And so it went on, members of the Golden Hind would find themselves being shrunk like Alice in Wonderland and then being sucked into a book and then sucked back out again to regain their full size. Now you would think that once was enough but not a bit of it, this jumping from one book to another in somewhat of a butterfly fashion was so addictive, making it hard to stop. This brought a whole new meaning to the phrase, ‘I’m really getting into the story\book.’
‘Open sesame,’ Alice and Gulliver cried instinctively in unison as the cover of the book opened and they were sucked into the story.
‘Alice! Alice where are you?’ Gulliver cried looking all about him in somewhat of a panic, seeing nothing but sand.
‘Behind you, I’m behind you!’ Alice cried hanging on for dear life to the reigns of a camel. To Alice’s mind, riding on the back of a camel was all a bit of a pantomime and it was not far from giving her the hump.
Gradually Gulliver managed to find the brakes on his camel and Alice caught him up.
‘And I thought a ship was hard to steer!’ Gulliver said managing a smile.
‘I can see why they call camels the ships of the desert now!’ said Alice squinting in the glare of the sun. In truth, Gulliver couldn’t see why they were called ships of the desert as they looked nothing like ships and the desert was full of sand with hardly a drop of water in sight!
Then something made Gulliver turn round and he saw a posse of white horses being ridden by what to him looked like Arabian knights, who were all brandishing knives that you were never likely to find in your cutlery drawer at home. It seemed that Gulliver and Alice had found themselves in the eye of the storm ‘as they say’.
‘Where’s a genie when you need one?’ said Alice trying to lighten the mood a little.
‘I wonder what’s ticked them off?’ said Gulliver as the wind blew up and he swallowed a mouthful of sand.
‘I think we have!’ said Alice as hanging down from her saddle was a brown leather bag and in it a golden hourglass.
‘What’s that?’ said Gulliver as Alice held the hourglass up to see sand pouring from the top to the bottom.
Upon seeing the hourglass, a thought flashed across Gulliver’s mind, if you rested a sandglass on its side, would that stop time? And if so and they did, would that stop the Arabian knights catching up with them and giving them a piece of their minds!
‘I think it’s the sands of time!’ said Alice innocently.
‘That thing’s an antiquity, it’s priceless!’ Gulliver said as a bead of sweat trickled down his forehead and past his left eye, which made him look as if he was crying. ‘Time we were on our way don’t you think, Alice?’ Gulliver said as the Arabian knights were almost upon them.
‘We could just give them the sands of time back, after all it belongs to them,’ said Alice sensibly.
‘Look, Alice, there’s no time to argue, the sands of time have nearly run out and by the black look upon their faces, I don’t think they’re in any mood to listen to reason, and as my mother is always telling me, procrastination is the thief of time.’
‘Never mind about procrastination being the thief of time, I think it’s us who are the thieves of time!’ said Alice jump-starting her camel into life.
‘Perhaps we can take the sands of time back to your world and time can begin again.’ Gulliver said as he too jump-started his camel, which didn’t look best pleased at this rather archaic way of getting his ship of the desert into gear.
‘I don’t think it works like that Gulliver, remember what the old man in the bookshop said, nothing is as it seems and some people have got so lost in a book they never return to their world.
‘It’s so hot, I wish there was a cloud in the sky which we could shelter under,’ Alice said looking into a cloudless sky.
Then Gulliver spied something in the distance so naturally he got out his spyglass and to his amazement saw a large old boat becalmed in the sand. The ship was stuck in a sand dune and by the looks of her she’d been stuck there some time. However, this was one ship that wasn’t encased inside a bottle. Gulliver’s eye strained to see what the name written upon the side of its hull was. He wasn’t finding steering his ship of the desert any easier than he’d found steering the Golden Hind. For his ship appeared to be like a ghost ship, steering itself, changing tack of its own accord, first veering to the starboard side and then to the port side as if a drunken sailor was at the helm.
Gulliver slapped the side of his camel, making it clear to the beast that he wanted to go full steam ahead and in doing so almost fell overboard. Luckily he just managed to cling on, eventually managing to sit into an upright position. Gulliver knew he wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week after this bumpy ride, he couldn’t say he was saddle sore because there was no saddle, no, Gulliver was just saddled with a stubborn mule of a camel! Then he nearly fell overboard for the second time in as many minutes when the name of the boat becalmed in the sand dune made itself known to him, it was Noah’s Ark, or at least it was an ark!
‘Alice!’ Gulliver cried, beside himself. ‘Alice, I think we’ve discovered Noah’s Ark!’
However, Gulliver had discovered from his life experiences up to this point in time that not everything is as it at first appears, or disappears for that matter. Perhaps his eyes were playing tricks upon him and this was nothing more than a mirage conjured up by a heat haze which would soon vanish into thin air.
And then in a flash of light with the Arabian knights in spitting distance, a sand storm blew up from out of nowhere and engulfed them all, now they really were both in the eye of a storm. Before they knew it, both Gulliver and Alice were sucked into a spiralling whirlpool of pages and words, which blurred together as one until they found themselves back in The Last Bookshop in the World.
‘Wow!’ said Alice with eyes as big as the big bad wolf in the fairy story Little Red Riding Hood.
‘Wow!’ Gulliver said, his eyes mirroring Alice’s the last time she looked into a looking glass. ‘Where are the sands of time?’ Gulliver said looking at Alice while spitting sand out of his mouth.
‘I must have dropped them,’ Alice replied. ‘Perhaps it was for the best otherwise the Arabian knights might well be chasing us round this bookshop right now!’ said Alice finally finding that cloud with a silver lining.
‘I wondered where you kids had got to,’ Old Father Time said, relieved to see Alice and Gulliver were safely back in the real world. Gulliver was wondering if he had been in touching distance of making the greatest archaeological discovery of all time just to have it disappear right before his very eyes like a conjuring trick.
