Eliot arrived at 8 p.m. while Anna and I were out visiting Carol-Ann in Dalbeattie. We returned home at 10.30 to find him munching his way through a pizza in the kitchen (which Janetta had tidied earlier). Every cupboard door was open, and there was cutlery on almost every surface. Before I’d even had a chance to say hello to him, I’d tripped over his shoes.
He greeted Anna like a long-lost friend, which I suppose she is.
Till Total £69
12 Customers
FRIDAY, 15 MAY
Online orders: 3
Orders found: 2
Eliot was in the bath from 8.30 to 9.20, so I had no chance to brush my teeth before opening the shop. He’s here this time because there’s a book festival fundraising auction tonight. It has become an annual affair, and supporters of the festival donate lots, such as a day’s fishing on one of the local rivers, or a weekend in a flat in Edinburgh – whatever they can afford.
Nicky arrived at 9 a.m., wearing a top that bore a striking resemblance to a small hot air balloon. I told her it was less than flattering. Needless to say, she’d made it herself.
As I was sweeping the pavement in front of the shop, two women walked past. One said to the other, ‘There’s no point going in there, it’s just books.’
At closing time I went to Newton Stewart to pick up wine and food for a pre-auction drinks party, to which nobody came. Perfect. Wine supply sorted for a month.
The auction took place tonight in the main hall of the County Buildings, with Finn in charge. I donated two lots: a drone flyover video and membership of the Random Book Club. The first made £140, the second £45.
After the auction several of us went to the pub, including Nicky. When we got back to the house, she assured me that she would open the shop so that I could have a lie-in.
Till Total £295
15 Customers
SATURDAY, 16 MAY
Online orders: 4
Orders found: 3
Awoke at 8.55 to no sound of any activity from below, so I came downstairs and opened the shop. Nicky eventually appeared at 10, looking bedraggled and hungover.
Customer in a beret and monocle: Have you got anything by Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown?
Me: I can’t say I’ve ever heard of him.
Customer: What? You’ve never heard of Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown?
And so it went on.
Captain – not usually protective of my welfare – appears to have formed a line of defence between me and the customers, and spent much of the afternoon lying on the counter, attacking anyone who dared approach with the intention of buying a book.
Till Total £100.48
8 Customers
MONDAY, 18 MAY
Online orders: 8
Orders found: 4
Thankfully the orders we found this morning were the more valuable of the eight. The total from the successfully picked orders was £180.
Callum came in to continue the demolition of the Garden Room and its steady conversion to a bothy for Emanuela, so the back of the shop was filled with the sound of hammering and drilling all day.
Anna had a visit from Carol-Ann to discuss an idea for a new business to market the region. Carol-Ann is currently working as a business adviser, and she and Anna have been close friends since Anna first moved here. Between them they are forever hatching unlikely business ideas.
At 4 p.m. a customer walked into the shop, looked around, spotted me and said, ‘Oh, you’re there. You used to be over there’, pointing at the other side of the room. The counter has been exactly where it is ever since I bought the shop, and probably a decade before that. It has never been where he pointed, but memory is a curious thing and I really didn’t want to get into a discussion on the matter, so I nodded politely and went back to reading my book.
There are no bids on either set of graphic novels on eBay, but there are quite a few watchers, which usually means that bidding will start at some point.
Till Total £113.50
14 Customers
TUESDAY, 19 MAY
Online orders: 2
Orders found: 1
Davy Brown delivered his paintings in preparation for Spring Fling this coming weekend. He’s going to hang them in the big room that we use for the Writers’ Retreat during the September festival and which, for the few months of the year in which it is warm enough, functions as my drawing room.
A woman with short, bleached blond hair came in and bought a book of copperplate prints of William Hogarth illustrations. I recognised her from a previous visit, and we started chatting. When I told her that I remembered her being here about a year ago, she told me that it was exactly three years ago to the day.
A few years ago, even when I first bought the shop, prints sold very well, and many a good book has been ‘broken’ over the years to extract them. Copperplate is particularly desirable, partly because it is an older technology, which invariably means the prints will have greater antiquity, but partly because it has a warmer aesthetic than the later, harsher, steel-plate technology. Prints, mounted or unmounted, rarely sell nowadays, and the woman who bought the Hogarth book could probably have sold the prints inside it for £10 each fifteen years ago. Not now, though. If they sell at all, it is for £3 or £4 each.
After she’d left, as I was pricing books for the mountaineering section, a customer asked, ‘Have you got a section on older books?’ I replied, ‘Do you mean books about old books? Bibliographies and that sort of thing? Or are you asking if we keep the older books in one place?’ Customer: ‘I don’t know.’
A man brought in a complete set of the first Statistical Account of Scotland (21 volumes, 1791–9). They were mostly in poor condition, but good internally. We currently already have a set on the shelves in the Scottish room which haven’t sold since I bought them two years ago. For some reason I gave him £200 for them.
Most of the afternoon was taken up with packing the Random Books.
