I thought a visit to the Book Barn would be right up Robin’s alley and anyway I wanted to try the Bristol warehouse. To make a thing of it Han & Kash came along and we stopped by the Mud Dock Cafe.

We found the site in Bristol but could not wend our way through it to the Book Barn and were distracted by a tasteful conversion which included live / work units. Just the sort of thing I hope to be involved in during my working life. It was not impressive or difficult engineering but just a pleasing development that would have been fun to part of the design team. Anywho, Kash spotted the ‘big enough not to miss it a mile off’ Book Barn sign and we went in. A tacky, paper thin walled, office type corridor led us to the triple portal frame warehouse.

Having said what fun a nosy around the Book Barn would be to newbies Robin and Kash, I was especially upset with it being poorly stocked and too open. That and it was bloody arctic freezing. The narrow and winding and disorientating towering bookshelves at the Somerset warehouse are fun in themselves. We headed for the architecture aisle and, in all of five minutes having flicked through all the books, picked up nothing. In fact I found nothing I much liked although I was surprised by the number of technical books in the mechanical engineering aisle, for example pre-stressed concrete texts. The others were successful:

Han

• Florence Nightingale, by Cecil Woodham-Smith (1950). £5
• Pain The Science of Suffering, by Patrick Wall (1999). £2

Kash

• Domes of Fire - Book One of the Tamuli, by David Eddings (1993). £2
• The Hidden City - Book Three of the Tamuli, by David Eddings (1994). £3
• The Treasured One - Book Two of the Dreamers, by David and Leigh Eddings (2004). £3
• Queen of the slayers, by Nancy Holder (2005). £2

Robin

• John Ruskin, Complete Works (1891). £4
• Dante’s Inferno, Dante Aligheri (1970). £3
• The Rubaryat of Omar Khaygam (1889). £3

Sometime in the new year I intend to drag them out to the Somerset warehouse hoping to top it off with a village cafe. That would be good. Sadly the Mud Dock Cafe, just off Queen’s Square, was not to be recommended. Overpriced, poor service, ordinary drinks, acceptable snacks and a dead atmosphere. The decor was different.