Confessions of a Bookseller
Page 23
MONDAY, 21 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 7
Orders found: 6
Awoke at 5 a.m. after very little sleep. Went back to bed after a cup of tea, but didn’t sleep. Granny was in the kitchen, reading when I got up. I asked her why she was up so early, and she replied that she always gets up at five o’clock.
At 9.15 I went to the bathroom to discover that the seat had broken off the loo. I’ll have to repair it before the festival. It’s the loo that is used by the Writers’ Retreat. It has also taken to making a loud, groaning noise when it’s flushed, which vibrates through every pipe in the house.
Drinks with Ben and Beth from The Bookshop Band in The Ploughman at 8 p.m., then painted windows for Amy’s pop-up wine bar in the dark. Not sure how they’ll look in the cold light of day.
Till Total £311.99
17 Customers
TUESDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 5
Orders found: 3
Awoke at 5 a.m. and came downstairs to again find Granny drinking tea. Made myself a cup and chatted with her for ten minutes, then returned to bed. Granny’s preferred subject matter for conversation tends towards the darker side of life; this morning it was death.
I spent the day painting the woodwork on the windows that I had made the mistake of attempting to finish last night in the dark. After that, I hung paintings in the bothy, fixed the loo seat for the Writers’ Retreat, mowed the lawns and tried to organise the uplift of the sixteen boxes of sci-fi that Granny has listed on FBA. Granny, meanwhile, looked after the shop, clack-clack-clacking about in her hard-heeled boots.
At 4.30 I was struggling to put up the marquee in the garden for the pop-up restaurant that is on during the first weekend of the festival when Ben and Beth appeared. I was wrestling with the frame, trying to work out how to put it up, when they wandered in. Ben immediately offered to help, but I declined and instead seized the opportunity to have a break and offered them a cup of tea. While we were chatting in the kitchen, Eliot turned up and, after making him a cup of tea, I suggested that we look at the space and the marquee for the pop-up restaurant. The moment we got there, he looked disappointed that I hadn’t finished erecting it and complained that he thought it would be far too small. It won’t. It will be fine. Later, after the shop shut, I was struggling to put it up on my own when Granny appeared and offered to help. We put it up in about fifteen minutes.
At 6.15, as I was lying on the floor doing my back exercises, Eliot stomped into the kitchen, stepped straight over me and poured himself a large G&T.
After my back exercises I went out and carried on tidying up the garden, but by eight o’clock it was too dark to work, so I came in and began cooking. At about 8.15 Granny appeared and asked, ‘I have time for wash my legs before to eat?’
Till Total £428.49
18 Customers
WEDNESDAY, 23 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 5
Orders found: 3
Granny was in the shop all day.
The plumber showed up at 9.15 a.m. and told me that I need to find an electrician to wire up the hot water tank, so I called Ronnie.
Granny organised the postage for the RBC, a job I loathe. It will be strange when she’s gone and I have to go back to being tied to the front of the shop.
Till Total £452.36
32 Customers
THURSDAY, 24 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 3
Orders found: 2
Nicky was working in the shop today, a glorious, sunny day.
Wigtown Book Festival begins tomorrow, and next week I will be forty-five. Normally, despite autumn being the most depressing time of year for me, the excitement about town and in the shop on the day prior to the start of the festival is contagious, and there’s a kind of energy around the place. The last day of the festival is the opposite; everyone is exhausted, the clear-up is ahead, followed by the cold, quiet, dark days of winter.
After lunch I drove to the dump in Newton Stewart once again, and dropped off a van load of books and cardboard boxes. Unfortunately there is no time to take them to Glasgow for recycling before the festival now. This won’t be the last of my trips to the dump – the Writers’ Retreat generates far more waste than the humble wheelie bin can accommodate, and I’m obliged to drive there regularly throughout the festival with bin liners full of paper plates, kitchen waste and lobster carcases. The empty bottles go into boxes, and I recycle whatever I can.
Granny did a predictably bewildering blackboard this morning:
Without a book you look very confused. Am I upside down?
