The Diary of a Bookseller Read online

  Till total £131.33

  10 customers

  THURSDAY, 20 MARCH

  Online orders: 4

  Books found: 4

  Bum Bag Dave came in shortly after the shop opened and bought three books from the aviation section. He is a knowledgeable character, scruffy and bushily bearded, and slightly paranoid that a firm of local solicitors has got it in for him, for some reason. His nickname derives from the fact that he is always adorned with at least two bum bags, one of which hangs around his neck, while the other is around his waist. On special occasions he has several more, and nearly always has a suitcase or rucksack too. He lives in nearby Sorbie and travels around all day on the bus, making use of whatever free facilities are available – the library and such. As he was leaving today, he asked me what time the bus to Whithorn leaves. When I told him that I had no idea, he replied, ‘You ought to know that sort of thing. You’re supposed to be providing a public service.’ This is news to me. He also has a digital watch that beeps every few minutes and at least one mobile phone that seems to be constantly emitting various irritating noises.

  In the early afternoon an elderly man telephoned. He had found a book we are selling online for £3 and wanted to buy it directly. Due to his bad hearing and a lot of confusion, the whole process took half an hour. While he was on the telephone the postman appeared and removed the five bags of random books.

  Bum Bag Dave was still shuffling about with his various beeping devices at 5.15 p.m. and asked if we have a section on pets. I told him, yes, but we were closed. At 5.25 p.m. he was still wandering about the shop, muttering about lawyers ripping him off.

  Till total £107.49

  14 customers

  FRIDAY, 21 MARCH

  Online orders: 5

  Books found: 4

  Nicky was back in working today. We had the usual argument about her making a mess and putting books on the wrong shelves. She threatened to quit, which she usually does about once a month.

  At lunchtime I left for Samye Ling, the Tibetan Buddhist retreat in Eskdalemuir. En route I picked up Anna from Dumfries railway station for a break from her London life.

  Samye Ling has been considerably enlarged since I last visited twenty years ago, and is a spectacular incongruity in the bleak Scottish moorland, speckled with golden Buddhas, pagodas and colourful temples and buildings, as well as a smattering of semi-derelict Portakabins and other relics of the centre’s infancy. We found the library, and met Maggy, the librarian – a woman in her sixties in a wheelchair.

  The library is new and is a massive unshelved room with piles of books on the floor. I went through the stock they want to dispose of and offered her £150. She clearly expected more, but when I told her that I was quite happy to leave them so that they could ask someone else in to look at them, there was a chorus of ‘No!’ from the other volunteers working there, so I had to take all the rubbish too, but there was some reasonable stock among it – a general mix of fiction and non-fiction, the sort of thing you’d normally find in someone’s house rather than what you might expect from the library of a Tibetan monastery. No doubt they have taken out all the material that would be appropriate for them to keep in their collection.

  Anna was completely smitten with Samye Ling – the contrast between the landscape and the architecture, even between different parts of the place, some of which looked genuinely oriental while others looked as though they might have been built by the council shortly after the end of the Second World War.

  We drove back to Wigtown and Anna’s demeanour relaxed as we grew closer to the shop. Her first instinct when she enters the shop is to find Captain, the cat, and within moments they were happily reunited.

  The transformer on one of the lights in the Scottish room has blown. I am sick of changing light bulbs on those strings of lights, so bought three used French brass chandeliers from eBay.

  Isabel came in to do the accounts. She and her husband have a farm near Newton Stewart, and Isabel is proficient in the accounting package SAGE. She has agreed to organise my accounts for me, thus relieving me of the most dreaded task of the week. She normally comes on Wednesday, but one of her daughters was performing in a concert this week, so she postponed. Her parting words today were ‘You’ve got lots of money in your account.’ Nobody has ever used those words in that order when speaking to me before.

  Till total £122

  11 customers

  SATURDAY, 22 MARCH

  Online orders: 3

  Books found: 3

  The sun shone all day, and it was warm enough to open the front door. Nicky arrived at her customary hour (fifteen minutes late), and we started to unload the boxes of books from Samye Ling. Nicky has found a company called Cash for Clothes, which pays £50 a ton for used books. She booked them to collect from the shop on Wednesday so we should be able to dispose of much of the rubbish from the Samye Ling deal.

