There’s something slightly unsavoury about metal-detecting in a children’s playground, when you consider that the loose change they gathered probably fell from the pockets of children.
The lorry arrived with a delivery of pellets for the new boiler at 11 a.m., just as my mother dropped in to say hello. When I tried to explain to her that I needed to give the delivery men a hand unloading them, she replied, ‘Yes, of course dear. You get on with that’, then continued to talk for the next ten minutes while the driver and his assistant wrestled with the sacks of pellets.
Email from someone called Ian Kitt with a list of books he wants to sell, so I emailed him back and asked him if he could bring them in.
Till Total £24.50 1 Customer
THURSDAY, 10 DECEMBER
Online orders: 1
Orders found: 1
The shop computer – which needs to be on twenty-four hours a day in order to receive orders – was locked in a ‘restart’ mode when I opened up this morning, so I spent the first hour working out how to get it running again.
The depressed elderly Welsh woman telephoned and surprised me by asking if we had any Wainwright guides, as opposed to her usual request for antiquarian theology. I responded by surprising her in return and telling her that yes, we have almost all of Wainwright’s guides to the Lake District. ‘Oh, can I have the cheapest one?’ I found one priced at £4.50, she gave me her card details and I took her name and address.
There was an email from Anna at Wenlock Books when I checked this morning, suggesting that we run the Readers’ Retreat again next year, this time in March. I replied that I would be very happy to do so.
The book signed by Bertrand Russell sold for £103 on eBay.
Seven customers through the door all day, and two of those commented, as they left the shop, that they wished they’d brought their glasses. It seems like a singular oversight to neglect to bring your glasses to a bookshop.
After closing, I set up the big room for the festival volunteers’ dinner tomorrow night. Every year, once the hangover of the festival has worn off, the paid staff in the festival office organise a thank-you meal for the volunteers. This year we’re having it here, in the Writers’ Retreat.
Till Total £47.50
5 Customers
FRIDAY, 11 DECEMBER
Online orders: 0
Orders found: 0
Beautiful sunny day.
Maria arrived at 9.30 with all of her catering gear for tonight’s meal, then headed off home.
No orders today, but I posted out the book signed by Bertrand Russell which sold on eBay yesterday for £103.
At lunchtime a white-haired man came to the counter and asked if we had a book about Mochrum, a nearby town, written by a local farmer. I showed the customer to a copy of it and left him sitting there for an hour, after which he left, saying, ‘Thank you, but it’s not quite what I’m looking for.’
Shortly before closing, a customer stopped me by the biography section and said, ‘This might sound like a crazy question, but [pregnant pause, then whispering] do you have any books in Dutch?’ I have to admit that I’ve heard crazier questions. Perhaps it was code for something.
Shona and Maria arrived at 6 p.m. to set up for the Christmas dinner. As they were doing so, Eliot arrived with his suitcase and asked if he could stay the night. As always, he immediately kicked off his shoes.
I went to Emily’s Christmas opening gallery night at 6.30 and bought a picture of a pig for my sister. On the way back about a hundred people were gathered in the square singing carols for the switching on of the Christmas lights. The volunteers’ dinner began at 7 p.m. and went on until about 1 a.m., with twenty-two people being catered for by Maria. We ran out of wine and I had to raid the cellar for more. Spent much of the evening being wine waiter.
Till Total £54.49
4 Customers
SATURDAY, 12 DECEMBER
Online orders: 2
Orders found: 2
I got up early and cooked breakfast. Eliot left at eleven.
An elderly customer came to the counter with twelve books, all relatively new. The total came to £65, and I told him that he could have them for £60. Rather than show any kind of appreciation, he said, ‘Is that all the discount I’m getting? £5?’
No customers between 11.30 a.m. and 3.45 p.m., then nine appeared within five minutes. None of them bought anything. Spent the day sorting through boxes and bags of books. I’ve barely made a dent in the massive pile of things to do.
After work I lit the fire and finished The Living Mountain. Sad that it was published posthumously, as it is a brilliant, moving book. Her description of the risks and joys of mountaineering, skewed with hindsight, is particularly familiar and resonant:
But there is a phenomenon associated with this feyness of which I must confess a knowledge. Often, in my bed at home, I have remembered the places I have run lightly over with no sense of fear, and have gone cold to think of them. It seems to me that I could never go back; my fear unmans me, horror is in my mouth. Yet when I go back, the same leap of the spirit carries me up. God or no god, I am fey again.
The feyness of which she speaks will be something common to many who have tramped and climbed in Scottish hills and mountains; there’s a sense of being in a disconnected world, at once familiar and unfamiliar.
Till Total £158.99
8 Customers
MONDAY, 14 DECEMBER
Online orders: 5
Orders found: 5
At 9.30 a.m. Maria came round to collect the plates and cutlery left here following the volunteers’ dinner on Friday, and the fridge which has been in the kitchen since the festival. Just after she left, Petra dropped in to kill time while she was waiting for something or someone (I forget who). I’m not sure whether people who come in to kill time realise that they are killing my time too.
