I haven’t walked up Kings Road for quite a while. I don’t mean the Chelsea one of course: Kings Road, St Leonard’s on Sea. It sounds exotic when you hear it, conjuring up noble gentility, when in fact it has struggled for decades to thrive. Kings Road leads down from Warrior Square Station, morphs into London Rd and within minutes you’ve emerged from the canyon of shops and are standing next to the sentinel clock on the promenade staring at sky and sea. What could be more dramatic than that?
But in fact I was turning my back on my salty companion, my daily familiar, going up and away into the thickets of shops and beyond.
Since the steady influx of urban escapees there is a new plantation of quirky shops and cafes – mostly closed now. The dog parlour, Tails of St Leonards, was open. I briefly entertained the idea of begging for a trim. Our canine friends are Kings and Queens in this our “country of the blind.” The allusion to HG Wells’ satisfying allegory was brought to mind by the window display in The Bookkeeper, an Aladdin’s cave of a shop; a book rummage of essential (to me) wordly goodies.
Their window display is about books in all senses. You don’t see it properly until you get up close, but the cascade of what looks like two rumpled off-white curtains, is made from book pages. At the foot is a copy of The Time Machine and a long quote from it on a hand-written scroll. One is put in mind of a time capsule, which, under the circumstance, may be intentional.
It’s the best bit of installation art, aside from Nature’s daily displays, that I’ve seen for a while. It tells of stories within stories and reminds me of the preciousness of books. They must never become extinct. Contained in them in a vast array of style and description, are the guts and blood, spirit and being, of whole humanity.
I had intended to share the walk that followed. But this is what came out. You will see where I went after. To the woods…but that opens up another story of trees and books.
“What a piece of work is man…”
Hamlet, Act 2, scene 2
