At The Water's Edge
Looking For Clues 2: The London Street Bookshop (RISC)
I didn't realise it at the time but maybe this adventure started when I first saw the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull (JLS) by Richard Bach. It was in the shop window of the London Street Bookshop in Reading.
I still remember it now, the display took up the whole of the window. I'm not sure which year it was but I guess it must have been early to mid-70s when I was in my early teens, sometime after the book had become a bestseller. Bach, hadn't been able to get a publisher to touch it initially. There's a lesson there somewhere.
When I first saw JLS, I didn't buy the book. It just didn't appeal to me. Another aspect to all of this and slightly weird (or perhaps not) is that The London Street Bookshop became the Reading International Solidarity Centre (RISC) and several lifetimes later I would play my first gig there (and indeed it is where I would spend many an enjoyable evening with the Crackerjack Crowd). The location somehow seems significant to me in two completely independent ways. Perhaps I should investigate the history of the place and see if there is anything else that resonates me. Perhaps I had ancestors that were farmers there or something. Being lost makes you think about these things; you're always looking for clues to try and find your way home.
