Confessions of a Bookseller
Page 2
With all the rain, the leaking shop window is dripping incessantly onto the Christmas window display (which was a pretty dismal show at its best) and now looks like a dreary and damp winter flower arrangement.
Three wildfowlers came in. One of them spotted a large, framed Victorian print, Fishing in Connemara which was priced at £40, and said, ‘I don’t mean to be cheeky, but what’s your best price on that?’, so I told him that he could have it for £35. He bought it, and three Robin Ade signed prints which I’d bought from Mary, my antique dealer friend. Nobody has shown any interest in the stuffed badger that I also bought from her, sadly, other than children, who are fascinated by it.
In the evening I went to the pub with Alicia (Taiwan), Gina (New Zealand), Elouise (Australia) and Petra (Austria). I was the only Scot at the table. They’re all here working in various pubs and cafés.
Till Total £132.99
5 Customers
SATURDAY, 10 JANUARY
Online orders: 4
Orders found: 3
Cold, grey day. Nicky appeared at 9.08 a.m., blaming the weather for her late arrival. The rain came on again at 10 a.m. and the sound of water dripping into buckets in the shop window began its usual symphony.
As I was filling the log basket, I heard a frog croak in the pond – the first one I’ve heard since last autumn.
On the way to the post office, I spotted Eric, the Wigtown Buddhist, in his orange robes – a welcome splash of colour on an otherwise grey day. I’m not sure when he moved here, but Wigtown has absorbed him with the amiable indifference it shows to everyone, no matter how incongruous they may appear in a small rural Scottish town.
Nicky spent the day re-arranging things that didn’t need to be re-arranged.
After lunch I took down the Christmas decorations from the window displays. The left-hand window was still full of little puddles in places.
Today’s blackboard:
Avoid social interaction: always carry a book.
Very few customers today, and most of them left before lunch. A family appeared at 2 p.m., and I had high hopes that at least one of them would buy something, but they left after ten minutes, empty-handed. No more customers between then and closing.
Till Total £34.49
4 Customers
MONDAY, 12 JANUARY
Online orders: 10
Orders found: 10
Grey, cold day, but dry.
Pleasingly, I found all of the orders this morning. One of them was for a German-language copy of Mein Kampf, published when Hitler was still alive. Inside, it was inscribed and contained a postcard – lacking any knowledge of German, I have no idea what any of it means. Still, it sold for £90, to a customer in Germany.
Five customers by 10 a.m., and all bought books. One bought three of Sandy the tattooed pagan’s walking sticks. He is one of just a handful of regular customers. He lives near Stranraer and claims to be the most tattooed man in Scotland. He’s also a keen (and talented) stick-maker. We have a barter system whereby he gives me sticks in exchange for books, and I sell the sticks in the shop. Must get in touch with Sandy and tell him we need more.
As I was taking today’s orders to the post office, William was emerging from its dark recesses for a cigarette. In an unprecedented display of politeness and decency he not only held the door open for me but went as far as to say ‘Good morning, Shaun’. Either he’s ill or I am.
Till Total £72.50
5 Customers
TUESDAY, 13 JANUARY
Online orders: 2
Orders found: 2
Grey, cold day. The rain began at 10 a.m.
A group of people in their seventies appeared at noon looking for books by Eric Ambler, Geoffrey Household and Eric Linklater. One of them approached the counter and asked me, ‘Do you respond to questions?’ He bought a biography of Wilfred Thesiger which came from a house in the borders whose library I bought last year. They were all very flattering about the shop, but disappointed that I didn’t have any of the authors they were looking for. The reason isn’t that I don’t come across them; it’s that nobody – until today – has ever asked for them, so I don’t buy them when I find them in collections.
As I was on my way to the post office I bumped into the French wildfowlers who used to come and stay in my parents’ holiday cottages. We had a brief conversation on the pavement outside the shop. My French is pretty rusty, but we managed to talk for about five minutes. They shot three geese yesterday morning on the saltmarsh. At least, I think that’s what they said.
Till Total £17.30
3 Customers
WEDNESDAY, 14 JANUARY
Online orders: 1
Orders found: 1
Clear, cold morning. Ice on the windows for the first time this year.
Andy (window cleaner) appeared at 9.30 a.m. for his cash. Tony, who used to clean the windows once a week, sold the business to Andy a couple of years ago. Andy is slightly less regular with his round. The woman who worked in the shop before I took over – Joyce – had an acerbic wit which seemed to offend everyone but me. She used to refer to Tony as the ‘window-smearer’, which, as with most of her observations on life, was unfair.
Joyce – a vocal atheist – once told me that she was convinced the house had a resident ghost, whose presence she had felt on the bottom landing of the stairs on a number of occasions. She assured me that he was benign, and she had even given him a name: George. I have yet to encounter any evidence of this spectre, and suspect that she was trying to wind me up.
The sole order was for a large, heavy book called Shackleton’s Voyages, a recent title in pristine condition. It sold for £3, and the postage was £13, but it was an Amazon order, so we had to take the hit.
Isabel came in at 11.30 to do the accounts.