Till Total £187
15 Customers
WEDNESDAY, 20 MAY
Online orders: 2
Orders found: 1
In an attempt to cut postage costs I’ve been in touch with someone called Gary at Royal Mail. Today – after a review of the ‘postage situation’ – he telephoned to suggest that ‘we replace your OBA with a DMO, that way your STL will migrate to a CRL’. Following a lengthy silence from my end, Gary clearly sensed my rising bile at being subjected to so many three-letter acronyms in a single sentence, and reassured me, ‘Don’t worry, there will be a lot of training.’ Training. A word guaranteed to send a shiver down the spine of most self-employed people. I never, ever want to be subjected to training again. Not that I’m averse to learning new things. It’s just that invariably ‘training’ when you’re in paid employment means listening to someone stating the obvious for three days while you think of all the other, far more productive, things you could be doing instead. It’s one of the reasons I don’t think I could ever go back to working for someone else. That, and the fact that nobody in their right mind would ever employ me.
As I was sorting through boxes and pricing up books, I found a letter tucked into the dust jacket of a copy of Auden’s About the House:
Flat no 150.
To: the tenants of no. 158.
I should be most grateful if you could avoid the noises, like a door being closed and the turning off of electric switches which seems frequently, as due to an accident which I sustained recently, breaking my arm and hand, this has caused my nerves to become very bad and I have to receive treatment daily at the hospital. My doctor has told me I should keep as quiet as possible and have as much sleep as I can, so I am writing you this not to ask you if you will be so kind as to prevent the sounds I refer to, particularly after 10 p.m.
Probably you do not know that they penetrate my flat.
Thanking you in advance for your kind co-operation.
I wonder if the copy of Auden belonged to the recipient, or whether the sender decided aga
inst the idea of sending it and put it there safely out of the way.
An American woman came in looking for our ‘section of books on the McConnell clan’. Clan and family histories are what most Americans visiting Scottish bookshops seem to be in search of. A group of Americans came in later during the day, this time looking for anything about Outlander.
The woman who bought the Hogarth prints yesterday came back into the shop to sign up for the Random Book Club.
Till Total £221.99
12 Customers
THURSDAY, 21 MAY
Online orders: 1
Orders found: 1
One month to go until the longest day of the year.
Callum came in at 9 a.m. to work on excavating the floor of the garden room for the conversion. Norrie (former employee) dropped by at ten o’clock to borrow the van, and Isabel appeared at 10.30 to do the accounts. Davy Brown arrived at eleven to set up his paintings in the big room. So, plenty of action about the place, but most of it costing me money rather than generating it.
The sets of graphic novels sold on eBay, but not before someone emailed me with an offer of £30 for a set on which I’d put a reserve of £40. Sensing that he was chancing it, I replied that if the set failed to sell I would break it and sell the volumes individually on eBay. He ended up as the only bidder and paid the full £40. The other set met the reserve of £50.
In today’s inbox:
Since leaving London for Australia in 1950 I have sporadically sought to identify the series of books I had to leave behind of illustrated histories of e.g. Prehistoric Britain, The British Empire, The Americas. I thought they might be Museum publications, perhaps quarto, soft cover, btw 100–200 pages illustrated with engravings from multiple sources scattered across the pages each with a short caption/note. Can you help? A publisher, some correct titles?
Frankly, they could be any number of series of books.
Till Total £162.50
14 Customers
FRIDAY, 22 MAY
Online orders: 1
Orders found: 1
Nicky was in again. Mercifully no Foodie Friday treats today. I loaded the van and drove to the paper recycling plant in Glasgow. The place was heaving with lorries and vans coming and going, and I had to wait an hour before it was my turn on the weighbridge, and about the same again weighing out.
I drove home via a house in Crosshill (about 30 miles from Wigtown) that I’d bought books from before, years ago. The current occupant is the daughter of the people from whom I’d bought the books; they had moved into a retirement home. I remember from my first visit buying two very unusual books about Ming porcelain, both of which fetched prices that far exceeded my expectations. The books today were mostly average shop stock, but some W. W. Jacobs with illustrated bindings, and several P. G. Wodehouse firsts (no jackets), so I gave her £170 for three boxes, but not before she’d gone through the books after I’d made her the offer and removed about twenty of them, so we had to renegotiate the price. It’s incredibly irritating when this happens.
It’s Wigtown Food Fair tomorrow, so I’ve loaded the marquee I bought several years ago into the van. It has been in a shed for most of that time, and as I was shifting it I noticed an alarming number of mouse droppings fall from it. No doubt it will be revolting, and probably a health hazard. Bev and Fiona are going to put it up in the morning. Wigtown Food Festival is the event that bridges the gap between the end of spring and the start of summer, and invariably falls on one of the most pleasant days of the year.
Till Total £40.50
8 Customers
SATURDAY, 23 MAY
Online orders: 2
Orders found: 1
Nicky wasn’t in today: her brother is visiting, and she wants to show him around. That should be a treat for him, being driven around in a van with the sack of manure that habitually inhabits the back of her van.