A customer looking for a Christmas present for a dyslexic nephew bought two Asterix books.
A Northern Irish customer came to the counter with three books and mauled them for a while, before pointing to a price sticker in one of them and asking ‘Is that really £20?’ When I confirmed that it was, he said ‘No, that’s too expensive’ and replaced it on the shelf. There’s a difference between a book being too expensive and a customer being too cheap.
Till Total £110.50
8 Customers
TUESDAY, 15 DECEMBER
Online orders: 2
Orders found: 1
My parents appeared at 11 a.m. for a chat. We covered my mother’s usual favourite subjects: who’s died, who’s dying and who’s got dementia.
A woman called to sign-up her friend for the RBC as a Christmas present. Hopefully membership will prove to be a popular gift.
Later, as I was making a cup of tea, I heard a shout from downstairs. It was Ian Kitt, the man who had been emailing regarding the list of books he sent last week. He’d brought six boxes of them to the shop. Shortly afterwards a woman who had moved here from France with her husband and brought five boxes in a few weeks ago appeared. I pointed to the boxes she’d brought in last time and told her that I didn’t want most of them. She told me that she had no room in her car because she’d brought me another seven boxes. I had to turn her away because the shop is now full of boxes.
I sorted through Ian Kitt’s boxes of books. All in mint condition, checked a few prices online and gave him a cheque for £300. I feel like I’m drowning in books.
Till Total £76
3 Customers
WEDNESDAY, 16 DECEMBER
Online orders: 5
Orders found: 3
Chris Mills appeared at 9.15 to valet the van, which was in an embarrassing state. I’ve known Chris since 2000, when I worked on a documentary about the loss of the Solway Harvester, a scallop dredger that sank near the Isle of Man on 11 January of that year. His brother David was one of the crew.
In the morning I started going through the books that came in yesterday. Among th
em was a box of photography books in excellent condition, so I have emailed photographs of them to my friend Aíne, who is a collector of modern portrait photography books.
At 5 p.m. I went to lock up the shop and discovered that Chris had gone off with my van key after he’d finished cleaning the van. The shop key is attached to the van key, so I slid the curling stone we use as a doorstop behind the unlocked door and went for a pint with Callum.
Till Total £49
4 Customers
THURSDAY, 17 DECEMBER
Online orders: 7
Orders found: 7
At 9 a.m. a woman blasted the door open and stormed into the shop, laden down with bags, clearly full of books she wanted to sell. She headed at considerable speed through the shop shouting ‘Hello’ and completely ignoring my replies. Eventually she reappeared in the front of the shop, the obvious place for the counter, till and staff to be positioned, and said with some surprise, ‘Oh, there you are.’ She then asked me if I was interested in buying books. Every surface and space in the shop is now covered with books and boxes which I have yet to process and which have arrived in the past two weeks, so I told her that unless they’re pretty special, I’m not interested. She began flinging the books from her bags all over the floor, and told me that they were very special hardbacks ‘John Grisham, Dan Brown, James Patterson’. When I told her that I wasn’t interested, she looked genuinely astonished.
After work I picked up my copy of The Master and Margarita, which I had interrupted to read The Living Mountain and carried on with it. Granny was right: it’s an extraordinary, brilliant book.
Till Total £70.50
6 Customers
FRIDAY, 18 DECEMBER
Online orders: 3
Orders found: 1
One of today’s orders was for the two-volume Lands and Their Owners in Galloway, which Nicky had listed for £40, about £100 less than it is worth.
Dropped off the orders for the last few days at the post office. On the way in, I noticed that the part of the window where they post the notices of impending funerals was completely covered. Carol-Ann’s mother, Alison, always used to say that as December crept on the number each week would always increase until, by Christmas, there was no more space for notices of the dead.
For today’s blackboard I wrote a haiku:
Christmas is hellish.
Lose yourself in a bookshop;
All will be well (ish).
Till Total £85.48
8 Customers
SATURDAY, 19 DECEMBER
Online orders: 7
Orders found: 7
I was looking for a book that I listed yesterday and for which we had an order this morning, and found that Nicky had put four books in a series called Rivers of America in the philosophy section.
Two of the books in today’s orders were from the £300 lot that came in earlier in the week. So far, from the few that I’ve listed online, £210 worth have sold. Knock off the Amazon cut and that’s about £150, which is a good, fast return. If only it was always like this.
In the afternoon I did the Christmas window for the shop: a pile of books in the shape of a Christmas tree, with some fairy lights around it. It’s the most effort I’ve ever put into a Christmas window.
Till Total £236
8 Customers
MONDAY, 21 DECEMBER
Online orders: 14
Orders found: 12
Foul, wet and windy day, but it’s the shortest day of the year, so once that is past there is – at least psychologically for me – a renewed sense of optimism. This would prove to be short-lived: Nicky appeared with a chest of drawers and four bags of books. She told me, with some glee, that she’s not coming back to work for me again. I don’t know what made me more sad, the news that she’s not coming back or the fact that she seemed so delighted to be leaving a job that she so obviously once adored. It will be the end of a golden era in the shop.
