of the interior of old buildings. With those first few steps past the counter and the shop assistant as antique and eccentric as the contents of the store itself, you navigate your way through books piled to the ceiling, harbouring that childish hope you can escape the detection of the incessantly creaking floorboards.

Yet, for all it's crowded shelves, you know you are in the presence of history as you survey the graveyard of delighted hours now awaiting new owners and new adventures. Pulling one of their number off the shelf, by a single flick of the cover and the inside pages can bring you for a moment to see a name and a year written by the previous owner of the edition in your hands. You look up at the highest row and down to the lowest tier and you are greeted by the company of books and the unknown, faceless people who read and loved them. Whilst many governments have sought to rip and burn such texts out of existence so that they could serve as the gatekeepers to men's souls, words have never lost their power to seduce us with the opiate of imagination. Knowing the books of another is akin to catching the whispers of the secrets of strangers. I came especially to appreciate the rubber stamp print of an "S.J. Artis" of Scunthorpe that could be found in many history books in my secondhand book shop of choice, the Harlequin, stamped usually with a date from the early nineteen seventies. Although he or she was a total stranger to me and we were separated by at least four decades, upon seeing it each time I entered the cover and pages of a slim paperback, it was a stamp of approval of someone who clearly loved knowledge and the books it came in.

When I think of what it would mean to become a writer, I can close my eyes and feel the magic and excitement of trying to plunge the depths of this ocean of unknown texts in a second hand store. Whether the journey to those shelves was one of months and years, or even decades, I think of myself as a teenager scrambling on all fours to glimpse the titles and authors of dusty volumes on the bottom shelf, with the determined expectation that I a may yet seize a masterpiece from the discarded ruins of other people's lives. Perhaps someone will one day pull out a battered leather volume from some dark corner, huddled on a wooden self, the pages yellowed with age, blemished with damp and the corners bent over inside, so that their eyes may gaze over the title and a name on it's creased spine. If only just once, let it be my name, so that with my words I may make a faint, desperate stab at eternity and share a journey with another that may outlast my own.