Our aspirations are wrapped up in books
Bookshop owner Jason Shelley helped me hugely in the last lockdown and today I tell his story
The last lockdown this winter was brutal. My partner and I had to juggle looking after our small baby and our four-year-old girl (whose nursery school had closed) with work demands. During the previous lockdowns I had used savings to supplement my loss of income but this time round the surplus was spent, I wasn’t eligible for furlough pay and my partner’s maternity leave supplement was dwindling as our second child grew older. We live in a small flat that isn’t conducive to home working when a family is housebound (the weather was wet and cold) and the genius idea of having a drop-down desk in the corridor to save space was as much a relic of pre-pandemic times as a Boots meal deal. It’s the main reason why I check the Covid data on a daily basis — like a lot of others I fear another lockdown more than the disease itself.
There were times during this lockdown when I had so little leisure time that I couldn’t sleep from the fatigue. There were times when I was so tired that I drank too much caffeine causing my eyelids to pulse uncontrollably. There were times when I was acting abysmally towards my children and partner. It was difficult — as so many parents will attest. The first lockdown seemed like an adventure in comparison even though that involved looking after my four-year-old daughter who missed her friends, a partner with chronic morning sickness and managing my own fears of the pandemic. (I got through this period by using Twitter to positive effect by making silly cricket videos and memes. It’s easy to focus on the negatives of social media but I do find it an inane source of fun).
But the one positive I had in the last lockdown was found through a different type of community. Having lived in this part of south-east London now for approaching three decades, I had a physical support group that dovetailed nicely with my online one. So I reached out to see where I could work during this time of pub, cafe and office closures and one man answered my SOS. Jason Shelley is a poet and owner of Crofton Books and he was working towards opening his new shop in what I will tongue-in-check call “mid-town Brockley” — there’s no one high street but three fragmented shopping parades. In fact when Jason was looking for a name for the shop that used to be located in our local library I suggested “mid-town books” which would add a New York vibe to his business. He passed. His loss.
So, timed to fall slightly after Independent Bookshop Week, this is the story of one of the kindest, softest men I know who always looks to pay it forward (even if he didn’t know that phrase and had to write it down during our interview).
“I helped you, Jason says. “Because I thought you were doing really interesting journalism. I also considered what you were doing to be quite important. It was a good use of the space and there weren’t any other writers around who needed it. I don’t think I was breaking the [social distancing] rules!”
The days I used the bookshop to work in I look on fondly because as well as giving me a quiet(ish) place to write it gave my life some variety when days were monotonous and full of daily graft. There were times when people knocked on the window when I was left in the shop alone and I could have conversations with strangers about books. When Jason was arranging the displays I worked in his basement which meant when I needed to pause I could browse the piles of non-fiction tomes which helped inspire me to pitch articles.
But mostly it was nice to chat to Jason who was running this community enterprise out of a love of the printed word. The friendship I had formed with him had started about six years ago when he sold second hand books in Crofton Park library — “down-town” Brockley. The bookshop would often be open on the days when the library closed and Jason would allow me to read the children’s books to my daughter on rainy days. The selection then was interesting and reminded me of the kind of range found in an Amnesty store in Hammersmith, West London.
I also remember being slightly jealous of his successful idea because I had an idle dream once to open a bookshop up in Brockley but was put off by the huge growth in Amazon Kindles (and the small fact that I have no experience of running a bookshop and can be quite grumpy to the end user. Mind you, before I met Jason I thought all owners were like Bernard in Black Books).
“This isn't to do with COVID,” Jason says. “But there has been a turning point in the trade. People are buying more physical books, they’re getting fed up with looking at screens. It's the human aspect, because you're going into a physical place, and you're doing something different.
“You might go and browse and it gives you aesthetic pleasure. It makes you feel more rooted and like you have a sense of belonging. Older books also make people understand history too — not just the writer but the people who owned the book before especially if you’re finding stuff inside the books [like hand-written messages].”
I’m aware I’m prone to revert to a narrative about old v new Brockley and particularly whether someone is “old Brockley”. Old Brockley, in my head, is a creative type who is very left leaning and unconventional. New Brockley is someone who moved to the area because of the introduction of the Overground which means you can travel quickly to the City via Shoreditch High Street or London Bridge.