Robert, the plumber, arrived at noon, and Ronnie, the electrician, arrived at 2 p.m. to wire up the hot water tank.
At four o’clock Maria arrived with all the drinks for the Writers’ Retreat, so the kitchen is now full of food, about twenty cases of wine and equipment for the festival catering. During the festival my drawing room is converted into the Writers’ Retreat, an area exclusive to visiting authors who are giving talks. We bring in Maria to take care of the catering, and writers are fed and plied with wine during their visit to Wigtown. Laurie, a former employee, is tasked with making sure that everything runs smoothly, which it never does (through no fault of hers). One year, one of our house guests had a bath on the morning of the first day of the festival and the bath drain started leaking the moment he pulled the plug. A torrent of water crashed through from the bathroom, soaking the electric cooker, which exploded with a bang. I had to telephone a friend and ask her to pick a new one up from Dumfries and bring it over with her. The surge in power when the cooker exploded damaged the wireless router, so we had no internet, and later in the day the washing machine stopped working.
Carol-Ann phoned and asked if she can use the bothy during the festival, so I’ve said yes. I spent the evening out there putting the finishing touches to it: hanging curtains and putting handles on cupboards.
Anna arrived back in Wigtown. She’s staying with Finn and Ella (friends who have a farm about 8 miles away). It’s such a highlight of her social year, and she contributes enormously towards it both with ideas and with helping out whenever she’s needed.
Till Total £568.48
20 Customers
FRIDAY, 25 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 2
Orders found: 2
Nicky was in early this morning. Today is the first day of the festival, and the first festival guest to grace the Writers’ Retreat was Mairi Hedderwick. Mairi writes and illustrates the Katie Morag books, much beloved by children, as well as many other books, mainly about the Scottish Islands. I first met her at the festival about ten years ago. She’s been back several times since, and is a friend of my father’s cousin, fellow artist Frances Walker.
Filled the log basket and lit the fire in the Retreat at 10 a.m. Filling the log basket is one of the many mundane tasks that keeps me busy during the festival, but Robert Twigger – an author and a festival institution – often beats me to it, and when I come down in the morning, I find that he’s been up before me and filled it.
Today Twigger set up a photographic studio in the snug (normally my only place of sanctuary during the festival). He’s photographing writers holding a blackboard with their advice to the world written on it as part of the festival this year.
Laurie arrived at nine o’clock, Maria and Shona (one of Maria’s helpers) at about ten. The Writers’ Retreat opened at noon. The drawing room becomes this venue, and the kitchen is awash with dirty plates, loaded dishwashers and sinks, crates of orange juice, bottled water, paper plates, boiling kettles and the like for ten days from now. Slow to start, but by the end of the day it was busy, a foreshadowing of what tomorrow will be.
I cut back some foliage in the garden to clear the access to Amy’s wine bar, took some chairs over for her and made some more signs to direct people there. Shifted the (now empty) bag of sand from the alleyway and cleared some space in front of The Bothy. Amy opened the pop-up wine bar at 1 p.
m.
Drove to Newton Stewart with yet another van load of rubbish for the dump. The woman who runs it (whom my father refers to as Attila the Hun) has become quite friendly following my frequent visits.
Two kegs of beer arrived at 11 a.m. Nicky has decided that the festival needs even more alcohol and ordered them on my credit card.
Pru (Eliot’s wife) arrived at 5.30, and shortly afterwards Eliot appeared in the snug and asked for an iPhone charger as he’s already lost his. ‘I promise I won’t steal it.’ On average, he loses three phone chargers during each book festival.
Shortly afterwards Catriona (festival trustee) appeared and wandered into the kitchen and asked loudly – in front of everyone – ‘Why did you split up with Anna?’
Till Total £326.98
32 Customers
SATURDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 0
Orders found: 0
I was in the kitchen moving some chairs when Finn came in with a huge Norwegian man in a lumberjack shirt. Finn introduced him as Lars Mytting, the author of a surprisingly popular book about wood-cutting and burning, called Norwegian Wood. He was completely charming.
