June/July is that time of year when a handful of old time Cambridge city dwellers find ourselves playing host to Michael Cahn who moved, a few years ago, to live in California.

I first met Micheal some 21 years ago when he was collecting his 2 year old daughter from our local nursery. He was holding her tightly in one arm to keep her from wriggling and he stretched out the other,  being most insistent that he take my son home for the rest of the afternoon so the two children could play. And there began a long and rich friendship between our families.

It was around this time that Michael began book collecting and founded Plurabelle Books, a second hand internet bookshop. The ‘shop’ has moved several times around the city but is now located in a warehouse by the railway off Coldhams Lane, in the company of CamCabs, Hilary’s, the vegetable whole saler, The Centre for Computing History, The Belfast Bed Super Store and St. Barnabas Press.

The Plurabelle website indicates that the shop ‘has books you don’t need in a place you can’t find’! The statement is not quite true, but it s not quite false either. Having recently cleared a large west London house that was stacked to the rafters with stuff, a household where everything, from beads, to bones and of course books were collected and carefully stored and certainly never thrown out, there was something quite reassuring in visiting this ramshackle warehouse of past loved, past studied and cherished books. A short bike ride from the centre of town, you won’t be disappointed in the reception you will receive, especially if the book seller is in town.