Letter in the post this morning from the back specialist in Dumfries. The results of the MRI scan show the problem is wear and tear, and that the only way to deal with it is pain management (Ibuprofen) and exercises, so she’s referred me to the physiotherapist in Newton Stewart.
The rep from Nicholson Maps, from whom I buy Ordnance Survey maps for the shop, arrived at noon. Our stock was low, so I ordered forty maps. The Ordnance Survey maps of the region sell fairly well in the shop, largely to visitors who come here for walking holidays.
A woman came to the counter with a pile of books after lunch and said, ‘I’d like a trade discount on those’ as she slapped her business card on the counter with neither a ‘please’ nor a ‘thank you’. I was very amused later when I read the blurb on her card:
Greyladies Booksellers and Publishers – well mannered books by Ladies Long Gone.
After the shop had closed, I spotted the cat with his head in the food bowl, so I slowly went to the Welsh dresser and removed a worming pill from its wrapper, sneaked over to him and grabbed him by the scruff. Every time I tried to push the tablet into his mouth he’d snarl and scratch so viciously that eventually I had to let him go before I collapsed from loss of blood.
Till Total £347.38
18 Customers
TUESDAY, 5 MAY
Online orders: 1
Orders found: 1
Today was a cold, wet day, more like a January day than one in May. Davy Brown phoned to see if the big room was available. The ladies’ art class normally meets outdoors in the summer, usually in one of their gardens, but since it was so miserable Davy decided to hold it inside today.
A middle-aged woman in Ugg boots came in at 10.30 a.m. and asked, ‘Do you have anything about the history of land ownership in the area? I’m doing some family history research’, so I showed her to the Scottish room, where there is a five-volume set of McKerlie’s Lands and their Owners in Galloway (1877), £100. One hour later she came to the counter and said, ‘Thank you very much, I’ll borrow that from the library.’
As I was tidying up a shelf in the theology section, I came across a slim pamphlet published by an organisation called AOL. Shortly after I’d bought the shop, a woman came in with a box of pamphlets privately printed about a hundred years ago under the imprint AOL, which – judging from its iconography and the language of the texts they contained – appeared to be some sort of secret society. I vaguely remember it was devoted to Osiris. I had no idea what they were, so I gave her £50 for them and listed them online. They sold incredibly quickly, and all went across the Atlantic to a woman in Canada, but not before I’d received a very menacing email warning me that these were not mine to sell and should be destroyed rather than fall into the wrong hands. I recall the words ‘you have no idea what you’re dealing with. This is a very powerful organisation. Desist from selling these or you will face serious consequences.’ To the best of my knowledge, I haven’t faced any consequence. Or perhaps fourteen years of bookselling has been my punishment.
Till Total £134.50
17 Customers
WEDNESDAY, 6 MAY
Online orders: 1
Orders found: 1
In the inbox today, an inquiry about a copy of The Merrick and the Neighbouring Hills which we have listed online for £30, asking if I was prepared to sell the book for £15. Will it never end?
After I closed the shop, I drove to Dumfries to collect Anna from the railway station. I think she feels more at home in Scotland than America now, and despite the end of our relationship, an incredibly strong friendship has emerged from its ashes.
A few years ago – on 26 March 2010, after we’d been living together for a couple of years – on re-entering the country after a trip back to visit her parents in Boston, Anna was held and questioned by an officious Border Agency employee at Glasgow airport. I was kept waiting in the arrivals lounge for three hours, with no idea what was going on. I knew her flight had landed, but there was no sign of her. Eventually someone came out and found me, at Anna’s request, and explained that she was being detained, and might be sent back on the next flight. When she finally emerged, she was visibly upset. She had been questioned for hours, the official had even gone through her personal diary and highlighted the entries in which she’d written about the occasions on which she’d helped me in the shop for an hour here and there. Under the terms of her visa (a holiday visa) she was not permitted to do any kind of work.
