Just when I think my brain can't fit anything new in, and that there is nothing new in my little world to discover, the universe shows me just how wrong I am.

I had booked a massge for today and coming home involved me walking down a street in London which, although I have always known exists,  I have never really been down it: Caledonian Road.

I know it as a landmark and have walked or bussed past the end of it possibly thousands of time, and maybe even walked a few yards into it, but never really explored the area and today took the time to do so.

When I came out of my masssage my main focus was on getting home to get on with some work, so I bustled along not really taking notice of where I was and then bam- I was hit by the fact it was a beautiful sunny day, I was walking over a bridge over a canal and perhaps I should do the visual equivalent of stopping to smell the roses (stare at the roses?).

Now I had come to my senses I began to meander along taking the time to look at the houses, restaurants and shops all around me and realised that although this street was so close to what must be one of the busiest areas in London, if not the UK, it had a small community vibe about it.

I was still in a rush but took the time to read the menus of all the restaurants I walked past, take a photo of the amount of green surrounding a house, and pop into two shops.

The first one I visited was Drink, Shop & Do which does exactly what it says on the tin.

The entrance tempts you in with its display of jewellery on vintage furniture along with ice-cream and jars of sweets for sale by weight. Then it's up the stairs to the 'drink' part where you can sit for a cup of tea or coffee, or something more alcoholic, or even eat. Who wouldn't want to sit here with friends enjoying afternoon tea and learning something new?

They run a variety of classes, demonstrations and events so I hope to be back in the near future.

Fun as this place was, the next shop I visited blew my mind away as I felt I had walked into another world.

I love visiting book shops and back when I was working outside the home I used pop into one a few times a week to peruse what was new, soak up the atmosphere and feed my habit. Now I work at home, and commute a lot less, my reading time is more limited and I struggle just to keep up with proof-reading, essential work reading and some magazines, so books rarely feature in my life anymore. But I still love to visit book shops.

I especially love to visit them on my travels as each country and area has such a different range of books that you feel don't exist in your loal shops. And they often don't. American bookshops are always interesting as they seem to contain so many different subject areas and varieties in each subject that we're not exposed to here in the UK. Here book shops, where they still exist (Borders shut down years ago and we don't have Barnes and Noble, Books a Million etc) are either mid-size chains which seem to just be full of just best-sellers, celebrity biographies and chick-lit or alternatively small independent shops which I love wandering in as they introduce me to worlds and books I never knew existed. But from necessity their ranges are limited and I find I often leave wanting more.

From memory the last bookshop I visited was in Tucson and there all the books on American history drew me in. Before that it was in New York where the sheer amount of different cook books, life-style subjects etc mesmerised me and I can't wait to sit in there again.

Whilst I still buy books, unfortunately usually online as it's mainly bead books or niche interest books I want and I can't always find the ones I want in local shops, nothing beats browsing through them in person.

The bookshop I walked into today was Housmans which sells itself as 'London's premier radical bookshop'. I hadn't spotted that before I wandered in and so innocently began looking around for the craft section but soon my brain realised something wasn't quite right.

I don't know what it was that clued me in that this shop was different. Maybe it was the lack of displays of air-brushed faces on celebrity books? The non-existance of shelves of Jamie Oliver cookbooks? No tables covered in '3 for 2' signs trying to enourage me to buy books which would take me into a world of women juggling friendship, mother-hood, work and love-lives all whilst over-coming dramas and managing to look gorgeous at the same time.

Here the books just looked different. There were titles I had never heard of before, subject areas I never imaged existed, covers which baffled me and bylines which were surely written in another language. I loved it.

I spent so long in here browsing the different categories of books, looking at magazines and zines, and exploring new worlds. Part of me was excited by it all, but a lot of me was overwhelmed.

I often find this when I discover something new, any new world, whether it be a polical area, a new craft or even just needing to learn some new software. It can all seem so over-whelming that at first I just want to put my head in my hands and hide. Here I found that so strongly. If there was a book I was interested in my mind soon raced ahead to the worry that I couldn't just dip my toe in but would have to know all there was on the subject, spend so many hours (days, weeks, months and years) reading up about it, getting involved and feeling inadequate.

It's the same type of thing I do when I see anything new- my mind immediately races ahead to all the possible negatives even if they may not apply, or won't for years.  For example if I see a gorgeous ball of yarn my mind races onto 'What will I use it for? I can't knit anyway. When will I learn? Whatever I make won't fit. It'll be a waste. I don't know how many balls I'll need. I can't read patterns. Knitting is not for me. Will my tension be too tight? When will I find the time to do it? and a million other worries.

Here my mind was racing but I wanted to dip my toe in so I bought a copy of MsLexia (mentioned to me last week by Lisa Margreet) and took home a copy of the delightfully weird and interesting Kittens. It's from the London wing of Junge-Linke (description here translated from German) called the ‘Wine and Cheese Appreciation Society of Greater London’. Looking at that will give you an idea of what the whole bookshop was like.

Mind fully blown, it was time to head home to work until I headed out in the evening for even more education.

The Association of Art Historians recently began a seies of events designed to help introduce their work to a wider audience. These consist of talks in a pub in Camden and when I found out about them, and that the next planned one was on taxidermy, I knew I had to be there!

Unfortunately the planned talk was cancelled due to the speak being unwell but instead we got to listen to Matt Lodder's talk entitled 'Not Just for Sailors: A Sceptical Look at Media Perceptions of Tattooing in the West'. I adore tattoos (as much as I love taxidermy) so this was perfect for me.

Matt's talk was fascinating and included many great pictures. I knew something about tattoos being the preserve of sailors and the 'under-class' being a myth but it was interesting to hear evidence and discussions to prove other wise and which talked about how that myth developed. Did you know that Winston Churchill was meant to have a tattoo? No-one is sure if he did, but his mum certaintly had one. As did Edward 7th and his sons George 5th and Prince Albert the Duke of Clarence. Throughout history tattoos have come in and out of fashion, but have been consistently done by all social classes and types of people. One of the most fascinating photos we were shown was this one of Aimee Crocker (Mrs Jackson Gouraud) who was meant to have full sleeve arm tattoos of demons. What a woman! Just reading about her has worn me out.

The great day was capped off with a sighting of one of Antony Gormley's Event Horizon figures on the roof of the Roundhouse.