After residents in Jericho were placed quite suddenly on the Environment Agency flood map, I wandered down Walton Street to find out what they thought.

On the way back from my interview session, I called in briefly to the Albion Beatnik bookshop, close to the junction with Little Clarendon Street, where a new colourful mural has been erected.

My eyes almost popped out of my head when I spotted a huge pile of relatively cheap John Buchan novels in the second-hand section.

I picked out Mr Standfast and one or two other gems. There was also a Biggles book which would have gone down a treat and a paperback copy of Robert Bolano's The Savage Detectives.

But for some reason, I got stage fright and left the store without buying anything.

I returned a couple of days later to find that someone else had bought Mr Standfast, the third instalment in Buchan's Richard Hannay sequence, so I bought The Island of Sheep, the last Hannay tale, as a consolation prize.

As I searched fruitlessly for the missing Mr Standfast, I noticed beneath the table of delights that there was a whole stack of Robert Louis Stevenson books.

In a bid to avoid spending too much, I quit while I was ahead, but not before the affable owner informed me that John Buchan was the former godfather of a friend of the family.

I shall peruse my copy of Buchan's autobiography, Memory Hold-the-Door, to see if I can spot any connection.

I have only been to the store a few times but I like the combination of new and second-hand books, the jazz music, jazz CDs and books on Bloomsbury and the Beats.

I was sorry to have to report this week that Waterfield's book shop in the High Street is to close in September after trading in Oxford since the 1970s.

I have to admit that I have not been the most regular customer because I find its location a little too far removed from my regular city centre beat.

While I was searching for a website for the Albion Beatnik shop on the web, I stumbled across a very professional book blog by an Oxford woman who is also a customer at Albion Beatnik.

The blog is called From the Desk of Bee Drunken and there's plenty of it. The writer is clearly a book addict who manages to find time to look after her family, travel the world, bake cakes and do the garden.

I'm afraid the Page Turner can't promise such strenuous exertions but I can promise that I will return, at some point, to the Albion Beatnik.

Perhaps I will combine it with a trip to Branca with my wife and kids, where I will inevitably order egg and chips. Have a good weekend.