Luckily Old Father Time was on hand, otherwise the crew of the Golden Hind would never see their shipmates or their ship ever again, engrossed in a book that they couldn’t get out of, never mind put down. This was a strange world indeed; Gulliver never imagined in his wildest imaginings, which let’s face it, had always been pretty wild, when it could be said that reading a book was more of an adventure than a real-life adventure, or at least no less of an adventure. The amount of times his father had said, ‘Get your head out of that book and get some fresh air into those lungs of yours,’ and ‘Gulliver you need to live a little,’ and ‘Gulliver, you do know that time waits for no man, don’t you?’ If his father could only see him now he wouldn’t believe his own eyes. In truth, Gulliver was having trouble believing his own eyes at times.
‘Gulliver that’s enough, it’s time to return to the real world!’ Old Father Time said grabbing Gulliver’s shirt sleeve as he appeared from out of a book called Tales of the Arabian Nights.
‘But, Old Father Time, I’m having the time of my life, or at least I was until you grabbed my shirt!’ Gulliver said rather indignantly. ‘I’ve just seen a copy of The Time Machine–’ Gulliver said but before he could continue Old Father Time interjected.
‘Yes, that’s all well and good, young master Gulliver, but we haven’t the time to be playing silly beggars, and anyway, what’s the good in a quest if you do not return to tell others about it,’ Old Father Time said playing the old vanity card.
‘But that’s the point, we can’t tell anybody about this bookshop, we’ve signed a contract,’ Gulliver said brushing his unkempt hair back out of his eyes and straightening his attire.
‘Contract! it’s not worth the paper it’s written upon!’ Old Father Time said gruffly. ‘Anyway, you don’t have to tell anybody exactly where The Last Bookshop in the World is, you only have to say you found it but you’re sworn to secrecy on pain of death, as Queen Elizabeth I had told the crew of the Golden Hind in his world after Drake’s circumnavigation of the world in 1580. However, that doesn’t stop you telling of your adventures in finding it, now does it?’ Old Father Time said, sounding very convincing in his argument.
‘I suppose not,’ said Gulliver thoughtfully.
‘There’s no supposing about it, my boy, no supposing whatsoever,’ Old Father Time continued on in a similar tack.
‘Where’s Alice?’ Old Father Time enquired.
‘Somewhere in Wonderland,’ Gulliver said as he had seen Alice pick Alice through the Looking Glass off the shelf and be sucked into the book immediately, if not sooner.
‘Well, young Gulliver, as soon as Alice appears from her wonderland, grab her and I’ll grab Drake and the others and we can be on are merry way otherwise Old Mrs Time will have my guts for garters for being late or early. Mind you, whatever time I turn up I’ll just give her the usual excuse any Guardian of Time gives their spouse and simply say I just lost track of time!’ Old Father Time said as a large smile found its way onto his dial.
To Old Father Time the bookshop resembled a maze or a labyrinth of neverending bookshelves which was as vast as the imagination itself, which was as good a description as any.
Then Gulliver spotted Alice popping up out of Alice through the Looking Glass, along with Wonderland, like in a child’s pop-up book and just at that exact moment one of the bookshop assistants was riding on a magic carpet past the bookshelf so Alice jumped onboard. ‘Alice, Alice, we need to be on our way!’
Alice heard Gulliver and shouted and with the wind in her sails and her hair blowing all about her she cried in an excited manner, ‘Wonderland was so magical, I want to go back, or should I say forward?’ as Alice asked the bookshop assistant to steer her towards a red leather-bound limited edition copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be no time at all,’ Alice said with a grin on her face as wide as the Cheshire cat’s. No sooner had the words fallen from her mouth like a waterfall and Alice had opened the book to the first page did she disappear into it taking her grin and the rest of her atoms with her. Now Alice didn’t appear to be making much sense when she said, ‘I want to go back or should I say forward?’ but actually, unlike the real Alice in Wonderland, she was making perfect sense, although it might have made a might more sense if she had read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland first and Alice Through the Looking Glass second, rather than the other way round, but then again, where would the fun be in that?
‘Nooooo!’ cried Gulliver to no avail.
‘Sorry!’ the guide said apologetically to Gulliver, ‘but you can’t hold back an imagination like that!’ he continued, shrugging his shoulders as the magic carpet whizzed off across the tops of the bookshelves before it too disappeared in between the pages of the now open book.
‘Now what?’ Gulliver said looking at Old Father Time quizzically.
‘You’ll just have to follow her,’ Old Father Time said matter-of-factly.
‘I won’t be long,’ Gulliver said climbing up the bookshelf as if he was Hillary or Tensing climbing Mount Everest.
The trouble was, Gulliver couldn’t find a copy of Alice in Wonderland, the book had obviously disappeared along with Alice and her Cheshire cat-like smile.
‘What now?!’ Gulliver muttered under his breath and then it came to him, ‘Eureka!’ Gulliver then climbed a little higher and then moved along the bookcase a little to the left where he found a copy of Alice Through the Looking Glass ‘Of course!’ said Gulliver. ‘Of course!’
Gulliver turned the pages of the book but where to enter the story, the beginning, the middle, or the end, and would he be able to find Alice? The logical thing to do would be to find the rabbit hole and from there he would be able to go from one book to the other. This was both logical and illogical thinking all rolled into one. Gulliver was thinking outside the book and the compendium box all at the same time, which considering there was no time was quite some feat.
‘Here goes nothing,’ Gulliver said taking a sharp intake of breath before turning to page ten where he started to read the poem that was printed there: ‘Child of pure unclouded brow and dreaming eyes of wonder! Though time be fleet, and I and thou are half a life asunder, Thy loving smile will surely hail the loving gift of a fairytale.’ And just as Gulliver finished the word ‘fairytale’ he was sucked into the book and was gone.