Today was a glorious sunny day: perfect for the Wigtown Food Festival, which took place in the square this year for the first time. Bev and Fiona came over to collect the key for the van at 9 a.m. and put the marquee up. Robbie, Fiona’s husband, appeared too, as he always does when an extra pair of hands is required, as did Bev’s husband, Keith. The booksellers of Wigtown are markedly split into those who do things and those who don’t, although I’m not sure into which category I fall.
Davy Brown arrived at 9.30 a.m. with more material for his Spring Fling show. I had completely forgotten that I’d agreed to let a writing group use that space too, so I was taken slightly aback when a raven-haired American woman called Marjorie introduced herself as its host at 10.30. At eleven o’clock the writers turned up, so I left them to fight it out among themselves.
Just after eleven a tall blonde woman came to the counter. She’d found a book that must have been here since long before I bought the business. It was a tatty Observers book, priced at 50p: ‘Two questions, firstly can I have a discount because it is in pretty grotty condition, and secondly, can I pay for it by card.’ When I told her that it must be the only book in the shop priced at 50p and that there was no possible way I could discount it, she looked horrified and left it on the counter. Most of our Observers books are £4 without jackets, and £6 if they have jackets, and they sell well at those prices.
At lunchtime a fat man with a ponytail managed to get wedged between a pile of boxes and the sci-fi section. I had to move several boxes to extricate him.
Till Total £279.91
33 Customers
SUNDAY, 24 MAY
Online orders: 1
Orders found: 1
I opened the shop at 9 a.m. Tricia and Callum (Davy’s daughter and son) turned up at 10 a.m. to staff the Spring Fling exhibition.
The first email of the day began with the ominous words ‘Hi i have a collection of 96 readers digest leather bound condensed books, and a lot of single ones would you be interested. I can provide more info if needed thanks’. Reader’s Digest books, particularly the condensed fiction series, are possibly the least desirable things you will ever come across in the second-hand book trade. They are worthless, and in fourteen years in the trade I think I’ve only ever been asked for them once.
Just before lunch a man came to the counter with a small pile of antiquarian local history books which Nicky had seriously underpriced, including a two-volume set of Sir Herbert Maxwell’s A History of the House of Douglas, which she’d put at £40. The last set I bought I paid £80 for and sold for £120. He asked, ‘If I buy all of these, how much will it come to?’ I had no idea that adding £40, £25 and £45 could be such an intellectual challenge for a grown man.
A man with a Crocodile Dundee hat and a white goatee which he’d dyed blue picked up a copy of Tripe Advisor, read a bit, chuckled and told his friends, ‘That appeals to my sense of humour’, before putting it back and buying a book about child abuse.
Callum, Gerald (my cousin, who is visiting from Ireland), Anna and I went to the pub after closing. There must be some sort of sidecar rally going on as the entire street was lined with motorbikes and sidecars.
Till Total £224.92
33 Customers
MONDAY, 25 MAY
Online orders: 0
Orders found: 0
No orders, so I suspect Monsoon is playing up again.
Today was a Bank Holiday, and the final day of Spring Fling. The shop was heaving with children messing the place up. Danny (my neighbour and a plumber) came to look at some work that I’m planning on doing in the bothy out the back. I apologised to him for bothering him on a Bank Holiday – he just laughed and told me that Bank Holidays were no different from any other day. For the self-employed – and for most people in retail – they are nothing like most people’s perceptions of a Bank Holiday. For the majority of the country they are a long weekend: a break, a holiday. But for my business they are the time when there are people around, and people who want to spend money, so, rather than take time off, I end up working longer hours than I usually would on an o
rdinary weekend. This normally coincides with having a houseful of visitors who want to stay up late and drink and chat.
An ex-girlfriend’s mother, Anna Campbell, came in with four boxes of books to sell at lunchtime, so I sorted through and picked out £25 worth. Often when they’re selling books, people will tell me that they want their books to ‘go to a good home’, as though they were a much loved pet or family heirloom. I have no idea whether the books I sell end up in a ‘good home’ or not, and were I to be so particular as to insist, indeed even ask my customers if they had a ‘good home’ to take the books to, I suspect I’d lose a great deal of business.
Sandy the tattooed pagan brought in four more sticks and spent £12.
A Northern Irishman spent four hours in the shop, managing to position himself in front of every shelf I needed access to. In the entire time he was there I didn’t even see him take a book from a shelf. Eventually he asked where the theology section was, so I told him that it was boxed up and piled in front of the music section. Since the time I boxed it up and piled it in front of the music section (so that there’s no access to the music section any more either), pretty much every second customer who has come into the shop has asked for either music or theology. He didn’t buy anything.
A woman came to the counter at 5.30 and said, ‘You only have one R. S. Thomas title.’ I thanked her for letting me know and carried on pricing up books.
Just before closing, a large family turned up – probably fifteen of them. They were wonderful, and all bought books. One of the daughters had insisted they come to the shop, eschewing all other Galloway tourist attractions in favour of here.
Confessions of a Bookseller Page 13