When I was on holiday recently in the fabulous South Island of New Zealand I came across a bookshop that wonderfully almost met the description of my ideal bookshop I wrote about in my previous blog.

I wrote there that ‘I particularly love the quirky ones, with nooks and crannies, comfy chairs, tables, mirrors, the occasional dog.’

I say ‘almost met’ because this one had all of the above features except the dog. However, when I mentioned this to the grey-haired co-owner (who was sitting near the doorway when I came in, quietly reading like an elf under a tree), she said brightly, ‘Oh we used to have a dog, but it died.’

She darted over to a table and produced a photo of their former canine companion, which I couldn’t resist including in my photo of the co-owners and their shop, ‘Red Books’.

‘Red Books’, a clever play on words for a second-hand bookshop, is in Greymouth on the north-west coast of South Island. It’s just a long sentence or two from the railway station that’s the starting point for the world-famous TranzAlpine train which traverses 223 kilometres across the Southern Alps to Christchurch.

The shop has that comfortable bookish feel and I could have curled up on a sofa for a long read – but I would’ve missed my train.

I did buy a book, however: Which New Zealand bird is that? by Andrew Crowe, which helped me and my wife identify some of the wildlife we saw on our travels. (Regrettably, in our short time there we didn’t spot any kiwis of the feathered kind, which are apparently nocturnal birds. Across the island we found the human variety of Kiwi we encountered friendly and helpful.)

The TranzAlpine journey is worth a story in itself, so I’ll leave it dangling here for the moment like an errant participle, and tell you about another quirky bookshop I found at Christchurch, the train’s destination.

I happened across this one in the city’s CBD, appropriately outside the Arts Centre. ‘The Custard Square’ is a small old-fashioned caravan. Painted yellow, of course.

Inside, it was crammed with books around its walls; outside, there were a couple of more-or-less portable bookshelves, and a small blackboard that proclaimed all books were $5.

 The affable couple I presumed to be the owners sheltered from the midday sun under a large bleached market umbrella and chatted to book buyers and browsers alike.

I reckoned $5 was a bargain, especially with the Aussie dollar exchange rate, and I snapped up a copy of Miscellany One: Poems, Stories, Broadcasts, by Dylan Thomas.

The book has a wonderful quote from Dylan on its cover: ‘I think that if I touched the earth, it would crumble; it is so sad and beautiful, so tremulously like a dream.’

The quote is accompanied by a black silhouette on a mid-blue background of a sad clown-like character touching the earth, which is cracking under his finger’s touch. A black rooster and a pale full moon gaze down at the scene.

I looked to see who the book’s publisher was, but there was no detail inside the front cover, no year of publication, no ISBN.

The only possible clue was on the plain cardboard back cover: a tiny line drawing in black ink of a caravan. Mysterious provenance.

Until next time

Darryl Dymock