Suddenly, as the blinding light evaporated and Gulliver’s eyes adjusted, he was standing in a room and looking up at a large gold Victorian gilt-edged mirror.
‘Will wonders never cease? Of course, forget the rabbit hole, it’s the looking glass I need to climb through the looking glass like Alice!’ Gulliver said realizing his illogical logic was a little flawed.
Gulliver following both the Alices footsteps, climbed onto a chair and stepped into the mirror. At once he found himself on the other side of the mirror and standing on the floor staring up at the back of the clock on the mantlepiece as a little old man grinned back at him. ‘This really is a great book,’ Gulliver said smiling and looking all about him to see if he could see either of the Alices, but at first glance he could not, however, he could see Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum sharing a book. Gulliver, like Alice, was curious to see what the book they were reading was as they both had puzzled expressions upon their faces. Gulliver, not wishing to interrupt them, crept around their blind side until he was in a good position to see the title of the book. The title of the book was Rudimentary Chess for Beginners, no wonder they had puzzled expressions upon their faces, perhaps it would have been better if they had chosen the book entitled The Dummies Guide to Chess as the thoughts of Gulliver’s older self popped out unexpectedly and made him cringe. Gulliver left the Tweedle twins stuck on the same page as when he first saw them huddled together on the grass with the book resting in between the two of them.
After some time, he managed to track down Alice who was conversing with a couple of chess pieces, the Red Queen and the Red King. However, it wasn’t Gulliver’s Alice but the real Alice from the book, if that made any sense, and curiously enough, to Gulliver it did. Gulliver wondered if he should track down a copy of the book Gulliver’s Travels and meet the real Captain Lemuel Gulliver. But then again, perhaps he would be disappointed after meeting him ‘as they say’ you should never meet your heroes, even if they are fictional.
With all this talk of looking glasses, this made Gulliver recall the end of Gulliver’s Travels when Capt Gulliver returned home and pondering on his journey he says, ‘To behold my figure often in a glass, and thus, if possible, habituate my self, by time to tolerate the sight of a human creature.’
In his world Gulliver had often shunned mirrors, even as boy he had always loathed his own appearance and time had not helped to alleviate this distrust of mirrors and looking glasses. People of Gulliver’s world had often told him that perhaps if he looked into mirrors his outward appearance might be much improved, however, he hadn’t heeded this advice. In truth, Gulliver no more liked looking into those metaphorical mirrors than he did the real thing. Having said that, hadn’t he climbed into the looking glass in Alice Through the Looking Glass and done it without even thinking? But that was Gulliver all over and like Alice in Alice in Wonderland\Through the Looking Glass he spent far too much time overthinking things and wondering, when he should just concentrate on doing. More of his father’s and his grandfather’s words of wisdom ringing in his ears, he thought, making his tinnitus worse!
‘Excuse me?’ said Gulliver not wishing to appear rude as he tried to break into the conversation between Alice and the Red King and Queen as the White King and Queen sat upon a shovel and two castles walked by as if they had not a care in the world.
‘Excuse who?’ said the Red Queen indignantly.
‘Yes, excuse who?’ said the Red King even more indignantly, if that were possible, which it seemed it was.
‘Could I have a quiet word, Alice?’ said Gulliver nervously.
‘Yes, of course you can have a quiet word, which quiet word would you like to have a quiet word with, silence? Or perhaps you would like to have a quiet word with the word quiet,’ said Alice mischievously with the cat-that-got-the-cream look upon her face.
‘Oh, I see you’re yanking the chain of my fob watch like the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland,’ said Gulliver mirroring Alice’s smile.
‘Alice in who?’ Alice said as a puzzled expression came across her face, an expression she couldn’t keep there for long before bursting into laughter.
‘My name’s Gulliver and I am looking for Alice,’ Gulliver blurted out without properly thinking it through.
‘Then you’ve found her, haven’t you?’ said Alice acting up.
‘No, another Alice,’ said Gulliver a little red faced.
‘Another Alice in Wonderland. That’s going to be ever so confusing isn’t it?’ said Alice as the puzzled expression returned to her face in earnest.
‘Well let’s see,’ said Alice thinking.
‘Yes let’s see,’ said the Red King and Queen ear wigging into the conversation.
‘Well, Gulliver, if you travel in that general direction as the rabbit jumps and turn left when you see a mad fellow with a big hat on his head, but don’t stop to ask him for directions for I fear you won’t get any sense out of him. Then turn right at the rabbit hole, or is that left? No, no, right at the rabbit hole, and according to the map in my head you’ve got as good a chance as any of finding you friend Alice,’ Alice said sounding extremely pleased with herself.
As the Red King and Queen said in unison, ‘Yes, you’ve got as good a chance as any of finding your friend Alice,’ before they turned away and the Red Queen said, ‘The boy will fall down the nearest rabbit hole and will never be seen again!’
‘Almost certainly, you can see he hasn’t the brains he was born with,’ said the Red King before adding, ‘the boy wonder has got two chances of finding his friend Alice, little and none!’
‘Madder than the hatter if you ask me. Asking for an Alice when an Alice is standing right there in front of him, surely one Alice is every bit as good as another!’ said the Red Queen indignantly.
‘Yes, especially as Alices are ten a penny farthing in this neck of the woods. I don’t know, some people are never satisfied,’ said the Red King dismissively.
Gulliver ignored the Red King and Queen, treating them with the contempt they quite clearly deserved, before thanking Alice for telling him where Alice at a pinch might be holed up.
