A woman arrived in the shop at 4 p.m., wiping blood from her arm. She was convinced that she had found Captain near the tennis court and had tried to bring him back to the shop, but when she got to the co-op the cat started scratching her and hissing, then ran away.
In the afternoon I did a short interview with Border TV about the impending book festival. Life in Galloway, with its thinly spread population, often involves being badly served by things that other people take for granted, such as public transport, but nothing quite encapsulates this epic failure in the way that our local television station does. They do their best, but Galloway is not part of the Borders, and our ‘local’ television station is broadcast from the far coast of another country. Gateshead, the headquarters of ITV Border, is in England and nearly 200 miles from the west of Galloway. This would be analogous to London’s local news being broadcast from Swansea and attempting to cover everything in between the two places.
Till total £152.49
13 customers
WEDNESDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 0
Books found: 0
Bethan was in again today.
As we were going through the last of the boxes from the Haugh of Urr deal, Bethan came across a copy of The Collected Poems of Kathleen Raine. Ordinarily I would expect to know little or nothing about most of the authors whose works are on our shelves, but Kathleen Raine is someone whom I learned a little about when I was buying books from an elderly man who lived near Penpont, about forty miles from Wigtown. Six years ago he had telephoned me to tell me that he was selling his books, so I drove to his house – an attractive laird’s house with an Andy Gold-sworthy sculpture in the garden. Before I started to work my way through his substantial library, we sat down to a pot of soup which he had made, and over which he explained that he had recently been diagnosed with terminal leukaemia. He was clearly struggling to accept the diagnosis, repeatedly telling me that two years previously, on his seventy-fifth birthday, he had climbed Kilimanjaro. His wife had died some years ago, and he had obviously expected to live considerably longer than the medical experts had now told him he could reasonably expect. There was a clear and understandable sense of injustice and anger in his language. Of his library of about six thousand books I bought about 800, and paid him £1,200. The most interesting thing among it was a letter to him from Kathleen Raine, which he had used as a bookmark in Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water. When he produced this and showed it to me, I had to confess that I had never heard of Kathleen Raine, so he explained that she and Maxwell had been good friends until, during a visit to Camusfearna (his home at Sandaig on the west coast of Scotland), he banished her from the house during a storm in 1956. Raine cursed Maxwell under a rowan tree in the garden. She blamed all his subsequent misfortunes – which were swift and many – on this curse and believed that Maxwell’s friends also blamed her for the series of disasters that befell him. The letter in the copy of Ring of Bright Water was a reply to an invitation to the opening of the Gavin Maxwell memorial at Monreith, near where Maxwell grew up. Raine turned down the invitation because she believed that Maxwell’s friends would be hostile towards her. The elderly man died within a few months of selling me his books.
There was a reported sighting of Captain at the Martyrs’ Stake car park, at the bottom of Wigtown hill. Anna set off straight away and returned with him. Clearly the cat found at the tennis court yesterday was not Captain, which would explain why he started scratching the well-meaning woman who attempted to relocate him.
No sign of the swallows on the wires any more.
Till total £158.50
16 customers
THURSDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 2
Books found: 1
Bethan and Nicky were both in today, so I set them to work picking and packing the Random Book Club mail-out. I don’t think I trust either of them enough to pick the sort of books that I imagine the subscribers would enjoy, but with the festival looming I am stretched to capacity, so I have no choice but to delegate. Nicky asked Wilma if she would mind sending the postman to collect the sacks tomorrow.
One of the books from today’s orders that we couldn’t find was one that I had sent to Ian in Grimsby when he had taken our online stock, but which I had failed to remove from Monsoon back then, so it was still listed as available from us. This normally results in negative feedback, as we are obliged to cancel the order.
I spent some of the afternoon interviewing more local business people for the radio station that will be broadcasting from the Martyrs’ Cell in the County Buildings during the festival. One of the interviewees was Nicky, who described me as ‘a big ginger conundrum’.
The co-op re-opened today, to much excitement, but by the end of the day everyone was complaining that they couldn’t find anything any more.
Referendum day: I had my own vote, and Callum gave me his proxy vote. He has gone off on the Camino – the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela. After the shop closed, Eliot and the festival interns, Beth and Cheyney (they get the glamorous jobs, such as stacking chairs and answering the office telephone), came round and we watched the results coming in. Eventually went to bed at 2 a.m., depressed at what was obviously going to be a ‘no’ vote to Scottish independence.
Till total £237.96
20 customers
FRIDAY, 19 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 3
Books found: 3
Bethan and Nicky both in the shop again today.
Spent the day recording more interviews for the festival radio station, leaving Nicky in charge. She arranged for the postman to pick up the six sacks of random books at 3 p.m. This time next week the festival will be starting.
Till total £157
10 customers
SATURDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 2
Books found: 2
Nicky arrived ten minutes late, gloating over the referendum result.
