Homing Instinct

I went back to Twickenham on Sunday and, for the first time since moving to Lewes, felt a slight pang of homesickness. I love living in Sussex, but it feels as if I'm on an extended holiday.

Twickenham and Teddington, where I spent the first three quarters of my life, is still home.

I began my visit by walking down Church Street. I wanted to see if the bookshop I used to manage was still there. It was, but only just.

In the 1960s and 70s, it was a thriving business; the largest for miles around. As a child, I always bought my Enid Blyton books in Langton's, all of which featured children with names like Peter, Janet, Colin, Anne, Dick, Susan and Ernest. The books seemed wonderful at the time, but reading them to my son, a few years ago, I quickly lost the will to live.

Later, as an awkward teenager, I purchased Pelicans with impressive-sounding titles like 'Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom' (I don't think I ever read it, but the mere act of buying the book made me feel terribly grown-up).

Sadly, in the 1980s, the owner decided to sell the business and the  shop entered a period of decline that seemed almost as long and drawn-out as the Byzantine Empire's.

Langton's was bought by a couple who wanted to run it as a retirement hobby. They both looked bookish - tweed skirts and bow ties - but the husband was a complete philistine who huffed and puffed around the shop floor, expressing his disapproval of certain books.

Holding a copy of the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde in his hand, he once said "Do we have to stock books by homosexuals?"

But the Major's posturing was all hot air; his wife was very firmly in charge. She was a highly educated woman who quickly learned the rudiments of bookselling and maintained a decent stockholding. Unfortunately, she was also a very abrassive character, whose loud Lady Bracknell voice and hectoring manner alienated as many as it amused.

The second nail in Langton's coffin was the appearance of a large branch of Waterstone's in Richmond, only a mile up the road. As well as losing sales, the owners also lost two members of staff, who couldn't wait to jump ship to a workplace where they wouldn't be treated like naughty children.

In the face of growing competition and the collapse of the Net Book Agreement, the owners decided to retire for a second time. The business was put up for sale.

A week or so after Langton's new owner had taken over, I decided to visit the shop. The moment I walked in, the atmosphere was completely different. Van Morrison was playing in the background and sitting behind the till, a balding, middle-aged man, with a long, grey ponytail, was chatting to a young woman.

I bought a copy of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'. Five minutes later, I was sitting in a pub across the road with the ponytailed owner, who offered me a job running the shop. "The thing is," he exlained in a soft Ulster accent, "I've got three other shops, so I need someone who can manage things here. How much are you being paid at Waterstone's?"

Like a fool, I told the truth. He offered an extra £500.

It all looked promising enough. I would be managing three people and have complete control of the stock. I was also given the impression that there were more shops in the pipeline and that I had joined the next Waterstone's. I could hardly believe my luck.

I spent several weeks decorating the tired-looking interior and improving the depleted range of titles. I felt that I was restoring the shop back to its former glory and was confident that the sales would begin to rise. Sadly, after only a month, it was clear that something was not quite right.

My new boss was a charming, likeable man, but he was also maddeningly mercurial and disorganised. In hindsight, I now understand that the challenges of running four separate businesses and having a son with cerebral palsy must have been extremely difficult. But at the time, all I could see was a man who undermined everything I did.

The owner specialised in secondhand books and his business mantra was "If people can't find what they want, they'll buy something else instead". I would often return to work after a day off and find that my carefully arranged bestseller bays were covered in a completely random selection of review copies, bought as a job lot from a journalist.

At the time, the bestselling title was the Alan Bennett Diaries. Finding that our only copies had been concealed behind a single copy of 'A History of the Belfast Telegraph' for a whole weekend was frustrating, to say the least.

But the thing that really got to me was the staffing. After beginning with three staff, my boss gradually whittled it down to one person: me. Each time someone left I was given the same story: "Cashflow's a bit tight at the moment...if you can just hold off for another month...things will pick up soon..."

Managing a shop alone is challenging both practically and emotionally. The essential day-to-day tasks like banking, unpacking, shelving and cleaning have to be combined with manning a till point and dealing with enquiries. At Christmas, when deliveries are four times larger than usual, it is an almost impossible challenge to sell books and replenish the shelves.

There is also the small matter of being able to buy lunch, eat it, or answer the call of nature. Eight hours is a long time to go without a break.

However the greatest challenge was the sense of isolation. I had regulars who came in for a chat, but they were usually lonely individuals who would talk at, rather than with me; often at great length. After two years, I was well acquainted with the minutiae of their lives, but I doubt if they knew a single fact about me.

As time passed, I realised that things wouldn't get any better. I now had occasional help from part-timers, but the money had stayed the same. I found a job with Ottakar's, where I went on to spend the ten most enjoyable years of my working life. My boss and I parted on good terms and to his credit, he gave me a very nice leaving present.

Before my return visit to Twickenham, I'd heard that Langtons now had a cafe and was keen to see what it looked like, but as I walked towards the shop I saw that the windows had been whitewashed and a sign announced that the shop was for sale.

I peered through a small gap in the window and saw the outline of a doorway that led to the children's section. I wasn't sure what was worse: a closed bookshop or a dying one? Perhaps the thing I'll miss most is the shop sign, with the font that has been the same for over half a century.

After Langton's, I walked with my wife and sons down to York House Gardens:

Unlike some parts of Twickenham, the riverside was reassuringly familiar, unchanged since I first went there in the 1960s:

These statues, imaginatively known as the Naked Ladies, were acquired under mysterious circumstances by the notorious Victorian fraudster, Whitaker Wright - a man who evaded justice by taking a cyanide capsule after he was convicted.

In some ways, the Naked Ladies have been a barometer of postwar Britain. When I was a small child, they were clean but the fountains hadn't worked for years, then as we entered the era of Punk and industrial strife, they were frequently vandalised, with the regular addition of blue pubic hair.

At some point in the late 1980s, the vandalism ended. Ten years later, the fountains were restored.

An arched 18th century footbridge connects the gardens to York House. I was very disappointed when I discovered that it houses offices for the local council, instead of a rakish lord. However, it had some auspicious former owners, including Sir Rajan Tata, Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff and Philippe, comte de Paris.

York House isn't famous, but anyone who has seen the film Alfie may experience a flicker of recognition:



The main centre of Twickenham is grotty, but the walk along the towpath from Richmond Bridge to St Mary's church has barely changed since the 18th century and I'd forgotten how idyllic it was.

When the good weather returns, so shall I.