saunter like a pro

i love chinatown and i love books actually. i took a train there today to search for possible christmas gifts and they were playing what sounded like stina nordenstam on the stereo and i asked the counter girl, and she said - no, it's isobel campbell - and it rang a bell but i got distracted by the lovely things around me - so exquisite i really love this shop - if kinokuniya runs out of nylon and i really need to get it they have it here in abundance, plus the wallpaper magazines with the special covers for this year and later as i walked gingerly down the staircase of the shophouse i remembered - isobel campbell, part of belle and sebastian and one half of the cd - ballad of the broken seas - i got mingyao to get for me. i didn't like all the tracks in there but i liked isobel campbell - her name rolls off my tongue like cream. they were playing her other cds and i will get them sometime, maybe it was the location - in such a shop with the storm-washed sunlight flooding in blessing the beautiful books that stand obediently on crisp white shelves and historic typewriters peeking out from under on the parquet floor and pretty photographs pegged on string winding around the shop - i say, i know, it feels like a very elfin encounter - ah. in my head only.

hence about six hours plugged in to the ipod i did my christmas shopping today - spent a long time in muji paragon - again - notebook paradise. spiffy top in topshop but i'm now officially a pauper so i left the shop without it - it reappears constantly in my fantasies though. this year's last minute christmas tree - i think it'll have to be in greyboard - 'it' colour of the yearend.