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The QI Bookshop of Life

from Matt Westcott at Geek Pop by Matt Westcott

/

lyrics

The QI Bookshop
On Turl Street in Oxford
Used to go about their trade
In a Quite Interesting way
They thought fiction and non-fiction
Was a meaningless distinction
And reorganised their stacks
In accordance with this fact

They didn't have a cookery section
But you'd find Delia, Nigella
And "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" too
On a shelf marked: "Omnivores"

An eclectic selection
Curated to perfection
In a minimum of space
For a polymath of taste
Persistently they would resist
The urge to turn all populist
Like other shops in town
They would never stock Dan Brown

They were the plucky independent
Taking on the might of Amazon
And Waterstones and Borders all in one
They closed down within the year

Fast-forward three years later
I was sorting through some clutter
While preparing to move home
To a flat just down the road
The new place, it was pretty small
With not much room to fit it all
And so my plans were based
Around creative use of storage space

All those trinkets and mementos
That I couldn't bear to throw away
Would stow away in the bottom kitchen drawer
Or underneath the bed

As I packed it into boxes
My mind started to wander
As I mentally attached
A snappy label to each batch
And soon it slowly dawned on me
I'd built a whole taxonomy
In which to organise
All the details of my life

Some notes I'd scribbled on a beermat
Filed under W for Whimsy
Or maybe T for Tableware instead
Or "Things they'll publish when I'm dead"

But you don't need a rolodex to realise your dreams
Don't let yourself be pigeonholed by someone else's schemes
For want of a catalogue, your memories won't fade
There is no Dewey number for the friendships that we've made
So throw away your index cards, cause nobody will mind
If you don't fit an archetype that's neat and well-defined
Dividing on a pie chart is no way to lead your life
As long as you keep living it, you're doing quite all right

The QI Bookshop
On Turl Street in Oxford
Used to go about their trade
In a Quite Interesting way
It's long been redeveloped now
But many still remember how
they rearranged their shelves
In a way they chose themselves

But whatever schemes they used
To enlighten and bemuse
The customers who wandered through their doors:
They'll never be as interesting as yours

credits

from Matt Westcott at Geek Pop, released March 10, 2011

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