Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
most of the old one a few years ago). This is still a city where you occasionally see some-
body fishing in the middle of it. The river Ness flows through the centre heading for the
sea, shallow enough by the banks for people to stand there, water splashing round their
waders, their lines creating great lazy 8-shapes in the air as the rods sweep slowly back
and forth.
There's a huge recently expanded shopping complex which we park in and which I
get lost in but eventually, after some apparently compulsory clothes shopping, we make
our way to Leakey's before it closes. Leakey's is a second-hand book shop housed in an
old barn of a church near the centre of town. It's packed with books, prints and maps, has
a busy upstairs café and lots of paintings by local artists. In the cold months it's heated
by a colossal wood-burning stove the size of a shed which sits square in the middle of the
place radiating warmth and making it feel welcoming even in the depths of winter. The
place has become something of an Inverness institution and a landmark for bibliofiends
and cartofans. The first time I came here I bought so many old maps I could hardly carry
them. This time, while I'm checking that there aren't
too
many of my books for sale in the
Fiction section, my arms full of more old OS maps, Les finds the Food and Drink section
and the old whisky books; I snaffle the lot, bar a couple of doublers, and need help to get
them back to the car.
'You actually going to read all this lot, Banksie?' Les asks as we squeeze the motley
collection of tightly straining carrier bags into the boot (most cars would have sagged sig-
nificantly on their springs under the extra weight, but the M5's made of sterner stuff).
I look at him blankly. '
Read
them?' I think about this. 'Well, some of them, I sup-
pose.' Les looks increasingly sceptical. I think some more. 'Well, I'll sort of scan all of
them. I mean, I can't claim I'm going to read every single word of every single one, not
cover to cover.'
What can I say? I've been given an excuse to buy books; this isn't something I am
easily capable of ignoring. Even when I was a student and didn't have much money, I'd
buy every book on my reading lists as well as all the topics I wanted to read for pleas-
ure or because I thought they were actually necessary for my course work, for the simple
reason that - like a reference book - a book on a book list didn't need to be read; a book
you felt you ought to have but didn't need to read cover-to-cover was like a bonus for me;
it meant more books on my shelves without the nagging guilt of not having actually read
them all (at the time I refused to let a book defeat me; I even made it all the way through
Sam Beckett's
Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnameable
trilogy. Took me about a month
because I kept falling asleep, but I did it. I'm a little more relaxed about this sort of thing
now; if a book hasn't grabbed me in the first hundred pages or so, I just let it go).
At the time - and I do not exaggerate - I preferred to economise with my drinking
money than cut back on the book-buying budget. Okay, I was an atypical student.
