Confessions of a Bookseller
Page 17
Language isn’t my forte, so it would be unfair of me to criticise Emanuela for her embryonic English, although it often results in considerable amusement. When I first went to Wigtown Primary School at the age of four, I’d grown up on a farm with an English father and an Irish mother, and although I had friends (my mother set up the Wigtown Playgroup for pre-school children for this very reason), I had yet to be fully exposed to the Wigtownshire dialect. When I went to school, everyone seemed to know one another, and I could barely understand anything anyone said. As I progressed through Wigtown Primary I often felt that I spoke two languages. Even the words for ‘one’ and ‘two’, pretty fundamental to an understanding of any language, are different: in Wigtownshire they’re ‘yin’ and ‘twa’. My parents always found it highly entertaining when they heard me speaking to my friends as a child.
Mark, the plasterer, turned up at 7 p.m. and finished plastering the bothy. Once that’s dry I will get to work painting it a.s.a.p. and Emanuela can move into it, assuming the plumber turns up to finish the job. Shortly afterwards I was in the kitchen with Emanuela when The Archers came on the radio. Her ears pricked up and she listened with rapt attention. After the closing theme tune she asked ‘What dis? A comedy?’
Till Total £322.48
22 Customers
FRIDAY, 3 JULY
Online orders: 1
Orders found: 1
Nicky was in today. After she’d found the solitary order, she tracked down three of the orders that Flo had been unable to locate earlier in the week. She gave Emanuela a guided tour of the shop, which – I’m guessing – contained useful tips like ‘The boss likes it if you leave books in piles all over the floor’ and ‘If you cannae fit the book on the shelf in the right section just find a space in another section.’ She didn’t seem her usual ebullient self, though. I wonder if she feels her job is under threat from Emanuela.
The Samye Ling people (who drop off unwanted books from the library of the Tibetan retreat in Dumfriesshire) dropped off four boxes, including one that contained nothing but books about incest – both grim survivors’ tales and psychology books on the subject of sexual abuse. I’m not sure how big a market there is for that in the shop.
It was a sunny day, so I made Pimm’s for Nicky and Emanuela, which we drank in the shop before closing up. Emanuela guzzled hers in a couple of large draughts, declaring that it was her first ever Pimm’s, and that it was ‘a-very-a good-a’.
Till Total £131.99
11 Customers
SATURDAY, 4 JULY
Online orders: 4
Orders found: 3
A dull day and a leaden sky.
Emanuela seems to be settling in well and is working hard, although she insists on wearing white gloves when she’s handling the books. I’m not sure Nicky likes her, but Emanuela seems blissfully unaware of Nicky’s opprobrium.
After work I cooked supper for Emanuela, who despite her slim figure wolfed down about three times what I ate. Like the Pimm’s, she told me that it was ‘a-very-a good-a’ before disappearing up to her room for the rest of the evening.
Till Total £159.99
23 Customers
MONDAY, 6 JULY
Online orders: 10
Orders found: 9
When I came downstairs this morning, Emanuela was sitting in the kitchen wearing what appeared to be an enormous turban. In fact, it was just a towel. She explained that she has to keep it on for an hour after she washes her hair.
Callum came around to work on the bothy. No Flo – she’s gone to Paris for the week with her mother. Emanuela volunteered to take charge of the front of the shop. At least, I think that’s what she said.
There was no power in the circuit that runs to the bothy. Apparently it’s been like that since the electrician came to do the wiring for the new pellet boiler, so I called Ronnie, the electrician, who always comes at the drop of a hat, and who appeared within moments and sorted it all out.
After work I went to the Unicorn Chinese restaurant in Newton Stewart with some old friends, Anne and David. Anne used to be the chair of Wigtown Book Festival, and I’ve known her all my life. We got back at about eleven and David and I stayed up and talked about fishing and cricket until about 1 a.m. Emanuela looked bored, so I offered to explain the rules of cricket to her. She looked disapprovingly at me over the top of her exceptionally thick glasses and said an emphatic ‘a-no-a, fank you.’