Gulliver followed Alice’s instructions to the letter and fell down a rabbit hole, which resembled a helter-skelter, pulling the wool over his own eyes. Perhaps I should put some flesh onto the bones of that last comment. Gulliver was wearing a woolly hat at the time and didn’t want to see what he might come across in this rabbit hole so he pulled the hat over his eyes! So you see, not everything in Gulliver’s travels is as complicated as it may at first appear. In fact, even the most illogical of things can be explained fairly easily when logic is properly applied to them. Just ask the wizards of the scientific think tank and I’m sure Newton, Einstein, Archimedes, Da Vinci, Copernicus, Pythagoras and the like would only too readily agree with that last statement, as would the logician Lewis Carroll himself I wouldn’t wonder!
Some indeterminate period later, Gulliver found himself somewhere else other than where he was before, if that makes any sense. No? Good, then we can continue!
‘Gulliver!’ Alice cried out on seeing him as he shot out of a rabbit hole as if being shot out of a cannon and landing on the side of a hill.
‘Alice!’ Gulliver said mirroring Alice. ‘Is this Alice in Wonderland? I mean the book Alice in Wonderland?’ Gulliver said picking himself up and dusting himself down.
‘Of course, where else would it be?’ Alice said instinctively.
‘Where indeed,’ Gulliver said blowing his cheeks out. ‘Old Father Time said it’s time we got back to the real world,’ Gulliver said breathlessly and as he did so he thought, the real world, really!’ It seemed at last Alice and Gulliver were on the same page!
‘Okay, I’m ready when you are. To be honest, I have been here for several weeks and I’m getting a little tired of talking to flowers, and to be even honester, I’ve never understood the game of chess,’ Alice said as she pointed to another rabbit hole about twenty yards from the one Gulliver had just appeared from.
‘That rabbit hole’s got our name written on it,’ said Alice as she took a copy of Alice in Wonderland out of her coat pocket and opened the book.
Five minutes later Alice and Gulliver were spiralling down another helter-skelter as Alice was attempting to finish the story. ‘Ever drifting down the stream – Lingering in the golden gleam – Life, what is it but a dream? The end’ and no sooner had Alice said the words, ‘The end,’ did Gulliver and Alice find themselves sprawled upon the floor in The Last Bookshop in the World.
‘That was a short story,’ said Old Father Time smiling as he helped both Alice and Gulliver to their feet.
By this time Drake had been drawn into a mystery novel about an art theft so this line seemed somewhat appropriate.
Gulliver had seen Livingstone and Stanley in the geography section of the bookshop, picking up and reading a book called The Lost Continent of Africa and then they disappeared and were never seen again. Gulliver surmised they were probably still searching for the source of the Nile or at least Stanley was in his boat the Lady Alice. Gulliver wished he could have talked to the two men then he could have said, ‘Stanley and Livingstone, I presume!’ After which they would look at the boy and say, ‘Gulliver, I presume, I see you’re still on your travels,’ Gulliver had often had imaginary conversation with his heroes as a boy. Well, if you’re going to have imaginary friends then you may just as well make them famous figures from history who can keep you entertained with their imaginative tales. The truth was that Livingstone had challenged Stanley to a hippopotamus race and, at this precise moment in time they were both riding upon the backs of two reluctant hippos somewhere in the region of the Congo Basin. After which they would probably go giraffe or elephant racing, or perhaps their imagination would allow them to straddle a giant pink flamingo where they would soar above the plains of Africa looking down at the greatest national wildlife park upon the planet. Well, that’s if Stanley and Livingstone had a head for heights that is!
Gulliver knew from his school days that when translated from Arabic, a giraffe meant ‘the charming one’, which seemed fitting for such a graceful and peaceful creature. Mind you Gulliver had once seen giraffes fighting, although this was on the wonder that was the television. The giraffes were using their necks to knock one another over, so they weren’t always utterly charming by any stretch of the imagination. But compared to some Homo sapiens, who could have definitely done with a spell at charm school, they were, Gulliver thought, reverting to his natural state of being, which was a thirty-five-year old man who occasionally suffered from the grumps!
Just before Gulliver left the bookshop he spied a book by Arthur Conan Doyle upon one of the shelves, this was obviously before he got his knighthood, thought Gulliver, that’s if he did get one in this parallel world. Perhaps in this world Arthur Conan Doyle was a struggling writer barely making a crust, his real job being a baker in a bakery, which is where he probably got his idea for where his great detective Sherlock Holmes would live, Baker Street, now Gulliver really was stretching reality to unimaginable lengths! The book was entitled The Lost World and he recalled that he had read the book as a boy, he further recalled how Sir Arthur had written a short verse at the beginning of the book which went exactly like this: ‘I have wrought my simple plan. If I give one hour of joy, to the boy who’s half a man, or the man who’s half a boy. Gulliver realized this line suited his situation like a book fitted a book’s dust jacket, as at this moment he was both a boy and a man. He then realized he had known his dog Beagle both man and boy ‘as they say’.
Gulliver thought what a great adventure it would be to get lost inside the pages of this particular book as he would have to canoe down both the Orinoco and the mighty Amazon rivers, climb mountains that touched the stars, and cross rickety bridges that in truth at times were simply tree trunks which had fallen across a deep crevice. One might say crossing such a bridge was a bridge too far, it certainly was if you fell! In this land that time forgot he would fight off pterodactyls with nothing more than his bare hands, his imagination and his courage, tools which would serve him well in his rites of passage in the art of making a man out of a boy. But then he came to the little senses he possessed and thought, perhaps not! It was bad enough being lost in this lost world without being lost inside a lost world within a lost world, that really would be like climbing a mountain and crossing a bridge too far! Having said all that, Gulliver surmised that if he got lost in any of the books in this bookshop, especially the historical ones, this would be the closest he was ever likely to get to travelling back in time. Well, apart from his little excursion into this world of course!
