To Lyme Regis and another expedition to 'The Sanctuary'. It's obviously one of those little shops that wasn't there yesterday (except it was there the last time I was in Lyme, maybe due to the time/space warping properties of its stock). These shops have been described by everyone from H.G. Wells to Terry Pratchett to the Simpsons so they obviously must exist in our collective consciousness. They are usually transient because they they are either a simple literary device to pass on a magic sword/lamp or FTL device or they transport the unwitting visitor/purchaser to some other place during their frequent moves. They're something like the Tardis but with stock. Usually they are run by some sort wizened and cranky anthropoid with a personal and unique sense of fashion (this, of course, does not refer to the august persona of the Sanctuary).
So why doesn't this shop move like the genre suggests? My personal theory is like the library at the Unseen University of Ankh Morpork the mass of the ideas/knowledge distorts the continuum so badly that it cannot move. The prediliction of the staff to keep adding books means this is not likely to change in the near future. Support for this theory comes from the fact that I was down in one of the sub-basements looking through a particularly fine assemblage of random copies of Analog from the 1970's and was surprised when a gentleman carrying a framed poster of Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle. After he had passed I inspected the dead-end he appeared from, there was no door, no room where he could have come from. I diligently moved books, tapped wainscoting looking for a secret door or switch. There wasn't one to be found and I subsequently searched the shop through many and varied rooms but to no avail. No gentleman, no proprietor to ask but a hung Miyazaki poster in the window. Had he come from another place? I couldn't find out but my time was sadly up and had passed in a strangely fast fashion.
If you are ever passing through Lyme then I can only advise you that you visit the Sanctuary Bookshop with your eyes open and your wits about you. Just don't buy/accept any magic swords/lamps or other goods and never, never get locked in after closing time.
Please excuse the lousy photographs. Half of them never came out and the rest are so bad it's almost like the shop never wanted to be photographed.