Till Total £333.81
24 Customers
TUESDAY, 7 JULY
Online orders: 3
Orders found: 3
One of today’s orders was for a book called R. F. D Country! Mailboxes and Post Offices of Rural America. Inside the front cover was a photograph of the authors, possibly the two geekiest-looking specimens I’ve ever seen.
As I was tidying the shelves, I spotted a copy of Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis in the Penguin section and put it in the snug to read later.
After lunch I nervously left Emanuela in charge of the shop and went to the river. This is one of my favourite places in Galloway, and the lower stretches of the Luce meander lazily around the soft landscape of the glen before spilling into the sea. Tree-lined and tranquil, it is a place I’ve known for almost my entire life. My father first took me fishing when I was two years old, and I caught a small trout (with his help). From that moment, apparently, it was all I wanted to do, to the point at which whenever I saw him throwing his fishing gear into his car, I would become agitated and insist on going with him. Today I was fishing the pool in which I caught my first salmon, and I bagged a sea trout of about 3lb. Anna (who is staying with Finn and Ella at the moment) came over and we ate it for supper. Emanuela looked horrified at the sight of the dead fish, pointing to its head, saying ‘a-poor-a feesh-a’ several times, before devouring about half of it.
Till Total £325.53
35 Customers
WEDNESDAY, 8 JULY
Online orders: 3
Orders found: 3
Flo was in, back from her trip to Paris, so this morning I took Emanuela to the post office to show her where to leave the bags with the online orders, and to meet Wilma, the wonderful woman who works there. On the way back Emanuela pronounced, ‘Wow, thees are amazing. It not just a post-a office. It sell-a everyfink.’ As we were passing the chemist, there was a man outside telling his poodle that no, he couldn’t go in there because dogs aren’t allowed. But he’s still a very good boy, apparently. Emanuela petted the poodle in Italian.
Later in the afternoon a customer brought in eleven boxes of completely unsellable books: Chambers encyclopaedias with spines sellotaped on, tatty Dick Francis and Jeffrey Archer paperbacks, Harmsworth Self-Educators, book club editions of John Galsworthy and so on. Of the eleven boxes, I managed to pick out about twenty books that might, at a push, sell in the shop.
At about 4 p.m. I went to the river for an hour, but caught nothing. After work Anna and I went to Rigg Bay to look for a piece of driftwood to adapt as a newel post for the bothy and found a superb piece of ash around which an ivy plant had snaked its way.
When I returned to the house at about 7 p.m., Emanuela was resplendent in her turban once again. When I asked her what time she’d like to eat, she replied ‘alf an hour. I go upstairs and wash-a me legs first.’ I thought it best not to inquire further.
Till Total £233.47
20 Customers
THURSDAY, 9 JULY
Online orders: 2
Orders found: 2
As I was checking the orders, I found a letter addressed to someone with the unfortunate name of Henry H. Crapo inside the front cover of one of them.
After work Emanuela disappeared off to the co-op, returning about an hour later with a faraway look on her face. When I asked her where she’d been, she told me ‘the co-op. How I love de co-op. De people is so friendly, and it have everyfink. I spend one hour in there every day from now on.’
Till Total £196.80
20 Customers
FRIDAY, 10 JULY
Online orders: 2
Orders found: 2
Nicky was in. Her heart-throb from the Jehovah’s Witnesses is going to be in the area this weekend, giving a talk at the Stranraer Kingdom Hall.
Nicky: I need to lose two stone in two days.
Me: How are you going to do that?
Nicky: Well, I’ve shaved my legs. That’s lost me four pounds.
Me: What are you going to wear when you meet him?
Nicky: I’m going for a 1972 Polish communist look.
We decided that the best solution for Nicky losing two stone in two days is to amputate something. We were all in agreement that it should be her head, as this solves the problem of how to style her hair at the same time.