Gulliver wasn’t exactly well read but he wasn’t poorly read either, if that even makes the slightest semblance of sense, and knew Sir Thomas Baskerville was the head of Queen Elizabeth I’s Royal Navy. He also knew Baskerville Hall was the basis for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s book The Hound of the Baskervilles, but that’s another story we don’t really have time for. However, if you have a mind to read it, may I suggest you head for the mighty Amazon and order a copy!
Just imagine, Gulliver thought wistfully, getting lost in one of Shakespeare’s imaginative tales. Oh, he certainly could do that all right, without any problem whatsoever. Imagine himself in the audience at the Globe Theatre with the great unwashed enjoying the dynamic performance of the thespians of the Royal Shakespeare Company. However, the only clue he would have as to what on earth they were wittering on about would be by their body language and by the colourful scenery upon stage. Still, at least back then time still existed and being old before his time he probably would fit in rather nicely if you please. And what’s more, even though he was dyslexic, as hardly anybody could read or write back in Ye Bad Old Days, he would be seen as some sort of literary genius giving William Shakespeare a run for his money! Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps not, Gulliver thought, as his imagination continued to run away with him!
Some unrecorded time later all the ship’s crew were back together and all disappointed they couldn’t continue on with their reading matter, however reluctantly, all agreed that Old Father Time’s course of action was the correct one and that it was time to be on their merry way. So they all gathered together books that they liked, or they thought the ship’s company would like, or they thought they could make a tidy profit from, or they thought would make a good doorstop or boot scraper and then went on their merry way.
Gulliver got several books and almanacs on horticulture and biology for Darwin, although not The Origin of Species, even though several copies of the book were sitting upon the bookshelves. Gulliver didn’t want to freak Darwin out and as he wasn’t sure how time now worked, or didn’t, he wasn’t sure if Darwin would rewrite The Origin, or perhaps he wouldn’t write it at all and would get fed up with nature and become a sail maker instead! Every time a book was taken off the shelf in The Last Bookshop in the World an exact copy replaced it as if by magic, exactly by magic as it happens, or so said the proprietor smiling warmly.
Gulliver also found several books by the wizard Leonardo Da Vinci, one which was entitled Codex Atlanticus, which was a treasure trove of information, drawings, diagrams of helicopter-like vehicles, submersible, even things which looked like flying machines. According to his writings it was just a matter of time before there were self-propped vehicles and as usual he wasn’t wrong.
Later Gulliver was to find out, when talking to the proprietor of the shop, that he had bought an ordinary old oak chest with metal clasps that was said to have belonged to Da Vinci. At first the proprietor of The Last Bookshop in the World thought this was just a fake but, after much reading and research and testing of the 10,000 pieces of papyrus drawings and manuscripts for age, and the handwriting, he found this lost treasure trove was in fact genuine. The old man told Gulliver it was hard to believe the writings and drawing in this chest were one man’s work, for at first glance they appeared to be a compendium of writings of hundreds of writers.
However, the wizened old man said, with a look in his eye as if he had just caught lightning in a jar, as this object was priceless, it was another object that couldn’t be removed from the shop. You were quite welcome to delve into this treasure trove but you couldn’t take any of the contents away with you. Gulliver wished Leonardo had invented a photocopying machine! Gulliver asked the proprietor how this could be, with a curious look upon his face. The proprietor said, it just was, so he should just accept it. After all, time was all mixed up and let that be an end to it. Gulliver took this to mean the equivalent of ‘end of story’. However, regarding Leonardo Da Vinci it was far from end of story!
It had occurred to Gulliver that as Galileo had written a paper on the making of spheres it was he and Leonardo Da Vinci who had designed this antique globe and the workings thereof. However, even in this world, surely that wasn’t possible. Some things had to be impossible, didn’t they? There must be a limit to what was possible for if there wasn’t they may as well take the word ‘impossible’ out of the dictionary. If you took ‘impossible’ out of the equation, what was there left to strive for as it had always been the impossible that made things possible? If you get my continental drift!
Gulliver saw a bookish-looking lad of no age at all take a book off one shelf, strip the book of its dust jacket before putting it on as if it were a coat, as he muttered under his breath, ‘It fits perfectly. Almost as if it were tailormade for me,’ the lad said admiring himself in an antique gold gilt-framed mirror that was standing in the shop.
And if you’re wondering as to what book the lad took the dust jacket off before he put it on, well wonder no more, for the book was called The Emperor’s New Clothes. So the next time you’re given over to wondering, I suggest you take a leaf out of Alice’s book and give it a wide berth!
Gulliver was finding all this hard to take in. The contents of this shop, which from the outside seemed unassuming enough, but when one stepped through the door and looked upon its contents it was literally mind-blowing. Gulliver could almost feel the neocortex and pathways in his head sizzling as he tried to assimilate the information that was now being fed into his brain. At this point in non-time there was a real chance of his head exploding like a champagne supernova. This Gulliver did not want for he had his heart set on his brain being pickled in a jar to end up sitting on a shelf in the Natural History Museum, although for the moment that could wait!
Gulliver also spotted a book called The Antikythera Mechanism by an unknown author. This tatty-looking book, which was almost falling apart, some of the pages even crumbled in the hand, claimed that both Leonardo Da Vinci and Archimedes, the great sphere maker himself, had built this mechanism together. Highly implausible it must be said, but never the less a darned good old-fashioned yarn to read on a long cold dark night in the midst of winter. This instrument is on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens and is said to be an instrument or device that could predict the motions of the sun, the stars and the planets.
The proprietor of The Last Bookshop in the World said the Greeks and the Italians were great ones for writing in code or disguising their works under the text of prayer books, both Da Vinci and Galileo had done this to protect their secrets. The Greeks, who invented the art of stenography, often hid messages under the wax of writing tablets. Later Gulliver wrote in his travelogue that Drake had made a bad joke, saying that it was all Greek to him, before adding, especially Greek!
