Back in 2008, the Shop Manager of Barter Books, David Champion, went scouting
around the premises to find more badly needed office space. And he not only found it, he
found a whole room - a room no-one really knew existed. (There were no windows
and the access door wasn´t on the bookshop side of the central platform.) As
the shop founder, Mary Manley, would be among the first to benefit from this new office
space he immediately sou
ght her
out. This would be great news! On their way to the room, David warned Mary that the
room, was virtually derelict. And so it was. After turning the large
old-fashioned iron key in the lock, David slid open the heavy door to reveal a room seemingly untouched by time since the last train had left Alnwick Station almost
half a century before. For a moment, Mary was speechless. All the more as this lost room revealed yet more suprises: first, attached to the 
far wall was a magnificent green fern miraculously alive after all these years thanks to
water from a nearby leaking drain pipe and light from a totally unexpected source, a large
glass skylight. "Look", said David, "our new office!"
"No", said Mary, looking from the fern up towards the skylight, the sun
streaming into the
lost room even then conjuring up something she had wanted far longer than a desk, a
chair, a lamp: "Our new Buffet!".
