treasure hunt: a winter's tale

I’m searching for something…

I am searching in the rails of Topshop, through the lycra and plastic leather, corduroy and cotton t-shirts, and the new home section with the make-your-own lampshades.

I’m searching when I take photographs and photographs on Bond Street. The Christmas windows are so icy, so velvet…Miu Miu’s window dresser puts a row of books by Robert Louis Stevenson on a dressing table, as though the Master of Ballantyne were a pair of shoes.

A backcloth of yellow and gold. Scottish Romanticism and fashion and the echo of treasure, but a treasure undefined. No sparkling jewels, no pirates for Ben Gunn alone.

And when I think about those books, sitting on that dressing table, in the middle of Bond Street, I type Robert Louis Stevenson into Google, and discover that this author died 111 years ago today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Louis_Stevenson