15 customers
THURSDAY, 4 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 3
Books found: 2
Today was Katie’s last day, so I gave her a hug as she was leaving. She hates physical contact, so it was particularly gratifying to see how uncomfortable it made her.
Till total £304.38
25 customers
FRIDAY, 5 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 5
Books found: 4
Nicky in. Within minutes of arriving she had thrown her bag on the floor in the middle of the front room of the shop, her coat had been tossed in a corner, and she’d opened several boxes and covered almost every available surface in the shop in unpriced, unsorted books. She found the missing order from yesterday, though, which I had failed to find, and admitted that she had put it on the wrong shelf.
While I was repairing a broken shelf in the crime section, I overheard an elderly customer confusing E. L. James and M. R. James while discussing horror fiction with her friend. She is either going to be pleasantly surprised or deeply shocked when she gets home with the copy of Fifty Shades of Grey she bought.
A short, chubby customer in tartan polyester trousers blocked the doorway to the Scottish room as I was attempting to put new stock out. She stared at me for a while before saying, ‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’ After an awkward silence, to which I admitted that, no, I had no idea who she was, it eventually transpired that she was author of many very perplexing posts on the shop’s Facebook page and clearly a woman with an impressive, if entirely unjustified, belief in her own genius. She told me that we had spoken once on the telephone; she is the author of No, I Am Not Going on the Seesaw, her unsurprisingly as yet unpublished autobiography. To my horror, she spotted one of the signs that Nicky had put up inviting customers to read extracts from their favourite book for us to video and post on Facebook. She disappeared to her car and returned with a book that she insisted I record her reading from. It was an autobiography of one of her ancestors, written just before the First World War. The dreary monotone of her reading of it was punctuated occasionally by fits of wailing and wildly gesticulating enthusiasm at inappropriate points in the text.
Before she left, she told me that she plans to come to the festival to ‘get an idea of the atmosphere’ so that she can know what to expect when she comes to visit as an invited speaker following the impending success of her book. She asked me if she could book the festival bed in the shop. I should really have seen that coming but stupidly was caught completely by surprise. I blurted out a feeble excuse that absolved me of responsibility and blamed Eliot, saying that he had decided that we would not be doing it again this year. This, despite the fact that I have taken two bookings for it already.
After work Tracy called round for a cup of tea and began describing the most obnoxious person that she has ever had in the RSPB visitor centre. It was the same woman.
Nicky stayed the night in the festival bed.
Till total £246.60
14 customers
SATURDAY, 6 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 3
Books found: 3
Nicky was up early and had tidied the kitchen by the time I came down. We had an order for a book called Incontinence.
Posted a photo on Facebook of the Scotland’s War of Independence mug, which sparked a few orders. Bev produced the mugs, based on a pamphlet from the 1920s that I scanned and emailed to her. I am sorely tempted to give one to my mother as a Christmas present.
A customer brought in eleven boxes of books at 10.30 a.m. – a mix of Italian art, physics and statistics. As I was going through them, an Australian woman stood uncomfortably close by and watched, grinning. After a while, she asked me if the books were being donated. I explained that nobody donates books, and I pay for everything. She then watched as I wrote a cheque for £120 for the books I wanted from the collection and gave it to the man who had brought them in. As she was leaving, the Australian woman told her husband, ‘All his books are donated, you know.’ By the end of the day I had sold six of the art books to a delighted customer who had been looking for two of them for several years.
Sandy the tattooed pagan dropped in with a friend and browsed for a while. He and Nicky had a ferocious argument about metal-detecting, of which they are both enthusiasts. There is something about the appeal of metal-detecting to which book collectors could probably relate. Both are scouring their fields for buried treasure, and I can see a keenness in Sandy’s eye when he is in the shop that is, I imagine, the same look he has when he is out searching for Viking hoards.
After lunch I had a meeting with Anne Barclay from the Wigtown Book Festival Company, who has asked me to produce a video for a funding application for Wigtown, The Festival (WTF) – the young adult strand of the book festival. I have arranged to video three of the organisers next Saturday. Anne is the Operational Director of the festival (Eliot is the Artistic Director), and she takes care of all the logistics, bookings etc. She is an exceptionally hard worker. The light in her office is often still on when I go to bed (I can see it from my bedroom window as I draw the curtains), and in the run-up to the festival it is invariably still bright at 1 a.m.
Till total £496.96
36 customers
MONDAY, 8 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 6
Books found: 5
Nicky was in today. The first business of the morning was an argument about her refusal to co-operate with my request for her to sort through boxes one at a time, and to not leave piles of books randomly distributed around the shop. By the close of the shop there were nine open boxes, and piles of books left in seven locations around the shop. When I pointed this out to her, she blamed customers.
At 11 a.m. I drove to Murray’s Monument with the drone to film a trailer for Stuart McLean for The Dark Outside, an event he set up last year, and for which he invited people to submit previously unheard pieces of music that they had written and recorded. Using an FM transmitter based at Murray’s Monument (a few miles away), he broadcast twenty-four hours of new music to anyone within a four-mile radius. He then destroyed the hard drive on which they were stored, meaning that – essentially – each piece only really existed for that one broadcast.