Gulliver remembered as a child one of his teachers saying that both the British Museum in London and the New Acropolis Museum in Athens were squabbling over the Elgin Marbles. Gulliver wondered why anyone would squabble over a few coloured marbles and, was given over to thinking that perhaps it was the curators of these two-world famous museums that had lost their marbles!
Gulliver also found Freud’s book The Interpretation of Dreams, which was guaranteed to send him off to sleep at night. Perhaps he could buy it and give it to Mr Dreams as a present, that’s if he ever woke from his slumbers. And a book called The Golden Book of Spells, written by an unknown alchemist simply known as Dr Magic, which was either very badly spelt or Gulliver’s dyslexia was playing up again. According to the proprietor, when this book first came out it was so popular it literally flew off the shelves! Gulliver wasn’t sure if the wizened old owner of the shop was yanking on the chain of his fob watch or not.
Gulliver also found a copy of Homer’s Odyssey which features a voyage home that Gulliver hoped the Golden Hind would not be duplicating. As well as the Iliad, which featured the wooden horse, Helen of Troy Paris and the lost city of Troy, which an antiquarian book collector in his world would pay a large fortune for.
As soon as Gulliver heard Troy had been found his heart sank for he knew once any mystery had been solved it completely destroyed the image you had in your head of the place. It was not knowing and wondering that made Troy, Atlantis and the Loch Ness monster special. Gulliver secretly hoped they would never find Atlantis and he was glad in his world that Nessie had found a safe hiding place that nobody could find.
It seemed that in his world there weren’t many more mysteries left to solve and soon, when they solved the mysteries of the deepest oceans and the cosmological oceans of the universe, the big bang and everything, then what!? Nothing, that’s what. Nothing. A big fat zero! Imagine a world with no mystery; how dull such a world would be. How dull? Well, Gulliver had imagined it and he found it to be unimaginably dull, that’s how dull! Unless the scientists were going to invent a time machine, perhaps it was best they all retired before they spoiled things for everyone, thought Gulliver irritably. No doubt soon they would find a magical elixir of life and we would all live for ever. Gulliver couldn’t think of anything worse than living for ever, apart from having to relive his school days, and until he turned twelve for the second time he thought school really was out for ever! To be honest, Gulliver thought that if scientists with their big eggheads couldn’t get their collective heads around a tiny little problem like time travel then they were certainly no Einsteins!
Gulliver also came across a little known work by an author called Plato, a book with the rather unimaginative title of Plato’s Timaeus, but as the condition wasn’t bad he bought it. You never knew, it might turn out to be one of those surprise reads, a real page-turner, a book you couldn’t put down if you tried because you’d spilled some honey on the cover while reading it at the breakfast table, or not! However, Gulliver couldn’t find the book’s twin Critias anywhere in the bookshop and there was supposed to be a third of the trilogy Hermocrates however Plato never put quill to papyrus to write it.
Oh, how authors loved to see their own names in print, Gulliver thought to himself. He also got his hands upon a respectable enough copy of a book called A Dissertation on the Topography of the Plain of Troy written by Charles MacLaren and first published in 1822, or at least it was in his world, although the copy was a second edition. Both books featured the story of the mythical lost city of Atlantis, a story which in Gulliver’s world of 2013 people were divided upon. Some said the story of Atlantis rested entirely upon Plato’s imagination. While others had discovered sunken islands in Greece which they said could well have been the islands which Plato had based his story upon. Some even said that one of these islands was Atlantis and had mapped the streets and towns by the outline of the town on the ocean floor and by the archaeological finds they had dug up there. From reading these books on the journey home to England, Gulliver made a discovery of his own, that Atlantis is an adjective derived from the word ‘Atlas’ which describes a father\daughter relationship. Literally translated, Atlantis means ‘Atlas’s daughter’.
The wizened old proprietor of the bookshop said that Gulliver may be interested in Jacob Bryant’s six-volume encyclopedia entitled Analysis of Ancient Mythology, being the subtitle of: Wherein an Attempt is made to divest Tradition of Fable; and to reduce the truth to its Original Purity. With a title like that, Gulliver joked, no wonder the author needed six books just to fit it all in! Gulliver thanked the wizened old man but said they had to carry the books several miles back to a canoe which, was only made out of bamboo and as he couldn’t swim, he didn’t want the canoe to be so loaded down by weighty books that it sank beneath the weight of them all! The proprietor said that for a small price he could send them by sea mail if he liked, although they might take a while to arrive, if they arrived at all, as the waters in this part of the world were full of pirates.
Gulliver said he would love to have acquired this historic set of encyclopedias as he could use them to stand upon to reach the books on the top shelf of Drake’s library on the Golden Hind! Gulliver also wondered how small this price was so in the end decided against this purchase; it seemed the e-book did have its uses after all! Gulliver kept this thought to himself, as he knew any self-respecting bookshop owner would throw the book at him if they could read his mind!
Gulliver then came across a book which must have had over a thousand pages in it and was so heavy he could hardly lift it up. The book was called The Book of Imagination. With the help of a guide, Gulliver managed to get the book off the bottom shelf and open the heavy cover, which weighed almost as much as a ship’s anchor. Much to Gulliver’s surprise, his eyes were met with nothing, nothing but pristine white pages which appeared to turn themselves as if by magic. Gulliver was lost for words, obviously like the writer, unless of course it was a book by Da Vinci and he had written it in invisible ink.
Gulliver asked the guide why this was the case and he said, and I quote, ‘Well, you know some writers, they’ve got no imagination!’ Of course the guide was just yanking on the chain of his fob watch and said as much before adding. ‘The secret to this book is to concentrate very hard upon the unwritten page and let your imagination do the rest. Before you know it you’ll be making up your own stories, which as soon as they finish will disappear like invisible ink.’ Gulliver had to agree it was a real page-turner!
