Stuck on the front door to Cofion is a sign that reads ‘ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK’, and peering through into the shop it is clear why. The bookshop occupies just one small room, that I imagine started as an organised, typical, bookshop. However, over the years books upon books have been stacked on each other, until what remains resembles less a bookshop, more a hoarders dumping room.
It is easy to pick up books on the tops of the stacks, but to pick one from the middle, or worse, the bottom, would be like trying to pull off the riskiest move you dared to make playing Jenga. As you ease yourself along the row of books, a single move could cause an avalanche that would surely bury you.
This chaos, rather than being off-putting, is entrancing.
What treasures have been lost, out of reach but so close; just a hair’s breadth away. The mystery kept me digging. Here, you can become an archaeologist of literature, the further back through the piles you go the further you delve into time, finding books that have surely been unseen and unread for years. You would have to spend hours however, to reach those kept behind, hidden at the bottom, hours I unfortunately didn’t have. Although I did come away with a lovely copy of Under Milk Wood (Thomas visited Tenby and in a letter to a friend dismissed it as a ‘filthy town’) and a photo album from a family’s holiday in the 1930s.
This is a bookshop that demands a second visit. And a third. And a fourth. But first you will need to give it a first, which I highly recommend you do.
Bookshops for Bookworms 