JEFF TOWNS’ POP-UP PONTCANNA BOOKSHOP | INTERVIEW
Welsh bibliophile (specialising in Dylan Thomas) Jeff Towns has vacated his festival-fave Mobile Bookstore for the winter – but he and his books have popped up in Cardiff just in time for Christmas…
Jeff Towns is an author, broadcaster and seller of second-hand, rare and antiquarian books, and it’s the latter role that’s kept him occupied for some half a century now. In his time he’s sold literature to Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Mick Jagger and Pierce Brosnan, if it’s celeb names that turn your head, but his wares have always offered great value for readers on a budget. None more so than his latest location, the Lufkin coffee shop in Pontcanna, Cardiff – a pop-up arrangement with an “honesty” option, where one pays into a charity box when they leave. Additionally, the Kings Road Yard, where Lufkin is based, hosts a Christmas market every weekend over the next few weeks, where you can buy craft, jams, bread, fruit and veg, even Christmas trees.
This actually isn’t your first time as a Pontcanna bookseller, correct?
At some point in the early 70s I had a bookshop in Pontcanna – I wasn’t long out of college and just starting out as a bookseller. I think it was where Beti Biggs is now, or maybe next door in the hairdressers. Cardiff has changed a lot in the last 50 years, but Pontcanna always had interesting, quirky little shops.
What’s happened to Dylan’s Mobile Bookstore, your old library bus?
It was a real hit at the big arts festivals across the UK over the last decade – basically we’d rock up anywhere where we thought we could have fun, create a little mischief and find interesting people who hopefully love books as much as we do. But the pandemic wiped out live events and mass gatherings in 2020, so the BookBus is currently off the road. Furloughed in a field on the Gower, actually!
So how has lockdown been for your business until now?
It was fun for a while. It definitely felt people were reading more during that first lockdown, and there was a gentle move back towards shopping local and supporting independents. I had all sorts of customers getting in touch via the Instagram account – Gruff Rhys bought a few books on Californian slang. Cerys Matthews got involved snapping up some old Welsh folk music. It was just a lovely way to stay in touch with old customers and friends during pretty strange times.
And how do you feel about selling books face-to-face again?
“Well, interestingly I’m not going to be there in the pop-up shop too much. I’m in my 70s so I’m laying low and hanging on for the vaccine. We’re actually going to have an Honesty Box in the shop – a sort of old-fashioned self-service checkout system where you just drop the money in a box on your way out. It’s based on trust. The kids’ books are free, so you can just take those, and the rest of the books are all £2, so it’s pretty simple.
We’ve also got a few hundred of our famous #BlindDateBookClub books wrapped up and ready and all the money from those is going straight to Shelter Cymru. Ideal stocking fillers.
The pop-up bookshop is open daily 9am-2pm. Info: www.dylans.com