Anne Brown, former chair of Wigtown Festival Company, has requested some audio pieces for Wigtown Radio, a station that will be broadcasting during the book festival, so this afternoon I went round the square and recorded short interviews with people who work in shops and businesses. Wigtown Radio started last year and runs throughout the festival. It is based in the Martyrs’ Cell in the County Buildings, a tiny vaulted room, and is nearly all live, with a presenter, a producer and a seat-of-the-pants line-up of guests whom the producer has to run out and find during broadcasts while the presenter holds the show together.
Finished As I Lay Dying this evening. A customer saw me reading it this afternoon and suggested that, if I liked it, I might also like Nick Cave’s book And the Ass Saw the Angel. I found a copy in the paperback fiction section and have started on it.
Till total £242.30
18 customers
TUESDAY, 9 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 3
Books found: 1
No Nicky today, so I was on my own in the shop on a warm, sunny day. Failed to locate two of the three orders. Nicky’s locator codes have been extremely inconsistent lately.
In this morning’s emails:
Subject: I have no money, I love books, please give me a job
Message Body:
To the Book Shop,
I am writing to inquire into job vacancies as I am a writer and like most writers, I am out of pocket. Normally I would resort to waitress work but I am crossing my fingers for a job that involves being in close proximity to a lot of books.
I live in a campervan and am parked up in the area as my husband is currently working with local potter Andy P (he told me to mention him, so I cannot be judged for name-dropping …). I have plenty of
experience working with other people and good customer service skills but what I believe qualifies me for a job at your book shop is a deep love and reverence of books in all shapes and sizes. I have always loved books and I always will. If it was legal then I probably would have married one.
I have a hard-working and friendly nature and I can provide references if needed.
I know this is a hopelessly unprofessional plea for a job in the Book Shop but I assure you that I can be professional when needed/forced.
Kindest Regards,
Bethan
I replied telling her that her timing was perfect as the run-up to the festival is frantic, and we need as many pairs of hands as we can muster, but that there will only be work until a few days after the festival finishes.
Carol Crawford, the Booksource rep, called in at around 12.30 p.m. She always times a visit before the festival to ensure that I am well stocked up from her iPad full of new books. I ordered about fifty titles, including three copies of Scotland’s Lost Gardens, one copy of which I intend to keep for myself. Again I feel consumed with the questionable rationale of buying from a distributor when Amazon is supplying the same titles cheaper than I can buy them from the publisher. I suspect that things can’t continue like this for much longer. Increasingly customers are using the shop merely as a browsing facility, then buying online. This is particularly the case with new books, which will almost certainly be for sale for less than their cover price on Amazon, but not so much so with second-hand books, where there is a good chance that they will be more expensive online.
In the early afternoon a customer entered the shop and asked if we have a copy of ‘the book called Kidnapped’. I told him that, yes, we have several copies in the Scottish room. Without even bothering to reply, let alone check, he left the shop.
I made a wooden shield mount from an old tray, mounted the shot Kindle and hung it in the shop.
There has been no sign of Captain, the shop’s cat, since Sunday. When I spoke to Anna on Skype and mentioned it, she seemed very worried and depressed about it, imagining all sorts of unlikely fates that may have befallen the unfortunate creature.
Till total £235.47
27 customers
WEDNESDAY, 10 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 3
Books found: 3
Nicky came in to work today. She managed to find the two books that I couldn’t find yesterday. She had listed them, then put them on completely different shelves from the locator codes on the database.
The depressed Welsh woman telephoned again, with the usual consequences. I wonder whether she might have a vast list of bookshops and spend all day every day telephoning them and asking the same question. By my reckoning such a list must be long enough to occupy her for two months before she has to start at the top again, which coincides more or less with the frequency of her calls.
At 11 a.m. Norrie and Muir turned up with the concrete books and the steel rod to make the new spirals, amid much excitement and consternation from passers-by.
I offered Nicky a cup of tea at about 3.30 p.m. She replied, ‘Aye, but only if it’s in a bone-china cup and saucer. I do not want one of your rubbish mugs.’
After work I filled in the application for the James Patterson bookshop grant. I will check it later and send it in.
Still no sign of the cat.
Till total £273.94
24 customers
THURSDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 4
Books found: 3
Nicky was in again today. She brought me a present of four bashed-in tins of tomatoes that were heavily discounted in the co-op.
At 10 a.m. I drove to Newton Stewart to pick up building supplies. I have to create a performance space in the back of the shop for the festival. While I was at the builders’ merchants, I bumped into Ronnie, the electrician, and reminded him that he has not yet sent me an invoice for some work he did for me three years ago.
Wigtown’s co-op closed at 4 p.m. for a refit. We now have to go to Newton Stewart for food shopping. It opens again on the 18th. This news is being greeted with at least as much excitement by some people of the town as the Scottish independence referendum on the same date.
