Oh, yes, definitely, Snarly. I'd pack a couple sandwiches and spend the day!

This chappie from Portsmouth seems a bit of a character..

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Portsmouth_Fo
otball_Club_Westwood

#24 - only if there's a toilet. I love books and bookshops but they send a signal directly to my bowels.

Blokes will use anything as an excuse for that sort of reaction.

Absolutely, Tom.

I think a law ought to be passed that all bookshops and record and dvd shops must have toilets on their premises available to customers.

I'd vote for that!

Is a customer someone who purchases something? As opposed to a browser...

As it happens we never prevent someone using the facilities in ourr shop if they are caught short (always surprised that certain pubs and restaurants make a big issue out of this). We find normally people will buy a card or a takeaway drink as appreciation, although we don't insist on a purchase.

I was including browsers, cos browsing is where the trouble starts. Don't know how many secondhand bookshops even have facilities.

There are browsers and then there are time-wasting racist browsers who wasteour time before they go to the pub. I missed one of them the other week, who verbally abused a Polish girl having a tea in our shop. I have a suspicion who the culprit is...

Bracing ourselves for complaints at the end of next week. We close Monday to Thursday due to our nuptials. I'm sure people who never use the place will complain that we were closed..

Looks like my local independent book shop in East Dulwich may close unless someone can be found to take it over when the current owner retires.

Congratulations, HerrW! I hope you have a lovely book-themed wedding.

People who like sport don't read innit

And congratulations HW!

MM reads a lot of cycling books. He reckons cycling lit is more extensive than many sports due to its long-term association with journalism.

Very little cycling fiction out there. I can only think of Tim Krabbe's The Rider which is ok to good. Lots of non fiction; most of which follows the standard arc of the sports biography. Our hero is introduced as he crashes, injures himself or has some kind of physical or emotional disaster. Is it all over? Then a few chapters of childhood/early sporting career. Then picks up the story after the crash and onwards and upwards to triumph.

But there are some great exceptions. Almost all of William Fotheringham is good as are David Millar's two books. (I know I'll think of loads more as soon as I hit the post button.)

But then you's expect cycling to have loads of documentation. It's a sport that appeals to nerds. (I speak as a cycling nerd myself.)

Three men on the Brummel is the only Cycling fiction that comes to mind.

I search for climbing memoirs if I've got the opportunity. Picked up 2 firsts by Eric Shipman for £60 some years ago, Nanda Devi and Blank on the Map. Our clubhouse has a copy of Colin Kirkus' Let's Go Climbing, which we reckon would pay for a new roof if we could bear to sell it.

Among non-fiction cycling books there is Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne. He is in the habit of taking a fold-up bicycle on tour with him, and cycling around the various cities of the world he visits, as a way of gettig more of a flavour of the places than a touring musician would normally get. Reportedly good - I enjoyed reading his How Music Works, although it was really more about how the music business works than how music works.

I found that for free a while back but never read it and lent it to a mate (you know the rest)