During a negotiation over the price of a private library with a seller, the collection assumes the appearance of a glittering prize. The moment that a price is agreed, hands are shaken and the cheque has left my hand, the books instead become a great weight which I have to box up, load into the van, unload and then check, list online, price up and put on the shelves before I will see a penny of my investment returning. The distaste to which Orwell refers happens the moment the books enter your possession – they suddenly become ‘work’ – but that unease is more than matched by the extraordinary pleasure afforded by the rare and exquisite joy of handling a book like Thornton’s Lilies.
THURSDAY, 1 JANUARY
Online orders: 3
Books found: 3
Closed due to hangover.
FRIDAY, 2 JANUARY
Online orders: 7
Books found: 4
Nicky turned up wearing her black ski suit.
One of the orders we found today was for a book called The Universal Singular. Nicky tidied it up before she sent it out because the top edge was slightly dusty.
Colwyn Bay Bookshop’s stock failed to meet the reserve on eBay. They have re-listed them at £14,500, with a note saying ‘THIS HAS TO BE THE FINAL REDUCTION’. I am quite sure they will not realise that figure. The mega-listers are paying public libraries a fraction of that, roughly 15p per kilogram. The Colwyn Bay collection is working out at roughly £1.20 per kilogram. None of the big dealers will touch it at that price.
Anna persuaded me to take her to Glasgow to see the film of her favourite book, Into the Woods, which has been turned into a Disney musical. This is my idea of hell: I dislike musicals and I’m no fan of Disney, so the combination of the two will unquestionably result in a film that is the cinematic equivalent of a week in the waterboarding wing of Guantánamo Bay. But we are going next Friday.
The young man with the beard who had been in on 3 November wanting to dispose of 2,000 books from a farmhouse near Newton Stewart came back in with his girlfriend and introduced himself as Ewan and his girlfriend as Sarah. He asked if I could look at the books tomorrow.
Nicky stayed the night and we drank a large scoop of beer between us.
Till total £145
15 customers
SATURDAY, 3 JANUARY
Online orders: 3
Books found: 3
Nicky opened the shop at 10 a.m. She was up and about and clearly not feeling the best, but not bad enough to stop her from hijacking the shop’s Facebook page and posting the following message:
Good People of 2014
1. The Ivy Leaf chippy (Stranraer) – kept a fiver for me when I dropped it; the best & most honest in Scotland.
2. Customer who ordered a book in March 2014, we found it 2 weeks ago, did he still want it? ‘yes please’ & paid MORE than we asked.
3. Customer on hearing the price of a ring was £3.50, yells ‘HOW MUCH?’ – it IS silver, we reassure her – ‘I expected it to be at least £35.00.’
Heartwarming!
Anna and I drove to the farmhouse near Newton Stewart to pick up the 2,000 books. It was a glorious day, and the house and farm buildings were ancient and beautiful. The books were in the spare bedroom of the dairy cottage. While we were chatting to Ewan, it transpired that his American girlfriend was being forced to leave by the immigration authorities in an uncannily similar version of Anna’s story. Anna had been deported for unwittingly entering the country more times than was permitted without a resident’s visa back in 2010. It took a Herculean effort and a significant amount of money before she was allowed back into Scotland – a country that needs all the well-educated, intelligent, hard-working people who want to live here that we can take in. Odd, also, that he is called Ewan, the name I chose for myself in Anna’s book. When we were loading the books into the van, it emerged that the people who live in the dairy cottage are Ewan’s brother Will and his girlfriend Emma. Emma worked in the shop for a summer about five years ago and is now a doctor in Dumfries.
The books were boxed, so, rather than go through them, I took them away and we agreed that I would sort through them later. It took two trips in the van to shift them, but thankfully there were a few of us so it didn’t take too long.
There was a piece in today’s Guardian about living in Wigtown called ‘Let’s move to Wigtown and the Machars peninsula’. It was subtitled ‘A little backwater, in the best sense of the word’ and included in the text was the following sentence: ‘There is always a friendly welcome wherever you go.’ The shop’s Facebook page was bombarded by comments like ‘They clearly haven’t been in your shop’ and ‘Obviously they haven’t met you.’
Anna and I took down the Christmas decorations in the shop after we had unloaded the boxes of books from the van. Hardly a great ordeal, considering how pathetic my efforts to celebrate Christmas were. Being Jewish, Anna was probably the only person in Wigtown less interested in Christmas than I was. Apart from Nicky.
Till total £63.98
12 customers
MONDAY, 5 JANUARY
Online orders: 4
Books found: 4
Opened the shop at 9 a.m. By 2 p.m. the door had been opened just three times: first by Kate, the postie; second by my father, delivering a newspaper; and third by the howling wind about five minutes after my father, who hadn’t shut the door properly.
As I was picking the orders, I found Captain staring despondently out of the window. Two weeks after the shortest day is a depressing time, whether you are a cat or a bookseller.
I spent much of the day going through the boxes of books from the farmhouse, which were almost without exception disappointing.
