Hello everybody, Oliver G here from the Earful Tower podcast, proudly brought to you by all the members on Patreon and Substack, who keep this thing spinning.

Thank you for being a member. Now, in this episode, you're going to hear the voice of myself and Penelope Fletcher who is a beloved and I mean beloved bookshop owner in

the sixth hour on this morning right by the Luxembourg Gardens if you've been book shopping in

Paris you've probably met her she runs the red wheelbarrow and now the red balloon two doors down so two bookshops all with

english language books and uh with a beautiful park right there what can i say this episode is

from the archives first so when i interviewed her i didn't really know her anywhere near as well

as i do now and i just want to sort of set the scene a little.

Since this episode came out, my wife and I have made four children's books. And those children's

books, people often ask me, where can I get those books? And the answer, the most surefire

bet of where you can find all four of them has always been

the red balloon. They always take a big order. They always have them right as you walk in, often

in the window at the front. So I've sort of, I guess I've developed a great relationship with

Penelope over the years. And I just wanted to give her bookshop

a nice shout out again. In this episode, you hear her recommending a big handful of books. You can

find all of the titles in the show notes. And as for Penelope herself, like, it's quite regular

that people, I mean, I was doing a walking tour the other day and someone

was talking about how they went in to see Penelope in the bookshop after having met her

at her Marais address years previously. So she has an effect on you, you know? And I was thinking

of a little anecdote to set the scene is once, one sort of fall, autumn

afternoon, I came into the shop and I just caught an autumn leaf that had formed from one of

those big plane trees, I guess.

And I came in, I said, ha, holding the leaf.

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