The old man with the cowboy hat who huffs and puffs in the erotica section turned up at noon. He is about 6 foot tall, wears black nylon trousers with an inbuilt crease, a husky jacket and – today – a flat cap in place of his beloved cowboy hat. He always makes the unconvincing pretence of being interested in the antiquarian books in front of the counter for the first ten minutes of his visit, and inevitably ends up spending at least an hour in the erotica section. Every few seconds he punctuates the passage of time with a heavy exhalation, a grunt, a sniff or some tuneless whistling. He also drums his fingers on the covers of the books he picks up. Today he told me that he’d had to abandon his car ‘on the top’ because of the weather and had managed to get a lift to Wigtown. He was supposed to be visiting Christian, the bookbinder (4 miles away), but obviously couldn’t without his car. As he rambled at considerable length about this, it transpired that what he was really asking was for the use of the phone so that he could call Christian and let him know he couldn’t make it. He hasn’t worked out how to use his new mobile phone yet, so I lent him the landline, on which he spent at least twenty minutes chatting to Christian, all the while clicking his pen. Just as I was thinking that this litany of staggering incompetence had run its course, he dropped the phone on the floor, before heading off for a cup of coffee, leaving his bags on the counter behind him. He has a slightly arrogant disposition mixed with a false chumminess, which, when combined, gives the impression that he thinks I want to be his friend and am very lucky that he’s considering it.
When he returned from his coffee, he started noisily mauling the books in the antiquarian section then asked for some paper so that he could write down one of the titles to take home with him, presumably to buy it online. He left without buying anything.
Telephone call at 2.15:
Caller: Have you any books concerning the First World War?
Me: Yes, we have a few hundred.
Caller: Are they a fair size?
Till Total £46.50
5 Customers
THURSDAY, 15 JANUARY
Online orders: 4
Orders found: 4
Clear, crisp winter’s day, with ice on the pond.
One of today’s orders was for a book called Scottish Castles. I’d bought it originally as a new book and it had remained on the shelf, unsold, for years. The cover price was £35. The supply of new copies must have dried up, so second-hand ones – now more scarce than ever – have shot up in value. The copy we sold today went for £75.
Alicia from The Open Book appeared at 9.30 a.m. and asked to borrow a bike to cycle to Finn’s, so I adjusted one to fit her. It took her an hour and a half to cycle the 8 miles to get there, going into the wind.
Sandy the tattooed pagan appeared at eleven o’clock and asked me to order a copy of Mactaggart’s Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia for his friend Lizzy, whose birthday is on Tuesday. Mactaggart is one of the essential components of every Galloway book collection.
The first edition of it was published in 1824, but it was almost immediately withdrawn from sale by the publisher because Mactaggart, the son of a Galloway farmer, had libelled a local dignitary. I’ve never seen a copy of the first edition, but thankfully enough of them survived for a publisher to reprint it, first in 1876 and again in 1981. It is a valuable record of the Galloway tongue, saved from oblivion by two far-sighted publishers. It is full of utterly wonderful local words and expressions from the Georgian era, many of which survive to this day. Here is one that I had never come across before, but which was clearly in common usage at the time of publication:
CUTTY-GLIES – a little squat-made female, extremely fond of the male creation, and good at winking or glying; hence the name cutty-glies. Poor girl, she frequently suffers much by her natural disposition: to be short and plain, it seems this is the class of females destined by some infernal law to become prostitutes.
In the afternoon I drove to Ayr to look at a book collection. I made the mistake of driving over the hills, which were covered in snow. I now see why the wheezing porn enthusiast from yesterday left his car ‘on the top’. I arrived twenty minutes late, to be met by an elderly widow who showed me up four flights of stairs to her flat. The collection consisted largely of modern hardbacks in mint condition, but very little of interest. I took about 10 per cent of it, including one or two interesting antiquarian things and another copy of Scottish Castles, the title I sold this morning on Amazon for £75. Wrote her a cheque for £400.
Returned to find Alicia sitting silently in the kitchen while Eliot – the artistic director of the Wigtown festival, and a good friend – conducted a telephone conversation with his wife and children on speakerphone in front of her. When he eventually finished talking to them, I cooked a Spanish chicken dish and he made patatas bravas. I used one tray. He used three frying pans, two saucepans and almost every herb and spice I had, and failed to wash up a single dish or put anything back where he found it. In fact, after we’d eaten, he sat and watched as Alicia and I tidied up.
Till Total £13.50
2 Customers
FRIDAY, 16 JANUARY
Online orders: 4
Orders found: 3
There was a light dusting of snow on the ground this morning, which Nicky blamed for her late arrival.
The bathroom was occupied until 10 a.m., when Petra’s belly-dancing class began. The rhythmic pounding seemed to startle the only customer to darken the doorstep before eleven. She left fairly abruptly upon hearing it. Petra and Alicia had a cup of tea in the sun on the bench in front of the shop afterwards.
In the afternoon I wrote up the AWB (our local booksellers’ association) minutes and emailed them to Andrew (treasurer) and Laura (chair) for approval.
