A Bookshop in Aberystwyth

It was in my drinking days,

hungover at the seaside, Butty Bach

after Butty Bach, bringing up all 

my usual drunken topics, 

people on their phones in restaurants,

how much I love Ross's podcast,

all the money I wasted on a B&Q bathroom,

that I wished I'd asked advice from friends

who know this kind of thing better than me.

I have learnt to stop pausing my stories

to show a relevant photograph on my phone.

I know that this does not help.

Considering I've spent my whole life

surrounded by books, my dad

was always putting up extra shelves at home

He used to work in a bookshop in Manchester where LS Lowry

was a customer and I am the first to be devastated

at the sight of a closed down bookshop

on a cobbled street in a market town,

I stare at the whitewashed windows and the thought

of the Bill Brysons that used to be on the shelves.

All the Father's Day and Christmases, buying

Captain Corelli's Mandolin but I don't spend a lot of time

in bookshops. It's too rare that I have the barcode 

of a hardback scanned and take it home in a branded bag

a stamp on a loyalty card but in the Saturday lunchtime

Aberystwyth sunshine there were a few of us

browsing the beautiful books, I will buy this one

each of us decides. I took a famous but literary

acceptable novel to a cafe and ordered a pot of Earl Grey.

It is so rare I do the things that make me happy.

The bathroom had been so expensive and the workmen

made such a mess.