Twigger emailed: ‘Hey Shaun you colossal ginger bastard – insult a few writers for me will you!
Love to all my friends in WIGTOWN, Rob.’
This year is the first year in a long time that Twigger won’t be at the festival – he is off exploring somewhere in the Himalayas for his next book, which is, I think, going to be a sort of topographical biography, similar to his last book, Red Nile.
As I was unloading some boxes from the van, Carol Carr, a local sheep farmer, was passing. We exchanged pleasantries and she asked how I was, so I told her that I was fine, apart from my back. She looked surprised and told me that Rob, her husband, has a bad back, as do most farmers. It had not occurred to her that book dealers spend a good deal of time lifting boxes of books in and out of vehicles and off the floor in uncomfortable, awkward spaces. I calculated that I lift about fifteen tons of books every year, and those fifteen tons will be moved a minimum of three times.
Six days until the festival begins.
Till total £193.50
17 customers
MONDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 5
Books found: 5
Nicky and Bethan in. Nicky brought in a cake that was made to look like a giant caterpillar. It had been reduced to 49p in Morrisons and she picked it up at the weekend. It looks absolutely revolting, covered in the most hideous icing.
The festival begins on Friday, just four days away, so most of this week will be spent in frantic last-minute preparation.
Bethan spent the day pricing up and shelving the Penguins that Bev brought in earlier today.
Zoe and Darren arrived. They are actors with whom Anna is going to be doing some performance art during the festival. Rehearsals start tomorrow. They are going to be re-enacting scenes that are set in bookshops from famous films – The Big Sleep, Notting Hill, The NeverEnding Story.
Checked the status of the delivery of FBA boxes to Amazon in Dunfermline – the boxes that UPS picked up have not arrived there yet.
Today broug
ht some very sad news. Alastair Reid died yesterday. I will write to Leslie, his widow, tomorrow. Finn telephoned to let me know at lunchtime.
Till total £145
22 customers
TUESDAY, 23 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 4
Books found: 4
Nicky and Bethan in. As the festival is looming, they spent the day making sure the shelves are full and tidy. Three days until it begins.
After several whiskies I wrote to Leslie, Alastair Reid’s widow. Springtime will lose some of its lustre now that I know that it will no longer be marked – along with the bluebells and the swallows – by his arrival.
Till total £372.96
21 customers
WEDNESDAY, 24 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 2
Books found: 1
Bethan in today, but no Nicky.
I moved the furniture from the big room and set it up for the Writers’ Retreat. Davy Brown, the friend and artist who holds art classes upstairs, arrived and hung his paintings there. They will be there for the duration of the festival. The Writers’ Retreat began in the relative infancy of the festival’s history, when Finn was director of the Festival Company. He had invited – among others – Magnus Magnusson to speak one year. His talk was at 8 p.m. At 6 p.m. he decided to find something to eat. In those early years, when the audiences were relatively small, most of the cafés, pubs and restaurants stopped serving food at 6 p.m. and, unable to find a meal anywhere, Finn called me in desperation and asked if they could come here for something to eat, so I quickly made some soup and a plate of leftovers, and the three of us sat down and had a meal in the house. Afterwards, Finn asked if I would consider keeping a supply of cheese, oatcakes and soup at the ready for the rest of the festival in case such an emergency reoccurred. It did. Several times. After a few years this had grown to the point at which we required a caterer to come in and manage it, and we had official opening hours. Nowadays, we feed up to seventy people on busy days, and at the weekends we treat them to fresh local lobster.
The marquee went up in the town’s central gardens today. More lorries arrived with chairs, flooring, heating and sound equipment, and another marquee. Just two days until the festival starts.
I spent an hour on the phone to UPS and Amazon in an effort to track down the missing six boxes of books we sent up to Amazon’s Dunfermline warehouse as part of our FBA shipment, but without any success. I appear to have entered a hellish world of corporate three letter acronyms.
One of the festival volunteers borrowed the van to pick up Astrid’s plywood cut-outs for the festival from her studio in Edinburgh and bring them down here. (Astrid is one of the artists in residence this year.)
This afternoon I made a stage from plywood and timber for Allison’s play. She wanted parquet flooring, so I’ve found some stick-on vinyl and ordered it.
Made a determined effort to plough through And the Ass Saw the Angel and finish it before the festival begins. Just thirty pages to go.
Till total £146.49
9 customers
THURSDAY, 25 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 3
Books found: 3
Nicky and Bethan were both in today.
The actors (Zoe and Darren) rehearsing in the shop caused even more consternation among the customers, particularly now that they have found props and costumes.
Amazon telephoned to say that they have tracked down the missing shipment, and it is now listed and available online.
The actors, Anna and I went round to the house that Eliot has rented for the festival, and he cooked supper for us and the interns, Cheyney and Beth. When we got home, Nicky offered me the last bit of the chocolate caterpillar cake that she had bought for 49p. All that was left was its face; she had eaten the rest of it.
