The first dream was to run a bookshop. I say run because I dont think you ever own a bookshop, if anything they own you. Having accomplished the first dream, and still loving it everyday I put the key in the door, I am looking to the second dream.
I think everybody has "book moments" in their life. Not necessarily those books that change your life but more books that represent who you were at that given moment or who you wanted to be. When I was 17 years old I picked up a copy of One The Road by Jack Kerouac and I fell in love with the freedom of a generation. Of course I was a typically precautious teenager willing to give my idealistic opinions to anybody and everybody that would listen and often pressed a copy of On The Road to my fellow idealists but like a proustian rush when I think about that book I instantly see its blue sky cover and its battered edges and feel that sense of freedom and adventure lurch in my stomach and tingle across my shoulders....and so living the dream part 2 is not quite to travel the length of America fuelled only by poetry jazz and drugs but to create a mobile bookshop I can take to Summer fetes, festivals and those hard to reach places.
Sadly, good Citron H Vans and vintage VW campers are in shorty supply so that part of my dream is currently on hold, converting a van into a mobile bookshop is, I feel, a Winter job anyway, but we will take to the road and to start we will be taking our beautiful classics to the Summer Milton Market on 24th July on the village green in Milton-Under-Wychwood. There will be art, music and food and although It might be more Gen Z than Beatnik but we are very excited to take Madhatter on the Move.
Just add Sunshine!
PS If you are looking for a book to change your life may I suggest Human Kind A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman and of course we stock copies of On The Road by Jack Kerouac.