  A few weeks ago a woman bought a copy of Where No Man Cries, by Emma Blair. She told me, to my surprise, that Blair was not in fact a woman, but was a 6-foot 3-inch beer-drinking, chain-smoking Glaswegian man called Iain Blair who had only achieved success with his romantic novels when he gave himself a female nom de plume. Blair’s books have been among the most borrowed books from Scottish libraries in the past twenty years. Before becoming a writer, Blair had been an actor. Apparently his career ended abruptly when, after being called to audition for a part in Raiders of the Lost Ark, he was kept waiting for so long that when Steven Spielberg eventually came into the room and said ‘Can you come back tomorrow?’ he replied, ‘No, I fucking cannot.’ He died in 2011.

  The chandeliers arrived just as Norrie was in the shop to collect some paint that had been delivered here by mistake. He offered to take them away and get them working again, as they have seen better days.

  Till total £160.38

  17 customers

  MONDAY, 24 MARCH

  Online orders: 8

  Books found: 5

  Just as I was returning from the kitchen with my cup of tea, a customer with polyester trousers about six inches too short and a donkey jacket almost knocked it out of my hand and asked, ‘Have you ever had a death in here? Has anyone ever died falling off a stepladder in the shop?’ I told him, ‘Not yet, but I was hoping today might be my lucky day.’

  In the emails today was one from a former employee, Sara, who worked for me during school holidays a few years ago: ‘Yo Bitch-tits, I need a reference. Here’s the form attached. Make it good, you bastard or I will come and get you.’ So I wrote this and emailed it to her.

  Tel. 01988 402499 www.the-bookshop.com

  17 North Main Street, Wigtown DG8 9HL

  Monday, March 24, 2014

  TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

  REFERENCE FOR SARA PEARCE

  Sara worked Saturdays at The Book Shop, 17 North Main Street, Wigtown, for three years while she was at the Douglas Ewart High School. When I say ‘worked’, I use the word in its loosest possible terms. She spent the entire day either standing outside the shop, smoking and snarling at people trying to enter the building, or watching repeats of Hollyoaks on 4OD. Although she was generally punctual, she often arrived either drunk or severely hungover. She was usually rude and aggressive. She rarely did as she was told, and never, in the entire three years of her time here, did anything constructive without having to be told to do so. She invariably left a trail of rubbish behind her, usually consisting of Irn-Bru bottles, crisp packets, chocolate wrappers and cigarette packets. She consistently stole lighters and matches from the business, and was offensive and frequently violent towards me.

  She was a valued member of staff and I have no hesitation in recommending her.

  Till total £109.39

  12 customers

  TUESDAY, 25 MARCH

  Online orders: 3

  Books found: 3

  Two of today’s orders were for 1960s bus timetables for the north of England.

  Andrew, the volunteer with Asper
ger’s, turned up at 11 a.m. He was accompanied by the woman from the council, who came with him to make sure that he arrived safely and everything was in order. She suggested that I put him in charge of arranging the crime section into alphabetical order. By noon he had reached the Bs; then he went home.

  Shortly after Andrew had left, an extremely rude old woman demanded a copy of Simon Sebag Montefiore’s biography of Stalin. We had one in the Russia section, which she brought to the counter. It was an unusually pristine copy in a mint jacket, clearly unread – original price £25. She asked how much it was; I pointed to the sticker that says £6.50. She pushed it away from her and turned, walking out muttering, ‘Too expensive.’ I’m pretty sure she’ll be back, so I re-priced it at £8.50.

  Anna’s friend Lucy arrived for a visit. She’s staying until Monday.

  Till total £34.50

  7 customers

  WEDNESDAY, 26 MARCH

  Online orders: 5

  Books found: 4

  Beautiful sunny morning. Continued sorting through the boxes of books from Samye Ling.