Carol-Ann arrived. Stuart Kelly arrived too, so the house is fairly full. The two Italians who are staying in the festival bed should arrive some time tomorrow, so I went into Newton Stewart to have spare keys cut so that guests can come and go as they please.
After work I spent a frantic hour or two putting an audio piece together for Stuart McLean for ‘The Dark Outside’ event, which starts at noon on Saturday.
The festival begins tomorrow.
Till total £227.49
15 customers
FRIDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 4
Books found: 3
I finished And the Ass Saw the Angel before the shop opened. Nicky and Bethan were both in again today.
Maria, who is catering for the Writers’ Retreat this year, came to set up the kitchen. This seemed mainly to involve the pair of us moving fridges around.
Nicky and I spent the morning organising things for the festival, such as making sure we have enough loo roll and washing-up liquid and that sort of thing, as well as putting up signs directing people to venues and finding seating for events. The parquet tiles arrived for Allison’s stage. Laurie, Nicky and I had our annual argument about where the apostrophe belongs on the sign for the Writers’ Retreat.
Anna was uptight today, as the performances she has been rehearsing with the actors begin tomorrow. Apparently this is ‘immersive theatre’.
Received an email from the Italians who were supposed to be in the festival bed to say that they can’t make it. I suppose the silver lining is that it is now available for any friends who need a bed for the night.
The festival was launched (as always) with fireworks at 8 p.m. Nicky brought some home brew in with her and had a couple of pints of it before we headed down. Nobody else dared to touch the stuff. She was dancing away to the Creetown pipe band as though it was hardcore 1980s acid house.
After the fireworks we dutifully trooped to the festival opening night party in the marquee. Zoe read one of Alastair Reid’s poems after Eliot had welcomed everyone, then Lauren McQuistin performed a setting of ‘Ye Banks and Braes’.
Till total £346.75
30 customers
SATURDAY, 27 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 3
Books found: 2
Nicky was in, but Bethan took the weekend off to chop logs for the winter.
I opened the shop at 9 a.m. to find an author waiting outside. Before I had even put the lights on, he was in the door and demanding food, so Nicky told him that the Writers’ Retreat isn’t open until 10 a.m. Maria hadn’t even arrived with the food.
I found two of today’s orders and took the mail bags to the post office. William’s choler rises to an extraordinary level during the festival, and he complains bitterly that – despite the thousands of people who come to the town because of it – his newspaper sales drop. This he attributes to the fact that it is difficult to find somewhere to park, so that locals go elsewhere to buy their newspapers.
Nicky decided that today – traditionally the busiest day of the festival – would be a good day to paint the shop windows and spent most of the morning doing that while I dealt with customers and the chaos of the first day of the Writers’ Retreat. This normally involves me searching for extension cables for the soup kettle, fuses to repair it when it has blown immediately after it has been plugged in, unblocking the sink, filling log baskets and lighting fires.
As well as all of that, Anna asked me if I could film her theatre performances in various bookshops throughout the town. They appeared to meet with an equal measure of confusion and excitement from customers wherever they were performed. One bookseller found the whole thing so perplexing that he telephoned me and said that that they were not welcome back in his shop.
Lou and Scott, my sister and brother-in-law, and their children arrived in the morning. They are loyal supporters of the book festival and always come down for Wigtown’s Got Talent, an event that happens on the first Saturday night of the festival. I fed them in the Writers’ Retreat at lunchtime, during which we heard a fairly harrowing story about necrophilia from a visiting writer. Thankfully, the children were playing with Captain in the snug at the time.
In the afternoon I produced Wigtown Radio for an hour between 3 and 4 p.m.
After the shop closed I went with Anna, Carol-Ann, Astrid and Stuart to Anupa’s opening night. Nicky, Stuart and I then went on to Lauren McQuistin’s Art Song event, then finally to Wigtown’s Got Talent. Stuart seemed particularly impressed by Lauren’s event. Drinks back here afterwards, Astrid slept in the festival bed, which the Italians had conveniently left free.
Till total £989.30
95 customers
SUNDAY 28 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 4
Books found: 3
Nicky in at 9 a.m. Maria arrived hot on her heels, and told me that the fridge wasn’t working, so I stripped the plug and replaced the fuse, then drove to the dump in Newton Stewart with all the empty bottles and bin bags of paper plates from yesterday.
Lee Randall, a journalist who chairs events during the festival, asked me if I could find some books in the shop with unusual titles for an event she is chairing – Robin Ince’s Bad Book Club. I managed to find her a few, including a huge medical book called The Rectum. She looked through it briefly before putting it on the counter and announcing, ‘Very interesting. I have got almost every condition in that book.’
Anna and the actors performed scenes from The Big Sleep and Notting Hill in the shop, once more to the confusion and joy of all who witnessed it. I overheard a young woman whispering, ‘It’s immersive theatre’ to her bewildered mother.
The Diary of a Bookseller Page 19