...this is what I was doing yesterday.

Well, perhaps it's not hugely obvious from the second picture! The empty bag shows that I came back without the books that I set off with; the books on the floor are those I came back with. Yes - I managed to get rid of some books - I took them to the Books and Comics Exchange in Notting Hill! The best thing is they give you twice as much money if you take it in vouchers/credit for the shop, so I was able to have a guilt free look around, and, despite managing to amass quite a pile of goodies, I didn't spend all of the £14 I was given for my books and have £6.50 for a future visit!

I was pleased with the books I picked up, especially the beautiful green Elizabeth Taylor - I am particularly on the look out for these at the moment - I love the beautiful flower pictures on the covers. And this takes me up to 10 out of 16 of the collection. I LOVED Teddy Robinson as a child so was thrilled to see this ex library edition of three of the books - I need to do some research as the titles don't match up with my later puffin copies. I have been enjoying the Family stories by Enid Blyton in the last 12 hours - I read some of them as a child but not the whole series and they were perfectly unchallenging for a tired cardigan girl after quite a tiring day out! Anyway, I don't quite feel I have broken my run of not buying books for 4 weeks - I'm sure it doesn't count if you've sold and got rid of books beforehand.

The trip to the exchange was part of a day out meeting up with the lovely Claire from Paperback Reader (she also sold and bought books). We then went on to visit Carlyle's House, down in Chelsea - Thomas Carlyle was an eminent Victorian historian, although hugely unfashionable these days; he may be familiar to some of you if you've read the wonderful Persephone book The Carlyles at home. It was a lovely townshouse full of the original furniture - we were both very taken with the wallpaper which was in 19th century Cath Kidston style! Unfortunately we got very lost trying to find the house and walked absolutely miles, but it was definitely worth it. Another long walk back to the tube took us back past Slightly Foxed, a fantastic bookshop which we could have spent hours in. Cardigangirl's feet were quite weary at this stage and she was in need of iced coffee so we repaired to Starbucks to swap some books (Claire has kindly lent me the new Rosy Thornton, and gave me a VMC that I didn't have) before catching the tube to head home. Thank you Claire for entertaining an otherwise lonely booklover who is missing her fiance.