Kevin Gildea: My bookshop is more than a business. Its closure makes me shed a tear

How to get by in a 3m by 3m apartment: ‘Small living has helped me think twice whenever I want to buy something new’

Recently, I found an old plan on paper for the layout of the shop — where the counter would be, where the shelves and the path around the shop would be. It’s a wonder that, at one time, the shop existed only as this tentative map. Time erases memory of the jeopardy of the past. The existent presents as the normal, the habit, the taken for granted, and often erases the beginning: the very real possibility that it would never happen, never be born, never become.

I sink into the chair hidden away in books, behind books; there is the odd small avalanche as a tiny tower of tomes collapses, as the books express themselves in a desire to escape or embrace chaos. Recently, a customer inquired about a book entitled The Street of Crocodiles, by Bruno Schulz. The book came to mind after I wrote the beginning of this paragraph, which seems to share some of Schulz’s evocations of fetid ecosystems of the inanimate becoming conscious.

At the time I had had a few years of personal challenges — the endings of many things. It had got like when you are out in the lashing rain and you get so wet that it doesn’t matter any more: you’ve reached peak wetness, saturation. More rain is water off a duck’s back. I had developed acceptance expressed by my new mantra: “It’s okay.” But this ceiling falling in felt like a metaphor for everything in my life for half a day.

I became part of the community on George’s Street Lower, whether the gaggle of dear Dub characters — Frances, Mary and the gang — or the people from the other businesses, like CK, Richard, Joe and Marty from Frewen & Aylward , Selina and the gang from Fred’s, Jovche, Yres and Faruk from the Natural Bakery, and Errol from the Value Store next door. And Keith for all the chats and printing work. And Eddie. Dave from Book Deals. And, of course, John and Roz, who helped in the shop.

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Kevin Gildea: My second-hand bookshop is more than a business. Its closure makes me cryI opened my Brilliant Bookshop just before lockdown. As I prepare to roll down the shutters for the final time, I can only say it’s been a fabulous adventure Passed it many times and rarely saw a soul in it.
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