  Isabel was in today to do the accounts. The happy ‘You’ve got loads of money’ comment after her last visit was long gone, and a measured warning about the state of the shop’s parlous financial affairs was her parting comment this time. I suppose that after she told me that I had loads of money I decided it was time to pay off some overdue bills.

  No sign of Cash for Clothes, who were supposed to collect the books we can’t sell and rotated stock.

  Carol-Ann arrived at 5 p.m. She stayed the night because she has to work in Stranraer tomorrow morning, and it is much closer for her from here than from Dalbeattie, where she lives. When Carol-Ann was in her teens, she worked in the shop on Saturdays; she is now in her mid-twenties and has become a good friend. She and Anna get on extremely well, and are forever hatching plans for unlikely businesses which mercifully never reach fruition.

  Nicky is working tomorrow and decided to sleep over in the festival bed. The house seemed full and noisy with her, Carol-Ann, Anna and Lucy, all of whom talk a great deal.

  Till total £95.75

  8 customers

  THURSDAY, 27 MARCH

  Online orders: 5

  Books found: 5

  Lucy, Carol-Ann and Nicky demanded a breakfast of bacon rolls, so I spent the first part of the morning chained to the frying pan. When I asked Nicky why Cash for Clothes hadn’t turned up, she told me that she hadn’t got back to them to confirm the collection because ‘you were in a grumpy mood, so I decided not to bother’. She’s now booked them, so hopefully they will be here soon and we can clear some space in the shop. There are roughly forty boxes of books to go, around about half a ton.

  Top priority of the day was clearing the books off the table and onto shelves so that we can process more boxes of fresh stock, which seem to be piled everywhere, including in friends’ sheds. After lunch I went to the bank in Newton Stewart to lodge the takings, and came back to discover that Nicky had opened nearly every box (in flagrant defiance of my ‘one box at a time’ rule) and had only cleared about half of the table – the one job that I asked her to do before I left. A loud argument ensued and Lucy looked embarrassed, made an excuse and went upstairs. Carol-Ann, on the other hand, laughed like a hyena and goaded us into further conflict.

  Someone posted a link on Facebook to a web site of Hungarian librarians being photographed holding books with photos of faces on the cover concealing their own faces. I spent the evening trying to persuade Lucy and Anna to do this but using the 1980s porn mags I bought about a year ago. It is not going well so far.

  Till total £128

  15 customers

  FRIDAY, 28 MARCH

  Online orders: 4

  Books found: 4

  The old woman who complained about the price of the Stalin biography came back. When she found that I had put the price up, she told me that I couldn’t do that. I told her that I could. She was furious, but she bought it, muttering that she would never set foot in the place again.

  Nicky arrived at 9.15 a.m., as usual, and after a brief repeat of yesterday’s row, a new argument followed concerning what she ought to be working on in the shop. We agreed to make a list every morning of what needs to be done so that there is no confusion. Later in the day I found she had made a few additions, including ‘Remind Shaun several times to call people back’, ‘Take Shaun seriously’, ‘Do not waste valuable time poncing about in front of the camera for Facebook’, ‘Offer the customer at least three times the value of the books he’s selling’. To my delight she has recently acquired a half-hearted suitor. Every time he sees her van (Blue-bottle) parked near the shop, he drops in to say hello and chat to her. He is invariably intoxicated, regardless of the time of day, and he attempts to conceal the smell with overpowering quantities of Brut 33. Nicky makes little, if any, effort to disguise her dislike for him, but this seems only to fuel his ardour.

  After lunch I went to the co-op to buy milk. Mike told me that he had caught the stray tom-cat which has been spraying in his house and my shop. Captain will be relieved. He has been jumpy for weeks, and the place has reeked of cat piss.

  Anna, Lucy and I went to Galloway House Gardens in the afternoon and picked wild garlic, then spent the evening making wild garlic pesto, using olive oil, parmesan and walnuts. This is one of Anna’s highlights of the year.

  Nicky found a book in the Samye Ling collection called Vamping Made Easy. Disappointingly, it is about piano scales.

  Mr Deacon dropped in to order a book shortly before closing, and confirmed that his aunt had received and was delighted with the biography of James I.