Much of the afternoon was occupied with setting up the house for tonight’s Writers’ House meeting. Tom and Willeke arrived at 4.30 with ten bottles of wine and baskets of snacks. Tom is English and Willeke is Dutch. They moved to a cottage just outside Wigtown a few years ago and being bright, funny and under fifty, they are a welcome addition to the community. I lit the fire in the drawing room and the snug. By six o’clock there were about twenty-five people in the sitting room, drinking and chatting. The meeting lasted until nine, after which Ben and Katie (a French man and German woman who are about to open a gourmet burger business in Wigtown), Tom and Willeke, Eliot, Alicia and I stayed up drinking and chatting in the kitchen. Tom and Willeke stayed overnight.
Nicky promised to open the shop in the morning, knowing full well that tonight would be a late night.
Bed at 2 a.m.
Till Total £17
2 Customers
SATURDAY, 17 JANUARY
Online orders: 1
Orders found: 0
Nicky opened the shop at 8.55 a.m., and I shuffled down shortly afterwards. She spent the morning going through the books in the antiquarian section that we’d listed online and checking prices against books which had been listed subsequently by other people to make sure our prices were competitive. Without exception, we had been undercut on the eighty or so books she checked.
Clear, cold morning. Tom and Willeke appeared at about 9.15 and tidied up the kitchen. Alicia came down about ten minutes later, and Eliot followed shortly after that. Tom and Willeke left at about 10.30, Eliot at 11.15.
Today’s bookshop imbroglio:
Customer: Did I leave my tide timetable here?
Me: I’ve never seen you before.
Customer: Never mind that. Do you sell tide timetables?
Me: No.
Sandy’s copy of The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia arrived, so I called and left a message on his answerphone.
Captain (the cat) is already nudging the borderline of morbid obesity and is the size of a small child. He now has the bonus of the full thickness of his winter coat upon him, and frequently startles customers who, on feeling what they imagine is a svelte kitten rubbing against their legs in the shop, look down to find something more akin to a fat puma instead.
Till Total £35.50
4 Customers
MONDAY, 19 JANUARY
Online orders: 5
Orders found: 4
Cold, overcast day. One of the orders today was for a book called Underground Adventures. There was a scrap of paper – a packing list scribbled by a previous owner – inserted in the first few pages which read:
Beer
Tent
Sleeping bag
Airbed
Blankets
The missing book in the orders today was for Patagonia, which I sold to one of our few regular local customers, Bum-Bag Dave, last week. I’m not sure why it is still showing as available on Monsoon: I clearly remember de-listing it. Another of today’s orders was for a biography of Robert Adam, which I listed yesterday. It sold for £100. The next-cheapest copy on Amazon was £400.
Sandy the tattooed pagan turned up to collect his copy of Mactaggart’s Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, and gave it to Lizzy, who seemed singularly underwhelmed by it. He brought in a box of books to sell which included a copy of The Fifteenth (Scottish) Division (1926 edition). Gave him £50 credit.
My mother appeared at 11.30 and talked incessantly on a variety of subjects, ranging from wild speculation about the sexuality of the residents of The Open Book (whom she’s having to lunch on Wednesday) to her reasons for clearing the loft (‘so that when we’re dead and buried, you and your sisters won’t have to do all that’). She was here for half an hour, and punctuated every five minutes by saying ‘I’ll fly off now’, before embarking on another lengthy, rambling aside.
As is often the case in winter, the total paid out today significantly outweighed the day’s takings. Today was Blue Monday, supposedly the most depressing day of the year. The till total certainly isn’t much to smile about.
Till Total £18
3 Customers
TUESDAY, 20 JANUARY
Online orders: 5
Orders found: 5
Cold, clear day. One of today’s orders was for a copy of Putnam’s Blackburn Aircraft since 1909, which came from a bewigged widow in Leeds over a year ago. Since then we’ve listed 5,000 books, which makes an average of 16 b
ooks listed per day. Not a huge quantity but sufficient, considering all the other jobs which drain time every day.
My father dropped in for a chat. We discussed Any Human Heart, which he’d finished on Sunday. He seemed to like it, although he criticised the title for containing the word ‘heart’, as it might be off-putting to men. While we were discussing it, an old man came into the shop with a leather bag slung over his shoulder, full of books that he wanted to sell. I picked out a few, mainly erotica and devil-worship, and gave him £25. My father looked less than impressed that I was buying such sordid material.
At 2.30 a woman brought in what she described as ‘antique and collectable’ books. I understood this to mean books about antiques and collectables, but instead it was a plastic crate full of shabby mid-Victorian era fiction – a genre that is almost unsellable in the shop unless it is by someone well known (Rider Haggard, Oscar Wilde, the Brontës etc.). I bought two purely because they appealed to my puerile sense of humour: The Sauciest Boy in the Service and The Cock-House at Fellgarth.
A customer came to the counter and asked if we had any miniature books so I directed him to the cabinet labelled ‘Miniature Books’. He looked at it, then back at me and said, ‘Yes, I’ve already looked through that.’ This often happens – people appear to imagine that we have a secret stash of ‘the good stuff’ that we don’t really want to sell.
Telephone call from a woman in Portpatrick who has books to sell, so I suggested that she bring them over in the morning.