Phill Jupitus came in at noon for lunch. I spent most of the morning setting up Simon Wroe’s pop-up restaurant in the garden, running extension cables, moving gas cylinders, finding knives etc. for the meals he and Laura Mitchison prepared for guests at noon, 2.30 and 5 p.m., all of which were well attended and appeared to go well, despite Eliot’s concerns about the size of the marquee.
In the evening we all went to ‘Wigtown’s Got Talent’ in the big marquee – credit for which resides firmly with Anna. During the first festival that she was here for, after hours in the Writers’ Retreat there were a dozen or so of us sitting around and chatting, when Martin (my old housemate) announced that he could hammer a 4-inch nail up his nose. Anna immediately latched onto this, and asked if anyone else had any unusual skills. Before I knew it, she’d programmed an evening of entertainment with me, my sister Lulu and Twigger as judges. Eliot was so enchanted by it that he programmed it into the festival the following year, and now it’s a mix of locals and visiting writers performing on the night.
Closed shop at 8 p.m. Bed at 1 a.m.
Till Total £829.98
84 Customers
SUNDAY, 27 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 1
Orders found: 1
Woke up early and filled the log basket. Opened the shop at 9 a.m. in time to let Laurie in. Granny took over the shop shortly after I’d opened, so I went upstairs and lit the fire in the Retreat at 10 a.m.
Today’s festival events began at 10 a.m. with the start of the Alastair Reid-athon, a tribute to the local man who achieved literary greatness and whose obituary was given full pages in all the broadsheets in the UK, despite his relative obscurity. He was the perfect example of a man whose genius was recognised in his lifetime, but who will be posthumously immortalised in the world of literature.
Following swiftly on the heels of Alastair’s event was the oxymoronically titled Festival Fun Run, which began at 10.15 a.m. and which nobody I know attended.
As always, I spent the day firefighting and clearing up rubbish from the retreat. Phill Jupitus and Charlotte Higgins were around, both of whom had another event today, as did Val McDermid. The Retreat was considerably less busy today than it was yesterday, but that’s normal for Sundays during the festival.
I gave Granny a break for lunch at 12.30, and she headed up to the Retreat. Maria had made brownies, and they are like crack to Granny. She visibly salivates as soon as they appear, and it’s a miracle that anyone else even gets a whiff of one, let alone a taste, when Granny’s around.
After Simon and Laura had finished their second pop-up meal at around 3.30 p.m., I took the marquee down and put it back in the shed, then popped into Amy’s wine bar, which was, to my astonishment, absolutely packed with people. It seems that between events, particularly on either side of a big name, people flock there for food and wine. Val McDermid finished at about 2.30 p.m., so I imagine that most of those present were there following her event.
Closed the shop at 7.30 so that Granny could go and watch Deliverance, which was on at the temporary cinema in the County Buildings.
Till Total £842.43
92 Customers
MONDAY, 28 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 1
Orders found: 1
Opened the shop at 9 a.m., and my mother appeared at 10.30 – exactly the same time as Ronnie, the electrician. If anyone can give my mother a run for her money on filling silence with chat, it is Ronnie. The two of them migrated straight to the kitchen, where Shona, Katie and Laurie were setting up, and plonked themselves on chairs and talked for an hour about Ronnie’s motor-bike journey around the world.
At noon I drove to the Whithorn dump (or ‘Civic Amenity Centre’, as it is euphemistically called on the council signpost) with twelve bin liners full of paper plates and decomposing food from the Writers’ Retreat over the weekend, as well as the two polystyrene lobster coolers, which leaked stinking lobster juice all over the back of the van. The smell usually lingers for about a month after the festival.
Twigger took part in a discussion about Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman. From his own account of the event, it was painfully obvious that he hadn’t read it.
Allan Little, a BBC journalist whose roots are near Stranraer (20 miles away), and Vince Cable were among the guests in the Writers’ Retreat for lunch. Met Vince’s wife, who rather humbly refers to herself as ‘Mrs Vince’.
Till Total £603.99
38 Customers
TUESDAY, 29 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 2
Orders found: 1
Janetta in at 7 a.m. to clean the Writers’ Retreat.