Peter Bestel came round in the afternoon to discuss technical problems with the Random Book Club web site. Despite getting thirty-two new subscribers in December on the back of zero advertising, I have been putting off marketing it because the database management system we set up in 2013 isn’t best suited to dealing with the complications thrown up by people giving a subscription as a gift, or not renewing etc., so until we sort these problems out I don’t intend to seek out new members.
By 3 p.m. I was giving up hope of having even one sale when the Robinsons, a large local farming family, came in and bought some books. Ken, who had recently married into the clan, found a book about St Kilda that he had been waiting for me to reduce in price. I had spotted him looking at it a few times, so after his last visit I raised the price from £40 to £45. He wasn’t very pleased but bought it anyway. I reduced it back to £40.
Till total £50
2 customers
TUESDAY, 6 JANUARY
Online orders: 1
Books found: 0
In today’s Amazon messages was one complaining about The Universal Singular, a book that we had an order for a week or so ago: ‘The edges (especially the upper one) is covered with a thick layer of mould – which is a serious health risk to handle the book. It is now sealed and had to be removed out of the building.’
I sent an unnecessarily sarcastic reply that I would arrange for someone in an ebola suit to come and collect it from her, since she considered it such a threat to her health.
Till total £70.47
7 customers
WEDNESDAY, 7 JANUARY
Online orders: 3
Books found: 2
Wild, wet and windy day.
Another very quiet day. Three people came in after lunch. They were visiting from Rutland Water, where they are running an osprey project. They wanted to see what we have done with our (formerly) resident pair of ospreys. One of them bought a reprint of Bradshaw’s Rail Times 1895.
At 4 p.m. Tracy dropped in to say hello. She is now working in a pub in Newton Stewart.
A young couple came in at 3.55 p.m. and spent an hour and a half sitting by the fire reading things they had pulled off the shelves. At 5.25 p.m. I told them that the shop was closed. They left without buying anything and abandoned the huge pile of books by the fire.
Till total £46.99
6 customers
THURSDAY, 8 JANUARY
Online orders: 3
Books found: 3
Further exciting developments in the saga of the mouldy copy of The Universal Singular.
Here is her reply to my sarcastic request for her address so that I could send someone in an ebola suit to collect it:
The address is:
Satellite 13RTX77 – X11
Venus orbit 3
Milky Way
I spent the first half hour re-shelving the piles of books that the couple who sat by the fire yesterday had built up.
Depressing news today was that last year global revenue from digital downloads of music overtook CD sales. As music, books and films are probably the three media that can most easily and cheaply be digitised, it seems as though it can only be a matter of time before our trade goes the same way, although it is reassuring that large numbers of people who visit the shop tell me that they much prefer the physical pleasure of reading a book, and dislike Kindles. The Kindle that I shot and mounted on a shield is, without question, the most photographed object in the shop.
Anna reminded me that I promised to take her to see Into the Woods in Glasgow tomorrow. She is incredibly excited about it. I am dreading it.
Till total £36.49
10 customers
FRIDAY, 9 JANUARY
Online orders: 1
Books found: 1
Nicky in, wearing her black ski suit as usual. After lunch she set to work on processing the remainder of the books from the farmhouse. She was far from impressed with the contents, which were mostly ex-library, many in Arabic, and a large number of autobiographies of vapid celebrities. She estimated that she was keeping one in thirty. I am not sure what to tell Ewan.
Anna has decided that we should produce a bookshop music video version of ‘Rappers’ Delight’ but rewrite the lyrics to make it ‘Readers’ Delight’ so we spent much of the morning doing that.
After saying goodbye to Nicky, Anna and I drove to Glasgow to watch Into the Woods. My expectations were extremely low, yet even they were not met. It was diabolical, and Anna was so upset that she suggested we leave early. Home at about 9 p.m. to find Nicky still in her ski suit, drinking my beer.
Till total £41.99
5 customers
SATURDAY, 10 JANUARY
Online orders: 2
Books found: 2
Nicky opened the shop.
In the morning I went to The Picture Shop in Wigtown to see about framing a print I had bought at auction last year. I was shocked to find Jessie, the owner, in her chair, looking very ill. She is keen to go to hospital, as she says she can no longer look after herself. Anna was worried and went to tell the doctor that he ought to visit her. Jessie is in her eighties, but works every day in her shop. She is the only person still alive to have been born in a house in the Mull of Galloway – the peninsula west of the Machars – before the hospital opened in Stranraer and the maternity unit was set up.
Anna, Nicky and I spent much of the day rehearsing our lyrics for ‘Readers’ Delight’. The Bestels came over for supper, and we worked out a loose choreography. The plan is to film it next Friday. Nicky is MC Spanner.