In the afternoon I went to Robbie Murphie’s funeral with Anna and Callum. Huge crowd. His daughter Christie spoke very movingly of him.
Till Total £270.58
31 Customers
SATURDAY, 11 JULY
Online orders: 1
Orders found: 1
Nicky was in on time.
Sunny day and the African Drumming Group was in the gardens all morning, lending an exotic tone to the town. They’re based in the west of the county, and largely made up of women, although Sandy the tattooed pagan was a member for a while. He took considerable delight in telling me that he’d been ‘drummed out’. They usually come to Wigtown during the festival or, if the mood takes them, at other times in the spring and summer.
A man in bleached shorts with white hair came in and talked at Emanuela for half an hour – ‘There’s a big tree in Greece which has money growing on it and people just pick it off the tree when they want it … same problem with the SNP, it’s a ferocious culture, now here’s a funny story, in the Normandy landings …’ – all this punctuated with some hip thrusts and dancing in his sock-and-sandal combo, and doing proper growling sounds into her face. The poor girl had no idea what he was talking about. Perhaps that was a blessing.
Nicky sold a map for £180 to a man who she decided (for reasons best known to herself) was a born-again Christian: ‘They’re mental, they folk.’ She and Emanuela seem to be getting on a little bit better. Emanuela’s English – while infinitely better than my handful of Italian words – is causing a few communication problems with customers, and her white gloves are not quite as clean as they were on her first day.
After work I made a short video in the garden about how to upgrade your Kindle to a Kindle Fire. It involved half a gallon of petrol and a box of matches.
Till Total £546.46
30 Customers
MONDAY, 13 JULY
Online orders: 7
Orders found: 6
Flo and Emanuela were both in the shop today. I left instructions for them to tidy the place up and list any fresh stock on Monsoon, then headed off at 9 a.m. for Yetholm (in the Borders, about three hours away) to look at a military history collection, and then on to a private library in Melrose. The Yetholm collection was a lead from my friend Stuart Kelly and belonged to a man who works in the Middle East who was disposing of his late father’s collection. I offered him £350 for the books. As I opened the back door of the van to load the boxes of books, a tin of emulsion that I’d bought to paint the bothy kitchen fell out onto the driveway and cracked open, spilling paint all over the place. Thankfully, he was very understanding.
The place in Melrose was an enormous town house; the people selling the books were moving to a smaller house and lacked the space to accommodate the library. He had been involved in setting up the Melrose Book Festival. The books were piled on top of a full-size billiards table, and I had to walk through several rooms and past an indoor swimming-pool to get to them. I only wanted about one third of the library, but since they were moving house, they asked if I could take them all. Thankfully there was a team of three furniture removers packing the contents of the house up, so they kindly helped me lug the boxes to the van. I paid £600 for the books I wanted, which included a few interesting antiquarian titles.
After a fairly exhausting day I spent the night with friends near Peebles, as I have to look at another library in a nearby house in the morning.
Till Total £253.50
48 Customers
TUESDAY, 14 JULY
Online orders: 3
Orders found: 3
At 8.30 a.m. I received a telephone call from the person I was supposed to be seeing this morning to say that he’d been called away unexpectedly, and could we postpone, so I drove home, and was back in time for lunch, only to find that Flo and Emanuela had strewn books and boxes throughout the shop in a way that would have made even Nicky blush.
After work I went for a walk with Emanuela to show her a bit of the area. As we were walking past a field of cows, she suddenly stopped and grabbed my arm. When I asked what was wrong, she pointed at a nearby cow (on the other side of a dry stone dyke) and said, ‘The cow-a he is look at me. Look, look his eye! He ’ate me!’ I tried to explain to her that the cow didn’t hate her, but she has managed to convince herself that it’s not just cows, but all animals that ’ate her.
