Today he has been let down by his builders. Their failure to arrive has thwarted the next phase of his work. He is waiting for them to break open the frontage to create a set of folding glass panels. Without them, he is becalmed, tasting a very unusual hour or two of leisure. This is so rare as to be unsettling. The sun is streaming through the old shop window that will be removed, perhaps later today, when the moonlighting contractors eventually arrive. It was a shop specialising in writing materials – gold-nibbed pens, unusual inks, heavy cream-coloured paper, portable leather writing cases. The gold lettering still catches the sunlight, traces the shadow of script on the floor in front of him. By the end of today that sheet of glass will lie shattered in the bottom of an iron builder’s-skip. Robertson’s, in its day, was a legendary shop where one went when every other outlet had failed to satisfy one’s quest. The staff were ancient – as is the rule in such old-fashioned places – and were characterised by a sort of lordly rudeness, as if their job were made disasteful to them by the oafishness of customers who were, increasingly, insufficiently educated in the complex rites of penmanship.
What do You think about Remembering Carmen (2013)?
