After number-crunching percentages for a story about school league tables, I was in need of a little light literary refreshment, so I dashed along the towpath and up New Road to the municipal library at Westgate.
After starting the very promising The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch, I was hoping the county-council run library would have a copy of the collected memoirs of John Bayley, Murdoch's husband.
Sure enough there was an Abacus paperback edition of the chunky volume, The Iris Trilogy, which incorporates the books Iris, Iris and Friends and Widower's House.
In the library's for sale section I picked up a copy of RF Delderfield's 1967 novel Cheap Day Return for 20p. Come Home Charlie and Face Them by the same author is one of my favourite yarns so I thought I would give this a spin.
Then I nipped along Queen Street, down Cornmarket and left into George Street where I made my way to the Gloucester Green Thursday market.
One of the book dealers was selling Murdoch first editions for £10 a pop, including the mid-seventies novel The Sacred and Profane Love Machine.
I was sorely tempted — by the title alone — but reminded myself that I was not in the rare books market and, much to my regret, put the collectable tome back on the shelf.
Back at base in Newspaper House, Osney Mead, I met a visiting journalist from Le Figaro newspaper in Paris, who wanted to look around the newsroom.
She said I could drop in at Le Figaro any time, and I look forward to combining a visit there to a trip to Shakespeare & Co, probably Paris's most famous bookstore. Apparently you can stay there if you haven't booked a hotel.
If you have ever been to Shakespeare & Co, do let me know what you picked up there.
And which Iris Murdoch novels should I read first? I'm so tickled by The Black Prince I'm tempted to go through the card.