She pleaded with the official to allow her a couple of days to return to Wigtown to collect her things before deporting her, and eventually they conceded. We had to be back at the airport by noon on the Monday of the following week.
Those were awful days, fraught and emotional, but they were a trifle compared with what was to come. On the Monday morning I drove her back to Glasgow airport, and we made our presence known to the immigration department. It was a farce; they didn’t seem to have any idea what they were supposed to do, and hadn’t even booked her onto a flight. At one point the officer told her that they’d found her a seat on an Iceland Air flight to Boston, via Reykjavik, but that she would have to pay for it herself. I remember the sense of pride I felt when she told them that if they wanted her out of the country, they could ‘fucking well’ pay for her flight. Initially, they agreed to pay for her to travel as far as Reykjavik, but from there she would have to make her own way back to Boston. Even when she explained that this would leave her homeless in Iceland without enough money to get back to America, they were unmoved. Only when the two of us threatened to go back to the van and drive back to Wigtown did they finally agree to pay for the full fare. The way the Border Agency dealt with it was an embarrassment from start to finish: a litany of incompetence, insensitivity and mismanagement. The look of profound sadness, tinged with indomitable optimism, on her face as they led her away will remain with me for ever.
The following months were awful, particularly for Anna, desperate to return to Scotland and everything she loved, but prevented from doing so by petty bureaucracy. From this end I did what I could – I met with MPs and MSPs, tried to speak to people from the Border Agency – but to no avail. The Border Agency is an impenetrable organisation, and even MPs have no influence over their decisions. One of the reasons I voted for Scottish independence in the referendum was because of the way Anna was treated by them. Rural Scotland needs people like her – intelligent, hardworking, passionate about the place – yet she was forcibly removed because of rules designed for the south-east of England.
After several failed attempts to get her back into Scotland, including paying exorbitant amounts of money to a lawyer who falsely claimed they could organise an ‘expedited visa’, and several months, including weeks spent sleeping in her car, there was only one option remaining: the one neither of us wanted to pursue – the fiancée visa. We filled in the forms and she returned, happy, to Scotland with six months to try to find an alternative or be forced to marry. Not, arguably, the worst fate in the world, but one that terrified me beyond imagination.
Several months later, and overriding my every instinct, we were married in the typically bland municipal surroundings of the registry office in Castle Douglas, with Carol-Ann as our witness. That event – more than any other – is the root of the problems we later faced in our relationship.
Till Total £210
13 Customers
THURSDAY, 7 MAY
Online orders: 5
Orders found: 5
Miraculously, I found all five orders this morning. All were from Amazon. Total £40.
Anna seems really delighted to be back in Galloway. She spent the day going around the place visiting people. We’ve decided that it would be best if she split her time here between staying above the shop in one of the spare rooms and staying with friends. All of my friends have become her friends, and she is infinitely more popular with them than I am. Thankfully, she didn’t get round to selling her car before she left, so it was here awaiting her, all rusty
and moss-covered, just as she had left it. Once, about three years ago, when we were planning to go for a walk on a wintery Sunday afternoon, as I was locking the shop behind us, Anna flew into a panic and announced that her car had been stolen. I tried to calm her down and reassure her that there had to be another explanation: cars don’t get stolen in Wigtown, particularly old bangers. I suggested that perhaps Vincent (who has the spare key) might have picked it up to check on something, so we walked the short distance to his garage and explained the situation. His response was to tell us that it hadn’t been stolen, and that he’d just seen it parked outside the co-op, so we wandered up there and sure enough, there it was – less parked, more abandoned, in the middle of the road. We finally worked out what had happened. Anna had been visiting Finn a few days previously and, on her way home, had stopped outside the co-op for bread and milk. She had double-parked because there was no space (normal practice in Wigtown’s wide main street) and on leaving the co-op had completely forgotten that she’d driven there. Her car had been sitting, abandoned, in the middle of the road for four days. Nobody had complained; people had just driven around it, as though it was a roundabout.