Just the one customer by lunchtime, huffing and puffing his way around the shop. He managed to redeem himself by spending £50 and telling me – with no apparent sense of irony – about a bookshop in Cornwall that has a huge sign at the counter which reads ‘NO ANECDOTES’.
As I was putting the labels on the parcels for the Random Book Club, a man with a German accent asked if we had a copy of Mein Kampf.
Till Total £174.98
11 Customers
TUESDAY, 22 DECEMBER
Online orders: 3
Orders found: 3
There was a parcel in today’s post from Italy. I opened it to discover all manner of delicious treats – speck, pecorino, salami and a bottle of Barolo – along with a message from Granny: ‘Eat this at Christmas, you shitty fucking bastard.’
I took the mail over to Wilma at the post office just before they closed for lunch, and asked her if she could give me £100 in pound coins. She whispered that William, who owns the post office, would be furious if he found out. Then, the moment he left the room, she shoved them through under the glass and told me to come back later with the notes to pay for them.
I was putting more books out from the £300 buy last week when I noticed that – by pure coincidence – all our Scottish mountaineering books are located on shelf K2 in the Scottish room.
Till Total £135.99
14 Customers
WEDNESDAY, 23 DECEMBER
Online orders: 3
Orders found: 3
Jeff the minister called in at 10.30. He’s back to travelling by bus again, now that we’re into the depths of winter. He spent a while looking for something in the theology section to inspire his Christmas sermon. It seems that the Kirk is keen to move him out from the manse, where he’s lived since his appointment here several decades ago. When I asked him where he was moving to, he replied ‘I have no idea. I’m like Abraham, standing on a hill and shouting “Ur”.’ I had no idea what he was talking about, but I have no doubt whatsoever that it would mean something to someone.
In the post this morning were two Christmas cards, one addressed to ‘King Prawn’ and the other to ‘Masterful Shaun Bythell’.
At 11 a.m. I went upstairs to make myself a cup of tea and briefly warm myself in the relative heat of the kitchen. On my way back downstairs I was surprised to find Mole-Man working his way through the art section on the first landing. He didn’t even look up at me as I passed him, so engrossed was he in a book of Dürer’s woodcuts. I suspect he’s buying himself Christmas presents.
I spent the afternoon pricing up books and putting them on the shelves, returning from a lengthy spell in the Railway Room to see the familiar site of Mole-Man at the counter, although this time from a different angle. I worked my way through his pile of books, which included two on climbing (he doesn’t strike me as an outdoorsman, but I may be wrong), a book on timber preservation, a history of Portugal, the Dürer woodcut book and one on the geology of West Yorkshire. The last title caused me to question an assumption that I’ve made since his first appearance: that Mole-Man is Scottish. Since I’ve never heard him speak, I have no idea whether or not this is the case. If he is indeed from Yorkshire, then he’s one of a very rare line of that breed who never ask for a discount. Perhaps I’ve subconsciously picked up that he always pays with Scottish notes, or something that leads me to believe he is a Scot.
As he left the shop I almost thought that I’d seen him smile, but it may have been trapped wind.
Till Total £40
5 Customers
THURSDAY, 24 DECEMBER
Online orders: 0
Orders found: 0
In today’s post was a card addressed to ‘Shaun Bythell, Belligerent Bookseller’.
Email in the Amazon inbox:
I regret to say I am very disappointed with this order. The book was described as ‘Used – very good’ condition. No mention was made of the fact that it was an ex-library book. The frontispiece was cut out, ‘cancelled’ was stamped on the next page and the page edges, and the book was
extremely grubby and smelt fusty. The book was intended as a Christmas gift and the recipient will probably just be pleased to have a copy of this out of print book.
However I do feel your description of the condition of the book was inaccurate.
I look forward to receiving your reply.
The book in question was £2, so I have given her a full refund. Ah, the spirit of Christmas washes over everyone.
Often the shop is busy on Christmas Eve, as frantic farmers panic to make sure there’s something under the tree for their wives, and often people come up early to visit family for the festive period, but the latter depends entirely on what day of the week Christmas falls: taking a couple of extra days off can mean a week off if Christmas Day is a Monday or a Thursday. This year I suspect that the working population who descend on relations in Galloway will be driving up or down today. Perhaps the period between Christmas and New Year will be better.
Till Total £86.94
10 Customers
FRIDAY, 25 DECEMBER
Online orders:
Orders found:
Closed.
Woke up to discover that the door to the spare bedroom in which the cat has taken to sleeping lately, and which I always leave open for the fat fiend, was firmly closed. It’s the bedroom on the top landing next to my bedroom, and isn’t vulnerable to the vagaries of the draughts that whistle through the shop. I’m quite certain that it was open last night when I went to bed. This morning, when I opened it, Captain shot out like an Olympic sprinter on laxatives with an eye on the loo.
Confessions of a Bookseller Page 29