Till total £411.44
19 customers
FRIDAY, 12 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 4
Books found: 4
Nicky back in again. The first thing she said was, ‘Do you want some bramble jam? Well, it’s not really jam. And it’s pretty disgusting, it’s far too sweet and I put chilli powder in it too. It might be quite nice with some meat.’
We found all of the orders, and I asked Nicky to deal with Royal Mail and drop the parcels off with Wilma at the post office. At 5 p.m. I noticed that they were still sitting in the shop, so I confronted her about it. She replied that they could wait until tomorrow. When I pointed out that this means that customers who ordered books on Thursday will not receive them now until Monday or Tuesday, and that we promise delivery within forty-eight hours, she replied, ‘They wilnae mind.’
After lunch I drove to Glasgow airport to pick up Anna, who spent most of the journey home articulating her various implausible theories about what might have happened to Captain, the errant cat.
As I was closing the shop, I spotted – on the shelf where Nicky had previously housed her ‘Home Front Novels’ (which I had removed) – a new shelf label called ‘Real-life trauma/abuse’. I removed it immediately. She clearly put it there to annoy me.
Nicky told me, on leaving, that she might come in on Monday, but only if she feels like it.
Till total £141.22
17 customers
SATURDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 6
Books found: 4
At 10 a.m. a very pretty blonde woman appeared and introduced herself as Bethan, who had emailed me on the 9th. She seemed charming and bright, so I have offered her a few odd days between now and the end of the festival, depending on when Nicky can or cannot work.
A customer picked up a copy of a Lyn Andrews book and announced to her friend, ‘I am reading that on me Kindle at the moment.’ I sincerely hope she stumbled across my mutilated trophy Kindle and considered the potential implications that the e-readers might have on bookshops, but I genuinely doubt that her mind is particularly troubled by thoughts of any nature.
At lunchtime a customer with his left trouser leg rolled up to his knee and his right one at his ankle, and a flat cap, bought a book about tantric sex.
At Anna’s insistence I printed off ‘Missing Cat’ posters and distributed them about the town.
Supper with friends in the Isle of Whithorn, which largely consisted of loud arguments about the independence referendum. Anna, who initially had been against independence because of her understandable dislike of nationalism (her maternal grandparents were both Holocaust survivors; her grandfather was a prisoner in Auschwitz when it was liberated), seems to be coming around to the idea that nationalism and independence are not necessarily the same thing. Half of us at supper were pro-independence, the other half against it. If the result on the day is as evenly split as we were, then it should make for an interesting night as the votes are counted on the 18th.
One of the unlikely outcomes of the evening was a discussion about poetry. Christopher, our host, is a farmer who read pure mathematics at university, and the last person I would have suspected to have a passion for poetry. I have known him all my life, but until tonight I had no idea that he had even the slightest interest in anything other than rainfall statistics and crop yields. Tonight he recited Yeats’s ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’ by heart. It was extraordinary and surprisingly moving.
Till total £239
17 customers
MONDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 5
Books found: 5
Nicky couldn’t come in today, so I emailed Bethan and told her that she was welcome to work if she was free.
Our Amazon rati
ng has dropped from Good to Fair, probably due to unfulfilled orders. Of today’s orders, one was sent to Belgium and another to Germany. This usually happens when sterling is weak, which it is at the moment, in part – so the anti-independence campaigners say – due to uncertainty caused by the referendum on Thursday.
Bethan turned up at about 1 p.m. I showed her around the shop and started her on tidying shelves, which has the twin benefits of making the shop look smarter and teaching her where the various sections are in the shop.
Shortly after Bethan arrived, Anupa, one of the festival artists in residence, dropped in for a cup of tea. I was desperately trying to catch up with a backlog of jobs, but we chatted for an hour or so anyway. We discussed Thursday’s vote, and the possibility that when we next meet, in a week or so, it might be in an independent Scotland. If nothing else, at least the co-op will be open again.
A shuffling old man with a beard asked for books on ‘Cumbriana and Northumbriana’, further fuelling my dislike of people who try to make themselves sound more intelligent by using unnecessary words. Philately will get you nowhere in The Book Shop. A few minutes later he returned, unable to find the topography section, and asked ‘Where’s Northumbria?’ Resisted the urge to tell him that it is just south of Scotland. His wife came to the counter with seven books on Northumbria, including a mint first edition Highways and Byways. The total was £27. He looked at the floor and mumbled, ‘What’s your best price?’
Till total £211.17
28 customers
TUESDAY, 16 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 1
Books found: 1
Bethan was in again this morning, so I spent most of the day building the ‘creative space’ in the old warehouse for Allison’s puppet show during the festival. Last year I converted part of the warehouse into a sort of clubby drawing room, and we advertised it as The Festival Club. Maria, who catered for the whisky supper back in the Spring Festival, supplied food, tea, wine, beer and soft drinks, and it was an enormous success. But this year Maria is catering for the Writers’ Retreat during the festival, and we haven’t been able to find a replacement caterer, so it is being used as an events venue, mainly for Allison.
The Diary of a Bookseller Page 18