To my knowledge the only car to have been ‘stolen’ in Wigtown belonged to my parents, and that was over twenty years ago. It had been in the garage for an MOT, and the mechanic had left the key in the ignition overnight (perfectly normal here in those days). A fifteen-year-old schoolboy had been passing, and – attempting to impress a girl – had jumped in it with her and driven around the quiet country roads for ten minutes before neatly parking it where he had found it. The only reason his crime had been discovered was because a sheet of paper with his homework on it had fallen out of his pocket and the mechanic spotted it the following morning when he was adjusting the seat.
A customer came to the counter and put £1 on it and said, ‘Have this back, we came here last year and we were undercharged by £1, and since you’re always complaining about being skint on Facebook we thought we should give it back.’ I thanked him and asked who was it who undercharged him, to which he replied ‘That dark-haired woman you’re always arguing with’.
At 4 p.m. a customer brought a beautiful full-calf Victorian binding to the counter. Someone (no prizes for guessing who) had priced it at £9.50. It ought to have been £45 at the very least, but the customer seemed so excited about it that I let her have it for the marked price.
Till Total £106
13 Customers
FRIDAY, 8 MAY
Online orders: 1
Orders found: 1
Nicky in today. Foodie Friday has reared its ugly head once again; this time she brought in a box of chocolate donuts, which I’m quite certain she’d sat on at some point. Or perhaps her cat had slept on them. In any case, all the chocolate had melted into a runny sludge.
There was a pile of feathers under the kitchen table this morning, which means that one of the unfortunate swallows that undertook the epic journey here from Africa has become Captain’s latest victim. Under the kitchen table is his preferred spot for devouring them.
This afternoon there was a telephone call from a woman in Cumbria who informed me that she would like to sell two boxes of children’s paperbacks from the 1960s. I told her that it would be unlikely that the cost of the petrol to get here would be compensated for by what she’d get for the books, and advised her to find somewhere closer to home to sell them. There’s a bookshop in Carlisle that will probably take them, so I gave her their contact details. At least she had the good sense to call and check before embarking on the journey. Far too often people turn up at the shop without having called first, and are often extremely unhappy to be told that their books are worthless after they’ve made the effort to bring them.
After lunch I drove to Newton Stewart and bought some Spot On cat wormer. Might be easier to apply it to his skin than try to force a pill down his throat.
Went to the pub with Callum and Tracy. Fairly late night.
Till Total £64
7 Customers
SATURDAY, 9 MAY
Online orders: 0
Orders found: 0
No orders this morning.
I dragged myself out of bed at 8.45 to find a bright and cheery Nicky downstairs, keeping the Facebook followers updated on my hangover and bad temper.
At the moment Nicky disappeared for her lunch break, a very elderly man, walking using two sticks to help him get about, bought a copy of a book called Advanced Sex: Explicit Positions for Explosive Lovemaking.
Managed to pin down the cat and get the worming liquid onto the back of his neck. He stalked off, looking back at me with cold, accusing eyes.
Till Total £242.99
30 Customers
MONDAY, 11 MAY
Online orders: 2
Orders found: 2
Today we had an order for a £4 book that was listed in the railway room on shelf D3. I eventually found it after twenty minutes on shelf B2. We never had this problem with books in the warehouse; it’s only in the shop, where customers can take books off shelves and re-house them somewhere different.
Every year I try to do something in the shop to make visitors, even returning visitors, take notice. Usually it’s something that people will find sufficiently interesting to photograph and share on social media. A few years ago, when Norrie and I were replacing the rotten wooden floor in the railway room, we found a large stonewalled cavity underneath it. I’m convinced that it was a brandy-hole, for hiding smuggled alcohol. Norrie came up with the idea for building a model railway in the space and putting a piece of toughened glass over it so that customers could see it. We built the model railway, and then I discovered the cost of toughened glass; to cover it would have cost £600, so it remains there, unseen. One day I will buy the glass so that customers can see it.