Till Total £259.49
29 Customers
WEDNESDAY, 15 JULY
Online orders: 1
Orders found: 1
Flo was in today. She parcelled up the random books, approximately 150 of them. While she was packing them up, she told me that she’d ‘had a dream when I was in Paris that you had put a hidden camera behind the computer and uploaded a video of me asleep at work’. Ah, the high calibre of this summer’s staff.
Owing to lack of space in the shop, I had to drop off most of the books from the Melrose library at Finn’s. I told him that he can have most of them as stock for The Open Book if he so desires.
In the evening I made a huge pot of parsnip and apple soup for supper (and to last for lunch for the rest of the week). Emanuela appeared in the kitchen at about 8 p.m. and asked what it was, so I told her, to which she replied, ‘What is bastarding apple soup?’ I told her to help herself, then went into the garden to pick strawberries. When I came back twenty minutes later, she was sitting in a chair grinning. The pot of soup was completely empty.
Got to the chapter in Lucky Jim where Welch has a party in his house and Dixon stays overnight. I haven’t laughed aloud at a piece of writing so much in a long time, particularly the moment when the pompous Professor Welch offers Dixon a drink: ‘In a moment he’d taken a bottle of port from among the sherry, beer, and cider which filled half a shelf inside. It was from this very bottle that Welch had, the previous evening, poured Dixon the smallest drink he’d ever been seriously offered.’
Till Total £172.49
20 Customers
THURSDAY, 16 JULY
Online orders: 5
Orders found: 5
Unusually, there was no sign of Emanuela when I opened the shop. She appeared, half an hour later, a bit flustered and apologising that she was late because ‘I have to put-a in order-a the face.’
Norman Furnishings arrived at 11 a.m. to put the carpet down in the bothy.
After lunch I left Flo and Emanuela in charge and went to look at books in The Barony. The Barony is an agricultural college about 6 miles from Dumfries, and Karen, the librarian, calls me whenever they’re having a clear-out. Mostly it’s ex-library stock, and not particularly good, but occasionally there’s something amongst it that makes the journey worthwhile. On the way there I was stuck at traffic lights near the turn-off to Glenkiln when Flo rang. Normally this only happens if there’s an emergency, so I answered. A concert pianist had come to the shop to sell CDs of her music, which, from what I could gather, was accompanied by some children’s storytelling. I dislike this sort of thing, so I told Flo to tell her that we don’t sell CDs. Clearly not satisfied with this response, the concert pianist demanded to speak to me, so I told Flo to tell her that I couldn’t, as I was driving. I could hear the concert pianist in the background saying, ‘Tell him to pull
over so that I can speak to him’, so I hung up.
Till Total £157
16 Customers
FRIDAY, 17 JULY
Online orders: 5
Orders found: 5
Nicky was in today, with some feta and spinach horrors that she’d raided from the Morrisons skip last night after her Kingdom Hall meeting.
Following a call earlier in the week I drove to Troon (65 miles away) to look at a maritime history collection. My suspicions were aroused by the presence of a yapping terrier and a man with a fluffy moustache and freshly ironed nylon trousers washing his car outside the house. Both the terrier and the car (and probably the moustache) were clearly fussed about and doted over. A woman in her sixties in a polyester skirt (which probably generated enough static electricity to power half of Troon every time she stood up from the sofa) explained that the collection belonged to her late brother. I went through them and made her an offer of £200 for about half of them. Her husband took a break from stroking the bonnet of his vomit-yellow Mondeo and came in to see what was what. After I’d explained the situation, he asked me to separate the books I wanted from those I didn’t – something I’d normally have done at the start but she had requested that I didn’t. After a couple of minutes, when I was about a quarter of the way through, he interrupted and said, ‘For £200 we’re not even in the same ball park.’ Occasionally it happens that the seller wants more than I’m prepared to pay for a collection, but it’s quite rare. Rarer still is that the seller lacks the capacity to articulate this politely and leave any room for discussion, but this was such an occasion, and I was happy to leave empty-handed and with £200 still in my wallet.
The new boiler has started making a whining noise, so something is clearly wrong with it.