And now, back to our roots… it’s been a while since we’ve been down to Lower Marsh in Waterloo, home of such wonders as Radio Days, Honour, the brilliant Scooterworks Cafe and the now-gone but much-lamented Last Chance Saloon (descendants of which can be found at the Aquarium Gallery and Nude Magazine). But professional concerns sent us South of the river (outer darkness, wailing, gnashing of teeth et cetera) to the wonderful Crockatt & Powell, a bookshopper’s delight.

C&P was set up by Adam & Matthew, two former employees of the Pan Bookshop, Daunt Books, and the big W, who’d had enough of “We could do better than this” conversations in the pub and decided to prove it. The result is lovely. Many independent bookshops, for all their wonders, can feel like they’re either just piling up whatever the wholesaler sends them, or struggling not to turn into a remainders merchant, but at C&P everything feels like its been selected for the shop.

For those intrigued by the process of setting up an independent bookstore - and what litgeek doesn’t want to do that when they grow up? - they’ve got the obligatory blog on which you can follow their progress (origins and original attempt here). They’ve just set up a mail order department too, but as ever we highly recommend actually getting off your arse and going down there in person - AC Grayling’s a regular apparently, so who knows who’ll you bump into.

One of the highlights for us was their large stock of Cabanon Press books and bits, featuring the work of Tom Gauld and Simone Lia, who we’ve been a fan of for ages - ever since Tom did that short-lived ‘Moving to the City’ strip in Time Out. We highly recommend Tom’s Three Very Small Comics and Simone’s Fluffy for the best in monsters, robots, border guards and paternally confused bunny rabbits.