Gulliver instantly slammed the cover of this weighty book shut, making dust fly all about him, for he remembered what the wizened old owner of the bookshop had told him about getting lost in the story and knew that with his imagination, if he got sucked into this book he would never get out!
Francis Drake purchased several of Shakespeare’s most recently published works in book form for the chief of Gulliver’s Island, one being a signed copy of The Tempest with the great storm and shipwreck that opens the story. And the other being Twelfth Night when the captain tells Viola how her brother tied himself to a floating mast after the vessel went to pieces. Drake also purchased a book called Frankenstein by an unknown writer called Mary Shelley and several romantic novels for Queen Elizabeth I.He also purchased a book for himself entitled Shipwrecked; being shipwrecked was something Drake hadn’t experienced before and hoped that by reading this book he would avoid the pitfalls of doing so in the future.
Several bespoke royal manuscripts illuminated in gold with pictures in them which could definitely be said to be works of art, sat in specially designed glass cases. These priceless books could only be viewed if you donned a pair of white gloves and were prepared to handle them with the utmost care. Some of the manuscripts were predictions of royal futures and one was even said to have been written by Merlin himself, astrology mixed with science. How Queen Elizabeth I would have loved to have got her hands upon this book which was wrapped in a red velvet cover with gold clasps to keep it tightly shut. However, once again these were not to be removed otherwise Drake would have bought the Bedford Hours, one of the rarest medieval books ever written. This priceless book included pictures of the Tower of Babel, Genesis with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and a stunning picture of Noah’s Ark with all the animals going into the ark two by two.
There was also a book upon the shelves called Guide to the Holy Land which Gulliver wanted to look through. Some of these royal manuscripts were bound in what looked like gold covers and were illuminated with so much gold it was hard to lift the covers and turn the pages. All these books and manuscripts literally reeked of history and some, Gulliver mused, reeked of too much history, making you slam the cover back down no sooner had you opened it! The work and detail which had gone into both the drawings and the calligraphy of such manuscripts was quite staggering. Gulliver was later to write this in his travelogue after Drake had showed him these majestic-looking manuscripts.
Gulliver knew enough about antiquarian books to know that in his world this royal manuscript collection was safely housed within the walls of the British Library. It seemed to Gulliver that because these books and manuscripts were bespoke and were to be read by only a chosen few, it made them more valuable. This Gulliver mused must give all authors who only sell a few hundred of their books great comfort, in that their books were rare and one day they would be highly collectable to antiquarian booksellers and as such worth a small fortune, or not! Gulliver found this muse of his quite amusing, although he didn’t think the nine muses would, other than Thalia, the muse of comedy and choral song!
As Gulliver looked through these books, he could imagine kings and queens turning the pages and reading about their own lives. When he turned the pages of these books it felt to Gulliver like he was standing over Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria and Henry VIII, reading over their shoulders, after which they would turn round and say in a voice which wasn’t in the slightest bit amused, ‘Gulliver, how do you feel like reading some horrible history in which you take the starring role? You wouldn’t? Well then, pull your head in before you lose it!’
Gulliver told Drake he thought this bookshop was like stepping back in time, which was strange what with there not being any time in this world to step back into.
Alice got a first edition of Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass, both signed by Lewis Carroll. Gulliver couldn’t believe these books were originals and not fakes. The proprietor of The Last Bookshop in the World had to tell Gulliver three times that this was indeed the case by repeating the line, ‘What I tell you three times is true!’ The wizened old man was obviously a fan of Lewis Carroll too by the sounds of things.
The coxswain and the seaman, who it had turned out was more than able to deal with any situation that came his way, got different versions of the Bible, authors unknown, and several picturebooks on sea creatures and dinosaurs. Old Father Time also got a copy of the Bible, the Old Testament version of course, and several ancient lexicons in Aramaic, as well as a copy of the Dead Sea Scrolls as that was something else you couldn’t remove from the bookshop. Old Father Time also got to read the Eleven Commandments, not ten, as one had recently been found in the belly of an extinct fish by a fisherman in the Red Sea. All the commandments were literally written in stone so you couldn’t remove them from the shop for obvious reasons. Old Father Time was a little concerned he may have broken the commandment which stated you shouldn’t worship any god other than God, which included the gods. Old Father Time had told Gulliver that it was the gods that had interviewed him for the position of Guardian of Time and had eventually given him the job, well, after the obligatory 500-year probation period of course! Here Gulliver wasn’t sure if the ex-Guardian of Time was yanking his timeline or not!
I wish I could tell you what that Eleventh Commandment was, however, if you want to know you’ll have to visit The Last Bookshop in the World, as this is one tablet that you will not be able to get your hands upon as it literally is out of this world! All I would say regarding this subject is use your imagination, it may well help. That’s if the modern world with its technological wonders haven’t dulled it to such an extent that it no longer works properly!
The Eleven Commandments were kept in the mythical golden Ark of the Covenant, otherwise known as the mercy seat, which was apparently found in Jeremiah’s grotto. The first time the Ark was opened it nearly blew The Last Bookshop in the World off the face of the earth. According to the proprietor, this was all written in stone in the original ledger of The Last Book Shop in the World, unfortunately it had mysteriously disappeared into thin air after the last stocktake sometime before time ended, he said, or so it was written ‘as they say’. After some extensive restoration work The Last Bookshop in the World was restored to its former glory.
These religious antiquarian antiquities were said by some to be just a good story and nothing more and the real gods were the ones who had written the rules of Compendium. These were the same gods who had deserted this world for another so how much store you wanted to place in them was really up to you. Old Father Time hoped this was nothing more than a good story as he had no wish to be struck down by a lightning bolt with his name upon it, as in his mind he still had a lot of living to do.
