Chapter House Books Gone ?

As usual during the warmer months my wife and I visit the beautiful beaches on the Mornington Peninsula.  On our drive there we often stop at a few secondhand book stores along the way.  One of those shops is Chapter House Books in Mornington.  Here's some photos from one of my last visits on February 1st, 2023.  I'm sure I've visited since but I can't find the photos.

In August 2022 I noted that Chapter House was displaying a sign in the window "Business For Sale".  I assumed the business would be sold, someone else would take over and life would go on as usual.  Our visit last week proved me wrong as I was saddened to discover the book shop was gone... replaced by a skin clinic.

I'm not sure if the shop has gone altogether.  Perhaps it's moved online as their website still exists.   Or maybe it's moved to another street address.  I'd like to remain optimistic because otherwise another physical secondhand book store has closed.  And with Books By The Bay, just around the corner in Mornington, rarely open it's not a good sign for the only two secondhand book stores in the suburb.

Missing Aston Martin DBS + Trigger Mortis On Oz Shelves

My Mum contacted me a fortnight ago as she'd read that a real James Bond car was temporarily on display in a building near the City until mid-September.  The car in particular was an Aston Martin DBS's featured in the film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service".

So last Friday during my lunch break I drove to the VACC building to check out the vehicle.  I've seen this car twice before: once at Armageddon Expo 2012 when I also met George Lazenby and the other time at the "Designing 007 - 50 Years Of Bond Style" Exhibition in 2013.  The car is owned by fellow Melburnian, Sigi Zidziunas, and from my recollection of the conversation I had with him in 2013 he's owned the car for several years after importing it from Portugal.  He quickly gained provenance and has displayed the car at a number of conventions and exhibitions. And I have to say... every time I see this car it looks fantastic.

Unfortunately though I wasn't to see it that Friday.  Mid-September arrived a little early and the car had been removed from display on Thursday, September 10, the day before my visit.  I still managed to grab some snaps of the lobby where it was parked just 24 hours earlier.  (Maybe I could just photoshop it in !)

Here's some snaps I took of the same DBS back in 2013 at the "Designing 007 - 50 Years Of Bond Style" Exhibition at the Melbourne Museum.  There were actually two identical DBS's used during filming of the 1969 Bond film but I'm not sure where the other one is located.

Fortunately I was not completely out of luck last Friday.  This English Second Language copy of "For Your Eyes Only" published by Longman in 1982 arrived in the mail.  This is one of several ESL books I've purchased recently.  I think I'm getting close to collecting them all now.

With some warmer weather arriving last Saturday my wife and I decided to drive to Mornington. As well as visiting a few gift shops we also dropped into Farrell's Bookshop.  A great independant book store with a wide variety of new books I was pleased to see copies of  the newly released Bond novel "Trigger Mortis" by Anthony Horowitz on the shelf.  This was the first time I had physically seen the book.

 

 

We also travelled just down the road to the second-hand store Books By The Bay where many Bond paperbacks sat on the shelf but unfortunately I had them all.  Still it was good to pay a visit.

And finally... I noticed this pile of "Carte Blanche" books on a shelf in a local department store.  They were 25% off but considering "Trigger Mortis" has just been released and this book was published in 2011 I'd be increasing that discount.