I often dream of owning a small bookshop specialising in a good quality selection of fiction, art books and children's books. It would be a small, cosy space with solid wood shelves lining the walls from floor to ceiling and a couple of lounges to sit and read. Any remaining wall space could be devoted to exhibiting the work of local artists or my own burgeoning photographic practice. I'd like to also offer coffee (I already have good barista skills after working for an Italian family in their restaurant, Pane e Vino, for many years to finance my tertiary studies and a couple of extended overseas trips).
A blurb from a novel that I am trying to write alludes to the feel that I would like my bookshop to bestow:I am propped at a window seat in a small bar, the only customer. Frank Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours plays softly. Its moody melodies waft into the dark corners between wood panelled walls and mismatched furniture. Antique chairs upholstered in grey wool, tall stools with black leather seats, a Wegner daybed sits in perpetual dialogue with a moss coloured bench seat.
On the window frame in front of me, paint peels exposing textured layers of rusted metal. Black and white film stills adorn the walls of the small space. Humphrey Bogart cradling Lauren Bacall’s face to his in the 1947 film-noir thriller Dark Passage. Audrey Hepburn dancing like a cat in a philosophers’ café in the 1956 film Funny Face. The curvaceous Marilyn Munroe with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon disguised as female jazz musicians in the 1959 classic Some like it Hot.