In the afternoon a customer dropped off two boxes of books, among which was a copy of Chattering, by Louise Stern. Louise came to the book festival in 2011 and was utterly wonderful. She is deaf and doesn’t speak. For most of the time when she was in Wigtown she had a signing interpreter, but in his absence she communicated by scribbling on bits of paper. The day after her event she told me that she wanted to go for a swim in the sea, so I took her to Monreith and we braved the October waters. The evening she first arrived in Wigtown she turned up in the Writers’ Retreat at about 10 p.m. There were quite a few of us there, and a lot of wine had been drunk. Her arrival brought with it a slight sobering of the atmosphere, purely because very few of us had encountered anyone who was deaf and didn’t speak. She sensed the tension and suggested that we each take it in turns to ask one another a question. She pointed at me, and Oliver (her interpreter) signed my nervously pedestrian question ‘Did you have a good journey here?’ to her. She replied, ‘Yes, thank you. My turn. When did you lose your virginity?’, at which point the atmosphere instantly turned back to the bawdy ribaldry it had been before her arrival.
Later that night at about 2 a.m., having drunk a fair bit, she attempted to return to her accommodation, but having no idea where it was (other than a key with the number 3 on it), she wandered around until she found a house with the same number on the door. She tried the key but it didn’t work, so she banged on the door until a bleary-eyed man in a string vest appeared and asked what she wanted. She made some sounds and started waving her arms. He swore at her and slammed the door in her face. Thankfully, she had been the last person to leave the Writers’ Retreat and hadn’t locked the door behind her, so she was able to get back into the house and make some sort of a bed for herself on a sofa. At 7 a.m. the following day when Janette (who cleans the Retreat during the festival) turned up to tidy the room; she spotted the sleeping Louise on the sofa and tiptoed around her, silently clearing up. At 8 a.m. Twigger came down from his room. On seeing Janette, he bellowed ‘Morning Janette’, at which point Janette put her index finger to her mouth and shushed him, pointing to the recumbent Louise. Twigger looked at her and said, ‘Don’t worry, Janette, she’s deaf. Look.’ He then walked over to Louise and shouted ‘Wake up’ right next to her face. There was, of course, no reaction whatsoever, so Janette got the hoover out and began the task of clearing up the carnage from the previous night while Louise slept silently on.
Till total £149
9 customers
MONDAY, 12 JANUARY
Online orders: 4
Books found: 4
The printer ran out of ink after printing off two orders, so I replaced it with a non-proprietary cartridge that resulted in the computer freezing with a message from HP that the machine will only work with branded cartridges. I’ve ordered two more, but this means that these orders won’t go out until Wednesday, so will probably result in negative feedback.
The ‘mouldy’ book was returned in today’s post. It is not mouldy at all. I emailed the purchaser to thank her for returning it and told her that ‘mould is in the eye of the beholder’ and asked her what life on Venus was like.
Anna went to The Picture Shop to check up on Jessie and returned with the news that she is now in hospital in Newton Stewart. We will go and visit her on Wednesday.
I carried on trawling through Ewan’s books. It is such a strange mix that I felt compelled to ask him where they came from.
The mouldy book customer replied to my email:
Not too bad, but I did prefer living on the other planet, which unfortunately is gone now.
Here, we never see stars, days stretch for ages. The screensaver over our heads is orange red, disguising, and it does not change much … Something possibly went wrong with her Highness Ithess who is in charge here.
I have to go now; using computers is strictly forbidden outside of the Temple.
The Bookshop Band (Ben and Beth) have taken on the residency of The Open Book as its first proprietors. Anna, Eliot and Finn took the idea on and have set it up, so we had them over for supper, along with our good friend Richard. He and I grew up in Galloway and have been friends since childhood. He is an actor, based in London. The last time I saw him he was in a production of The Tempest directed by Sam Mendes in New York.
Till total £61.50
4 customers
TUESDAY, 13 JANUARY
Online orders: 2
Books found: 1
Flo came in to cover the shop so that Anna and I could attend the auction in Dumfries. I bought another commode and a stuffed squ
irrel. Anna bought a bay lot (essentially the equivalent of a box full of junk) for £3, the minimum bid in the saleroom. Whenever the price drops to this, her hand automatically shoots up in what appears to be an involuntary reflex. Lord knows what rubbish she has bought this time.
It snowed all the way back from the auction; very cold afternoon. On returning to the shop I discovered that four boxes of books had been dropped off by Samye Ling.
Till total £51
4 customers
WEDNESDAY, 14 JANUARY
Online orders: 5
Books found: 4
Before I opened the shop, I dropped off the van at the garage for a service. I had forgotten about it, so it meant we had no vehicle and couldn’t visit Jessie. When I told Vincent that Jessie was in hospital, he assured me that he would service the van as quickly as possible.
The Shearings coach tour turned up at about 11 a.m. Normally a swarm of miserly pensioners shuffles from the bus and invades the shop. They never buy anything, grab everything that’s free and complain about the prices, but today the only one who came in was a young woman who was polite and interesting and even bought some books. I asked her if they had kidnapped her. She looked blankly back at me, then slowly backed towards the door.
The Diary of a Bookseller Page 26