It’s a narrative that has a certain edge of prejudice, generalisation, sniffiness and hypocrisy. It also strips the area of its racial history (although I would argue that your archetypal “old Brockleyite” may be white but they would be fully aware of events like the Battle of Lewisham and the New Cross Fire). “New Brockley” is apolitical and consumerist at its core, especially judging by the people I met at a local parenting group who would boast about flying business class and the benefit of being close to East Dulwich. Sigh.
I’ve always thought of Jason as “old Brockley” and his life story is quite compellingly unconventional by any yardstick. In the late 90s, when he was nearing his 30s, he worked in the Waterstones inside Harrods while living with a film director whom he helped with duties like script editing and research.
He then worked as a runner on the Channel 4 programme Beg To Differ where he was paid cash in hand for tasks that included looking after the director’s camera. The series sounds like part of the then-nascent structured-reality genre and it included filming a homeless man being fitted for a suit in Savile Row.
After this he worked in the specialist (and at times daunting) second-hand bookshops you find on Charing Cross Road. He set up his own publishing company and moved to Brockley in 2005 from Camberwell as the green spaces in the area appealed as he had a young family.
During all of this hectic living he manages to write poetry every day and is very passionate about the power of verse, citing the way a British poet he used to know, Christopher Logue, constructed this:
Come to the edge. We might fall. Come to the edge. It's too high! COME TO THE EDGE! And they came, And he pushed, And they flew.
It’s read out by US basketball teams before a match to inspire them like Pacino’s Inches speech in Any Given Sunday. I ask him then if his life is spent reading poetry, like Logue’s, or the many piles of novels strewn around the shop; I have an image of him in socks, leafing through yellow-paged beat poetry while the shop is empty.
“I read articles, stuff about poetry and prose,” he admits. “Critical analysis. Rather than the stuff itself. At one point, I did take an interest in styles. But I find it quite difficult to sit down and read a novel through. I’d rather just read bits and pieces.”
He’s like a dealer who doesn’t get high on his own supply. But he’s also a great example of the discipline needed to be creative.
“I wrote my first poem when I was aged eight,” he says. “I actually remember writing poetry sitting at a desk in school. So, I then just carried on writing after that. My philosophy is you just need to write because you can do courses until they're coming out of your ears.
“You have to be fearless and you just have to write.”
Jason set up the bookshop in the library after the demise of a scheme to run a creative writing company in an office above it with his friend, Lucy Owen.
“The idea drifted away,” he says. “And we used the office space for a year to work on other projects: just ideas and thoughts. We didn't actually give any classes in creative writing, so we did our own creative writing. It did allow us to scope out the building and the development of the bookshop.”
But if you think Jason is some kind of dreamer who has his head in the clouds then you’re wrong. He learned business, logistics and enterprise from his time working with clothes retailer French Connection. And that’s why he’s able to employ staff members as well as sticking close to his creative roots by creating a hub for writers in his new shop in mid-town Brockley (I’m working hard to make this phrase stick!).
The library bookshop was like the second-hand retailer I talked about a couple of weeks ago, Records, in that you could go crate digging and find treasures but the new shop is now a meeting place for those passionate about the printed word to meet and chat. (The old shop was hamstrung by its library location and had a ragtag assortment of lonely old geezers who didn’t look that interested in books.)
“Working in a bookshop,” adds Jason. “Is a good accompaniment if you're studying. There's four people working here who are doing their masters, and they find that it's good work to do because it’s not too labour intensive or stressful. It enhances their studying as they get to meet and chat to customers who can be academics and journalists.”
It’s funny because a second-hand bookshop feels to me like a very old-fashioned place but this hub fulfils a very modern need. With more and more people like me working remotely you need to have somewhere to go in the day where you can meet like-minded people. The connection I have with Jason means that we do chat about writing and culture but we can also talk about the demands of childcare and family life.
Jason is always interested in my journalism which is very helpful especially when I’m feeling rejected, disconnected and alone: the leitmotifs for any freelance writer. And, like in Logue’s poem, when I fall the support I get from Jason and people like him has been able to push me into flight.
Thanks, mate.
The headline is taken from Belle & Sebastian’s Wrapped Up in Books.
I should promote my paid journalism more after all it’s important, as Jason says. A couple of weeks ago I had this piece about computer gaming addiction published and last week I had this examination of cringe comedy launched. The latter has numerous photos of me watching an episode of Peep Show which can only be described as awkward. Would you have eaten the dog?