Isabel was in at 1 p.m. to do the accounts, and Granny covered the shop. One of the customers this morning demanded change (£17.50 from a £20 note) in English money. Granny didn’t understand what he was talking about, so she came up to the kitchen where I was having a chat with Stuart and said, ‘Sorry if I distoorb you, a very rude man is in the shop.’ I went downstairs with her and dug out an English £5 and £10 and gave the man his change.
The Writers’ Retreat was fairly quiet today, but I topped up the log basket and lit the fire just in case.
I had a flick through the programme for today’s events and noticed that the first one was a visit to a tea plantation near Creetown, about 10 miles away, on the other side of Wigtown Bay.
Closed shop at 7.30 p.m. and headed over to The Ploughman for Stuart Kelly’s Literary Pub Quiz, where I teamed up with Lee Randall, Twigger and Anna. With no help from me, we managed to come second.
Till Total £425.47
42 Customers
WEDNESDAY, 30 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 2
Orders found: 2
Nicky was in today. Winter must be approaching because she was wearing a thick coat and her hat, which is a sort of trilby made of felt. This is my favourite of her winter outfits – I always point out that she just needs a pair of lederhosen and she could pass for a Tyrolean yodeller. She enjoys coming in during the festival, and inevitably ends up having a bizarre conversation with one or two of the authors, who probably leave Wigtown somewhat shell-shocked as a consequence. Captain appeared at the same time as Nicky. He dislikes the festival intensely, as the rearranged furniture confuses his navigation system, and there’s always lots of noise and movement. He tends to hide in my bedroom for most of it, and Anna relocates his food supply to there.
Twigger had already lit the fire by the time I remembered to do it at 11 a.m.
David, who works for BBC Scotland and is running Radio Wigtown with Anne Brown, asked if I could record an interview with him and John Higgs in the Martyrs’ Cell. It took about twenty-five minutes. I went into the Retreat afterwards for something to eat and found Liz Lochhead asleep in one of the armchairs by the fire, an open newspaper on her lap. She’d c
learly nodded off reading it. Over lunch, as I was chatting to the historian Max Arthur about the ethics of using drones in warfare, I mentioned that I have a video drone. He perked up and asked if he could see it, so we drove down to the salt marsh and I flew it around for a while. He seemed unduly impressed.
At 3 p.m. Anna and I went to John Higgs’s event about making sense of the twentieth century, an entertaining hour well spent. Someone left a copy of his book in the Writers’ Retreat, so if it’s still there at the end of the festival, I’ll read it, although for many people, I suspect, going to events at literary festivals is an alternative to reading the book, rather than a supplement to it.
At the busiest time of the year the planning department decided to send a delegation to inspect the concrete book spirals. In their defence, they were extremely apologetic, and seemed very taken with the spirals.
Stuart, Twigger, Anna and I had supper with Simon Wroe and Laura in the kitchen. After we’d eaten, everyone started reciting their favourite poetry around the table. By bedtime, everyone was drunk and it had assumed an air of pretentiousness otherwise unheard of in the kitchen, and possibly the whole town.
I have – to this day – no idea where she came from, or how she got in, but at about 11 p.m. a small young German woman appeared and asked if she could stay for the night. Nobody had the slightest idea who she was, but I showed her to the bed in the shop and told her she was welcome to stay.
Till Total £489.83
37 Customers
OCTOBER
There is also the confidential customer. He walks in on tiptoe and talks to you in whispers. He blushes and looks around as if he were committing a crime. Probably he only wants Hume Brown’s History of Scotland, but you’d think he had stepped into a police station to make a confession. You can do nothing with him: you cannot put him at his ease. He takes the parcel from you, and goes off with it like an apologetic thief. He is a contrast to the bluff, outspoken man who talks in a loud voice. This kind won’t listen to what you say and bangs down his money as if he were driving a nail into the counter. Although he thinks he knows what he wants, he often doesn’t. But there is no need to worry. Once he has bought a book, he has bought it and he’ll never come back and admit his mistake.