biography – T E Shepherd

A bookophile’s book

Thomas — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 13:37:31 +0000

Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co.by Jeremy Mercer

This is a bookophiles book; a book for everyone who loves everything about books, and the written word. It is impossible that I wouldn’t love it.

I had little idea what to expect when I added this to my too read wish list. I have only recently discovered that Shakespeare & Co. is a real place. I first encountered it whilst watching the brilliant, Before Sunset. I just assumed that the bookshop was an invention of a clever script and a location manager – I never dreamed it was actually real until a friend posted a picture of them outside of it a few years later.

And what a marvellous truth it is that this bookshop does exist. Who hasn’t – or a least who who doesn’t also love books – dreamed of living in a bookshop. Next to eating and sleeping in a library, surely it is the most perfect of dreams. Time Was Soft There is Jeremy Mercer’s own story of the time when he ended up living and working, and writing, and loving in Shakespeare & Co., and through him you get the biography of the bookshops owner and creator, George Whitman.

The cast is bohemian, as are the stories, many of them self-contained in their nature. Indeed, for me, the book works best in the first two-thirds, when each chapter is pretty much a self-contained story. When we get towards the end of Mercer’s accounts, the book has more of an over-arching story, and this for me detracts from the portraits of individual characters. Even so, a wonderful book of a a wonderful place, that one day I will visit.

I Are What I Are #3

Thomas — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 19:38:00 +0000

K. I write down her name on the back page of my notebook full of roughs. Is it possible that she likes me? What was meant earlier in the playground? In my insecurities, I jest with Simon, sitting next to me in Geography. He is in the same Maths class as me and for some reason I challenge him to lay his hand on hers. It’s stupid. As the words are spoken, I know its stupid.

I never find out if he did or not, but the next I know is they are going out. Damn my insecurities.

And Simon was my friend. I remember when his parents moved to the area, and he started part way through third year at Middle School. Mrs Bateman, placed him at our table because that was where there was a space. We became friends from then on, us and Martin and Alex, and Gary. Where are they now?

Still, it’s not like Simon knew I had a crush on her – I was insecure of myself and (even though I got on better with girls and had more friends who were girls) I still shied away from the whole girlfriend thing. Maybe it was because there was also C.– I couldn’t decide which? I think it was more that I spent too long agonising in my own mind whether she – whether they – were similarly attracted. If they ever did, then I missed the opportunity, I never the courage, I’ll never know…

I Are What I Are #2

Thomas — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 23:57:00 +0000

The summer of 1989 – the summer I turned sixteen – was one of the last truly, long, hot summer’s I can remember. Months stretched on after months of blazing sun, roasting temperatures and blue skies. In the early days of computer generated weather maps, I remember more or less permanent waves of high pressure over the country, and Ian McCaskill’s mythically inconprehensable reports, understandable only by the round yellow sun icons and the orange to red shading across the country.

This was the summer of my GCSE exams. Long days out on the school fields with my peers writing out study cards, and trying to soak up the trigonometry and the physics behind electromagnetic transformers. It was the summer that my parents went to Moscow at Easter, and my brother and I were left to look after ourselves the house, our dog and cat – Penny and Tess – with Granny and Granpa looking in from time to time.

I would have been doing the preparatory sketches for my art exam by then – art exams were always some of the first to be held, and it was about the only one I actually enjoyed doing. That year the art exam fell on my sixteenth birthday, the year that I got my second brand new bike. At thirteen my present had been what was supposed to my first and only brand new bike, but I had grown so much, and outgrown the bike by some considerable margin, that mum and dad decided to relent on this rule. I still have that bike, a black and silver Raleigh racer now. It still works. It gets me about.

Despite not being very good at, or enjoying exams – I much preferred coursework – I dreaded the exams ending. I dreaded this because I knew it would be a long summer to follow, a long summer when I wouldn’t see my school friends. In those days, I wasn’t good with the socialising – I’m still not that good – and I didn’t want to parted from all these people for so long. It didn’t help, that in the latter part of that school year, I had my first real crush. K – I fancied her like anything, but couldn’t say anything. What if she said no? What if she laughed at me? I was sixteen, I was in love and I was petrified…

I Are What I Are

Thomas — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 12:00:00 +0000

a biography of me

I’m fifteen and I’m sitting on the flint and brick wall outside the church, looking across the little roadway that leads to the beach. In my fingers are my pencil and rubber, and on my lap, my sketchpad. My eyes study the little row of cottages, with their small front doors, and their stone steps that open direct onto the sandy road — my hand draws the warped and twisted lines of the tiled roofs and, I place in the detail of the tie-bars.

I can never remember what this road is called — I’m not even sure that it has a name — it’s just the lane at the end of Saxon Road. It’s the road to Pakefield Church. It’s the road that would have run through the village and out the other side before the North Sea carved out the land, stopping short only at taking the church.

In the opposite direction, at the corner where Saxon Road curls round towards the church hall is No. 2, my home for a while. We moved here from Derbyshire, my birthplace, when I was three months, and my Dad got a new job here on the Suffolk coast, in the lab on the cliffs. There was a corner shop at the far end of this road, selling groceries and sweets. There’s still a shop there now, but now it sells fireplaces and you never see anyone go in or come out.