This morning I spent half an hour explaining to an old woman that we don’t have the copy of the Orwell title that includes the essay about a hanging in Burma (I imagine that it’s in Burmese Days), yet still she ploughed on telling me that she needs it to give to her granddaughter, who is writing a thesis on capital punishment. Eventually she left, muttering darkly about the stock in the shop.
Till Total £306.79
25 Customers
TUESDAY, 12 MAY
Online orders: 1
Orders found: 1
At 11 a.m., a customer asked if he could bring his dog into the shop. As always, I said yes, then immediately regretted it when it became evident that the creature was a huge, ancient, reeking hairy beast, leaving enormous muddy footprints all over the freshly cleaned shop (Janetta comes in on Mondays and Thursdays to clean).
As I was mopping up the Hound of the Baskervilles’ footprints, a woman came to the counter and asked, ‘Are you Shaun?’ When I confirmed that I was, she told me that Anna Dreda from Wenlock Books sent her best wishes, and that she was here on holiday because Anna had recommended Wigtown.
At 2 p.m. I nipped out to drop the mail off at the post office and returned to find that a customer had come in to collect a book she’d ordered. She had probably been there for a minute or two, and was standing in a doorway, impatiently shouting ‘Hello!’ I replied with a similar greeting, to which she responded ‘Where are you? I can’t see you.’ I was standing behind her. She’d been in the shop a few weeks ago and had ordered a book. She’d given me a scrap of paper on which she’d scribbled down the author, title and ISBN. The book had arrived last week, so I dug it out from behind the counter and gave it to her.
Till Total £379.50
13 Customers
WEDNESDAY, 13 MAY
Online orders: 1
Orders found: 1
This morning’s order was for Mochrum: The Land and its People, by John McFadzean. John is a retired local farmer, and his son Ian is married to my cousin. He wrote this comprehensive and impressive local history book a few years ago, and asked me to publish it for him. With literally no experience of publishing, I turned to John Ca
rter, from whom I bought the shop, for advice. John was – as always – incredibly helpful and gave up a considerable amount of his time to steer me through the process, and eventually the book came out in a limited edition of 500 numbered copies in 2009. It was well received locally, and although I still have a few copies left, it broke even in a surprisingly short time.
The woman who came in to collect her book yesterday was back again this afternoon. She was furious, because the book isn’t the one she thought she’d ordered. When I produced the handwritten piece of paper showing the title, author and ISBN that she’d given me she calmed down slightly, and admitted that I had made ‘an understandable mistake’.
Till Total £170.48
14 Customers
THURSDAY, 14 MAY
Online orders: 4
Orders found: 4
The orders took over an hour to locate this morning; only one was on the correct shelf.
A young customer wearing a baseball cap asked ‘Where’s your travel section?’ as I was putting a recently priced book onto a shelf in that very section. I replied ‘It’s right in front of you. In fact you’re looking at it now.’
Customer: Where? Here?
[He pointed to the shelves to the right of the shelf he was looking at, which is the history section.]
Me: No. Right in front of you.
Customer: What, here?
[Pointing to the shelves to the left of the shelf he was looking at, which is the India section]
Eventually I had to put my hand on the shelf label that read ‘TRAVEL’ and was about six inches in front of his nose.
Lisa, the doctor’s wife, came in with two sets of graphic novels, Blake and Mortimer (17 volumes) and a French series called Adèle Blanc-Sec (8 volumes) along with some other books. I gave her £70 for the lot, and listed the two sets of graphic novels on eBay in the afternoon with reserves of £50 and £40 respectively. Although I’m the first to admit that I’m out of my depth when it comes to graphic novel values, I would hope that they sell by this time next week.
Confessions of a Bookseller Page 12