"Keys to the soul, bound in ink".
These words hung above my father's bookshop. I have worked there every single day of my life since I was old enough to. But I have been reading here since I was able.
My father would often say, "Leon, books are the key to power, one cannot advance if we does not know to read".
I took those words to heart and throughout my childhood would devour an assortment of novels. Jane Austen's pride and prejudice to J.K Rowling's Harry Potter saga. Our little bookshop, Quill Books, based off our family's name, sits at the intersection of Doughty and Fleet, had it all.
It sat between Sonny's, a Tottenham Spurs fan bar, and The Griffin, a three star hotel. The street was always busy with foot traffic, but our bookshop was never matching the liveliness of the adjacent businesses. Looking at the shop from across the street, it looked like an entrance to a new world, one step removed from London. It always seemed to me, the bookshop was a place one would find only if one simply wasn't actually looking for it. One where a child just like I could get lost in the endless rows of books.
Throughout my years of perusing bookshelves and reading, I have always felt that the shop was not for the actually selling of books, but that the books here were more for safekeeping. As though every book here was waiting for the right person to come by before enchanting them and lighting their soul on fire.