Quite lively in Weston on a Saturday night. We can probably gloss over the evening’s activities, except to say that The First Lady showed perfect taste and judgement in disengaging me – pretty sharpish – from a posse of lady pirates on a hen night.
Across Quantocks in search of a remote and apparently non-existent bookshop, said to be open on Sundays. Perhaps it is, but all we found was a rather fine parrot in a window. Dropped in to the Cobbles Bookshop in Dunster – one of the tidiest bookshops we have encountered. A handful of things purchased.
Jane the sat-navigator let us down rather badly by insisting that Rothwell & Dunworth were situated in the middle of a muddy field at the top of a narrow track on a hill so steep that the car could only continue by jettisoning the presidential bulk. Gravitas is one thing. Gravity another. Orderly retreat and Rothwell & Dunworth found in Dulverton where they have always been.
Just as I took a book off a shelf there, a mighty clap of thunder seemed to be a message from the gods. But all it betokened was a return to drenching rain for the remainder of the day. One would have thought it impossible to cross Devon from one side to the other without encountering a cream tea, but somehow we contrived it.
A French woman once told me that she regarded the cream tea as England’s single greatest contribution to civilization. I muttered something about books, art, science, etc., but in my heart I knew she was right. We shall give Devon a second chance tomorrow, after a Cornish morning in Liskeard and Launceston.
The Bookhunter on Safari 