Books and the Monks

  The quaint village stereotype is so easily found on the Isle of Wight. Scouting various bookshops today, I witnessed the absolute intrinsic hold of little villages. As I'm starting Uni there's a few course texts that I need to get and, since it's a chore I absolutely LOVE, my nan and I have been scouring nearly all of the islands bookstores. We've been to the usuals; WHSmiths, Waterstones but, being as cheap as I am, I'd much rather get them second hand, then marking the pages with annotations and giving them away when I'm done won't hurt quite so much. We've looked it Charity shops but often the book supply is frugal so we've taken to older shops stacked to the ABSOLUTE brim with paperbacks in all sorts of conditions. That smell of weathered parchment and musty covers is much like a drug; it's an addiction that leads me to add to my ever expansive bookshelf of unread novels. 

  I found a couple of the titles I needed but freezing and in need of a hot chocolate we went next door and ordered a drink and some cake. It was only very small but beautifully laid out in a way that is so common in seaside towns, particularly those of Cornwall. 

  We moved on to yet another bookshop afterwards. It was a shop with every wonder you could think of (apart from the novels I needed!)

  It was a house, renovated into a bookshop. Three storeys high and separated by section into the different bedrooms of the house, it was a book lover's paradise. You can probably imagine how ill I felt by it all! It was magical by all standards tucked away as an unassuming shop decorated like those newsagents that no one but locals or passing travellers go in. If the cashier hasn't told us about the layers of books we wouldn't have known the scale of novels. So the ground floor and hallway were made up of the new books; penguin classics, nature and poetry. Taking the door to the left lead you to the base of the stairwell and out the back of the ground floor, lay shelves and shelves of second-hand thrillers and normal fiction in what was, effectively, the kitchen. Various others were stacked under the stairs. As you took the flight to the first floor, the walls were lined with alphabetically ordered fiction, the front bedroom was a collection of war, history, true crime, nature and gardening books, with the neighbouring room full of philosophy, religion and English literature. Back down the hallway, a small airing cupboard was opened with numerous children's titles joined to a smaller bedroom housing EVERY children's book ever desired; Rupert, Enid Blyton, Harry Potter, magazines, Roald Dahl, everything. And, what was more, if those categories weren't enough you could take another, equally long staircase to find adult's health, psychology, arts and creator books on the third floor. It was mesmerising and I was so so lost in the variety and reasonable prices. 

  But, at 3:05pm, the wonders of the day were far from over. 

  There is something so intoxicating about a place like Quarr Abbey, our next stop. Spontaneously and despite the rain, we had decided to visit in passing. The serenity, the smell, the exclusion, the divinity and the leisure of the pigs that roam the grounds was just divine! 

Places like this are a true mark of unfailing beauty. Churches and monasteries never fail to captivate me. I always find myself there. The church is such a wondrous place for me. I always think on how it became; how religion was so deeply upheld. The multiple religions that float about today; Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam to name but a few, are all upheld today as there were in their origin. Whilst the world has changed; things have become, others extinct and yet, though many can guess at the rate of inclination in members, religion prevails. 

  I often think I'd like to be a nun. And then I think again. I have deep admiration for such servants of God. The devotion of their lives in accepting religion in the most remarkable way through embedding themselves in such ancient forms of society. It's inspirational. Regardless of whether you are religious, places of worship always have something to offer; if not a special place, perhaps peace of mind, silence or hope in the knowledge that religion is only one stem of belief in a system of unique thinkers.

All in all then, I had such a lovely day full of many o the things I love; books, walking, nature, eating and religion!