As the proprietor of the shop went to lift the lid of the Ark of the Covenant, some people in the shop dived for cover expecting all hell to break loose. One woman exclaimed, ‘God help us all!’ Another old man said, ‘Have mercy upon our souls!’ After this firework display turned out to be somewhat of a damp squib, metaphorically speaking that is, the old man looked towards the heavens and said, ‘Thank God!’
Old Father Time also picked up a book called The Chronicles of Time (Time is Your Oyster) by Reginald Clocksmith, almost certainly a pen name, and a book called Clocks throughout Time by Wilton H. Timepiece.
When Old Father Time first picked this book up and opened it, it fell open at a page about the first pendulum clock, which was originally made by a man named Christian Huygens, a clockmaker of some repute, who finished the clock at 12.32 on Christmas of 1656. Well, clockmakers had always been known for their preciseness. And a book so rare that only one other copy had ever been seen outside The Last Bookshop in the World a book entitled, A Compendious History of Board Games throughout the Ages by Algernon Merryweather. Although only two copies of this book were printed as the printing press at the time it went to press went up in smoke, that and all the workers on the printing press were press-ganged into sailing in Queen Elizabeth I’s fleet.
As there were far too many books to carry or fit in the canoe, all the books were put on Drake’s tab on trust of a later payment, and as Queen Elizabeth appeared to trust Drake, this was good enough for the proprietor of The Last Bookshop in the World. The proprietor informed the purchasers of the books that they would make their way to the buyers in six working weeks, no more, no less, carried by the ever-reliable postal service known as the carrier pigeon, which in actuality was a giant albatross! It seemed to Drake’s mind that having to do such a Herculean task as this meant the poor bird permanently had an albatross around its neck!
Before Gulliver left the shop he ran into a man who introduced himself as Jonathan Swift. To say Gulliver was taken aback would be the understatement of all time, although in this world that would just be an understatement. Mr Swift asked Gulliver if he could get a book high up on the shelf for him as he suffered from vertigo and didn’t want to use the stepladder provided. Gulliver was happy to oblige. You may be interested to know the book Gulliver procured for Mr Jonathan Swift, well, to satisfy your curiosity, the book was a travel book called A Poet’s Bazaar written by Mr Hans Christian Andersen. Gulliver told Mr Swift he loved his book Gulliver’s Travels and that his name was Gulliver and at this exact moment in time he was on his travels around the globe. He also told Mr Swift that he’d been christened after the character in his book. Swift by name and swift by nature, Mr Swift apologized to Gulliver as he hurriedly bid farewell to him. The reason for this hurried departure might well have had something to do with the fact that he hadn’t even written the book yet.
Later Gulliver was to ponder on this unexpected meeting when he told Mr Swift what he’d told him, which was that he loved his book and that his name was the same as the surname of the character in this book. And at the time he told Mr Swift this fact, his face was both one of puzzlement and a picture. Gulliver was then given to wonder if it wasn’t this chance meeting that had given Jonathan Swift the idea for the book Gulliver’s Travels in the first place. And his hurried departure was not because he thought Gulliver was one library short of some books, or not all the (library) ticket, but that he was hurrying home to begin the story! Was this so unlikely? Certainly not, as hadn’t Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe been told a story in an inn about some sailor being washed up upon a desert island, and then went home and wrote a similar story? What’s more, after a chance encounter with a Persian fisherman, hadn’t one of the writers of the Bible gone home and written the Noah’s Ark story? Yes, I agree the whole thing’s extremely fishy!
On this historic meeting, Gulliver surmised that Mr Swift was around about fifty-five years of age so he could and could not have already written the book. And like Raleigh having to rediscover tobacco and the humble potato, Jonathan Swift may well have had to rewrite Gulliver’s Travels too! It was hard to get your head around all this and it certainly was all going round and round Gulliver’s head like a neverending circumnavigation of the globe.
‘Where’s Hans?’ Gulliver said looking all about him.
‘He got sucked into that Brothers Grim book about fairytales and to my knowledge he’s still in there!’ said Old Father Time raising a bushy eyebrow or two.
‘We can’t just abandon him!’ Gulliver said compassionately.
‘Look, we haven’t the time to stay here any longer. Anyway, didn’t you say Hans has been to Constantinople before and he’s a travel writer? He’ll find his way home, I’m sure of it,’ said Old Father Time sounding very assure of himself.
‘Do you think so?’ said Gulliver nervously.
‘Yes, I’m 100% sure of it,’ Old Father Time said reassuringly.
‘Well, if you think he’ll be all right,’ continued Gulliver, rather wishing Old Father Time had been 110% sure of this fact rather than only 100% sure of it!
‘Look, if a travel writer can’t find his way home, what hope have any of us got?’ Old Father Time said logically.
And so they left Hans Christian Andersen in the same state they found him, in a world of his own. Except he wasn’t on his own, he was in the world of imagination and in that world you can never truly be said to be alone.
Gulliver thanked the proprietor of The Last Bookshop in the World and said the time they’d spent there was literally and literary out of this world. It was just a pity he’d never got to chat with Mr Dreams, who by now was resting his head against the bookshelf snoring extremely loudly. The entire crew said they would honour their contracts and the wizened old man said he would expect nothing less as he knew an Englishman’s word was his bond.
Later Gulliver was to make an entry into his travelogue that he almost needed a separate travelogue for his travels inside The Last Bookshop in the World. And he wrote that he most certainly would have done had they spent any more time there, although if you wanted to be pedantic, as there was no time to speak of, they didn’t spend any time there at all. Gulliver added that the time they had spent in The Last Bookshop in the World had passed so quickly it felt like they had been in there no time at all. So although this narrative in his travelogue sounded very much like gobbledegobble it actually made perfect sense, in a manner of speaking!
All I can say is that as an outside observer it was just fortunate that Gulliver had not picked up the Bible in The Last Bookshop in the World and been sucked into its pages, otherwise we would all be here till kingdom come!