  Till total £97

  10 customers

  SATURDAY, 29 MARCH

  Online orders: 6

  Books found: 6

  Nicky took today off, so I was alone in the shop again. Six orders today, including one on Scottish medieval poetry, which is shipping to Baghdad.

  An elderly couple came in after lunch, wielding a Farmfoods bag full of books. This is never a promising start. They had been clearing an aunt’s house and had come across a few old books which, it transpired, were part of an incomplete set of Dickens – in dreadful condition – from the 1920s. They wanted a valuation. As the husband produced the first book, I told him that it was worth nothing. He clearly did not believe me and continued to produce the others, one at a time, asking, ‘How about that one?’ I tried to explain that there was no point in showing me any more if they were all from the same set, but five minutes later he was still proffering them.

  I went upstairs in the late afternoon, but by the time I got to the kitchen another voice was summoning me down. Standing in the shop was a tall hipster with a beard and tweed cap, holding a Tesco bag full of books. A Tesco bag is an improvement on a Farmfoods bag in terms of the quality of books it is likely to contain, but only a marginal one, and the books in this particular case were indeed better but still stock of which I already had an abundance, so I rejected them, primarily because he kept calling me ‘Buddy’.

  Till total £105

  12 customers

  MONDAY, 31 MARCH

  Online orders: 5

  Books found: 5

  Half an hour late opening the shop this morning because I forgot that the clocks had gone forward.

  Monsoon was playing up, so I checked the settings. By chance this led me to discover some of Nicky’s ‘Frequently Used’ notes for describing books on our online listings:

  ‘no ink marks’

  ‘which looks to be unread’

  ‘some lovely pictures!’

  Normally the notes I would use for describing books would be along the lines of:

  ‘Previous owner’s name on front free endpaper’

  ‘Blind stamped front board, five raised bands’

  ‘Deckled edges to pages, bevelled boards’

  But, as Nicky frequently points out, these are terms that are only of use when talking to other people
in the trade. They are unhelpful when dealing with people who have no understanding of the jargon of books. Ian, my bookseller friend from Grimsby, often has this conversation with his wife, who believes that the language of book jargon belongs to a bygone age and that the internet has made it all but redundant, with the exception of auction catalogues. When I bought the shop in 2001, before the internet morphed into the monstrous retail machine that it has in part become, many booksellers would send out catalogues of their stock to customers on their mailing lists, and by necessity they would have to provide detailed descriptions of the titles they were selling, but the use of vocabulary such as ‘gilt dentelles’, ‘verso’ or ‘recto’, ‘octavo’, ‘fleuron’ and ‘colophon’ has since become almost irrelevant to the selling of books. To my knowledge there is nobody in the trade who still sends out catalogues, and with the swift and apparently inexorable decline in bricks-and-mortar bookshops, I fear that we may go the same way. Our times, though, are not the first transitional period in the history of publishing and bookselling. As Jen Campbell points out in The Bookshop Book, following Gutenberg’s invention of movable type and the first ‘mass market’ books becoming available, ‘Vespasiano da Bisticci, a famous bookseller in Florence, was so outraged that books would no longer be written out by hand that he closed his shop in a fit of rage, and became the first person in history to prophesy the death of the book industry.’

  Our Amazon status has shot back up to Good again.

  Since it was a pleasant day, I painted the benches in front of the shop during lunch. An elderly neighbour with whom I have a nodding acquaintance was passing (I had bought the books from her late sister’s estate several years previously). She was making her way towards the co-op with her shopping trolley and stopped in front of the shop and started chatting. She told me that she had spent a good deal of money on her garden bench fifteen years ago because it was the first garden she had ever owned and she felt like treating herself. When I asked her where she’d lived before Wigtown, she listed a number of places, including Tokyo and Jerusalem, where she helped create the first Hebrew dictionary. I had no idea that she had led such an interesting life. Ah, the dangers of making assumptions about people. No doubt I do it on a daily basis with my customers, and dismiss people as key-jangling buffoons when they may well have led soldiers onto the beaches of Normandy or pioneered ground-breaking medical research.