Rob MacKillop
Edinburgh Correspondent
Topping bookshop in Edinburgh was about the only place open yesterday, and it being my wife's birthday, we spent a good couple of hours there, and came home with a good catch. I bought Edna O'Brien's biography of James Joyce, and Why People Photograph, by Robert Adams.
To be honest, I wasn't really in the mood for taking photos, so these are merely whimsical. I tend to buy the first thing I see - this time almost - while Susan will read every book in the shop. So I got a little restless...which often leads to trouble.
Two rough-looking guys started shouting at a poor little shop assistant lady. They were aggressive, and REALLY loud - I just couldn't concentrate, and I started getting worried for the assistant. So I stepped in, asked them to speak quietly and more respectfully. They then started on me, which was ok as it took them away from her, but also a bit worrying. Finally a security guy appeared, and the guys left the shop. The lady thanked me, and I walked into another room...
in which a dog started barking and trying to bite me! Luckily it was a tiny little thing, and its barks were high enough to break glass. It was tied to a woman's handbag, whose owner was up a ladder (it's that kind of bookshop). The dog was pulling the heavy hand bag across the floor to try to bite me, and I inched away from it to frustrate it, all the while laughing, before the woman came down off the ladder to retrieve both bag and dog, in that order. She gave me a wounding TUT! before pulling her dog to safety from the terrifying monster.
It's a mark of Susan's powers of concentration that she never noticed any of these shenanigans - clearly a woman of deep focus in the matter of book purchasing.
Almost forgot...some images, sadly not of the altercations, but a few of a particular Ionic column, hence the thread title:
Selfie:
To be honest, I wasn't really in the mood for taking photos, so these are merely whimsical. I tend to buy the first thing I see - this time almost - while Susan will read every book in the shop. So I got a little restless...which often leads to trouble.
Two rough-looking guys started shouting at a poor little shop assistant lady. They were aggressive, and REALLY loud - I just couldn't concentrate, and I started getting worried for the assistant. So I stepped in, asked them to speak quietly and more respectfully. They then started on me, which was ok as it took them away from her, but also a bit worrying. Finally a security guy appeared, and the guys left the shop. The lady thanked me, and I walked into another room...
in which a dog started barking and trying to bite me! Luckily it was a tiny little thing, and its barks were high enough to break glass. It was tied to a woman's handbag, whose owner was up a ladder (it's that kind of bookshop). The dog was pulling the heavy hand bag across the floor to try to bite me, and I inched away from it to frustrate it, all the while laughing, before the woman came down off the ladder to retrieve both bag and dog, in that order. She gave me a wounding TUT! before pulling her dog to safety from the terrifying monster.
It's a mark of Susan's powers of concentration that she never noticed any of these shenanigans - clearly a woman of deep focus in the matter of book purchasing.
Almost forgot...some images, sadly not of the altercations, but a few of a particular Ionic column, hence the thread title:
Selfie:
