Some 18 leagues due north from my front door lies one of the largest second-hand bookstores in Europe: Barter Books, lodestar of literary pilgrimage and home to the original “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster as well as an impressive mural of authors.

Ah, you know, between those shelves it is possible to forget the passage of time; I can’t remember the last time I was so distracted by the present. Here are a few of the things I saw this afternoon on my voyage along the platforms of the old train station that houses the shop.

Biographies are front and centre as you walk into the main part of the store  and this volume was on display. The author is a friend; I had the pleasure of getting to know him a bit while he was training as a minister in the Church of England. Tom fed me westerns and frontier-flavoured theology, warned me off crappy writing gigs (said I’d be be happier going back to nursing) and encouraged me on every level in a series of conversations that are burned into my soul. Seeing this reminded me that I still have not followed up on his recommendation to read more … Raymond Chandler.

Now here’s something you won’t find on any editions of Kipling’s work these days, nor even any editions later than 1935. Rudyard Kipling adopted the symbol, which is an ancient Sanskrit symbol for wellbeing, long before the Nazis got hold of it.

Two of Kipling’s books stand out in my life as a reader. I read “Kim” when I was about 12 and it proved an extremely significant influence on my unfurling spirituality and lead me into further reading and an early exposure to eastern philosophy and religion that has coloured everything that has happened since.

When I was much younger I read a wonderful collection of Kipling stories told from a dog’s point of view, called “Thy Servant a Dog”, which was easily one of my favourite childhood reads. I’ve never been able to find myself a copy of the book, but I keep my eyes peeled in second-hand bookstores.

This was the hardest book to replace on the shelf: the price tag of £39 was more than I’ve ever paid for a book, but if any book were to come close to having that kind of value to me, this would be it.  GM is the brightest burning star in my literary galaxy and “Donal Grant” (quoted on this page) certainly my favourite of his “novels”. His shadow has presided over a latter unfurling in my spirituality but, apart from his “Diary of an Old Soul”, I have read very little of his poetry. Ahhhh … well … another time, perhaps.

The woodcut illustrations by Nora S. Unwin were just the icing on the MacDonaldian cake!

Merely four books sat on the Gaelic shelf, including this New Testament. I don’t read Gaelic (yet) but feel as if I have had a lot of exposure to it in recent weeks through getting deeper into celtic music. I’ve given some serious thought to studying the language because it sounds so beautiful when spoken and I’d really like to solve once-and-for-all the ongoing dispute in my band over the correct pronunciation of the names of tunes like  Chi Mi Na Morbehanna and An Phis Fliuch.

This ranks among the most curious finds of the day. A book on Swedenborg and John Wesley is coming from left field to begin with, but this one uses “reformed spelling”! Yes, published in the earlier part of the twentieth century before two world wars gave us something more serious to think about than spelling reform.

After about three hours of browsing, I walked off with this in my rucksack. At £1:50 it was kind of in that sweet spot of providing a decent number of hours of rewarding reading of something I knew I’d like at a price I could manage. I’ve been on a D.H. Lawrence kick since Xe Sands reawakened my dormant interest in his poetry with some of her readings. I’m hoping this will bring a dose of bygone  English summers to the remaining days of winter for me.