Our Amazon status has shot back up to Good again.
Since it was a pleasant day, I painted the benches in front of the shop during lunch. An elderly neighbour with whom I have a nodding acquaintance was passing (I had bought the books from her late sister’s estate several years previously). She was making her way towards the co-op with her shopping trolley and stopped in front of the shop and started chatting. She told me that she had spent a good deal of money on her garden bench fifteen years ago because it was the first garden she had ever owned and she felt like treating herself. When I asked her where she’d lived before Wigtown, she listed a number of places, including Tokyo and Jerusalem, where she helped create the first Hebrew dictionary. I had no idea that she had led such an interesting life. Ah, the dangers of making assumptions about people. No doubt I do it on a daily basis with my customers, and dismiss people as key-jangling buffoons when they may well have led soldiers onto the beaches of Normandy or pioneered ground-breaking medical research.
After lunch I drove to Dumfries and dropped Anna and Lucy at the railway station to return to London (each armed with a jar of wild garlic pesto) and was back in the shop by 4 p.m.
For the last hour of the day the shop was occupied by a family of six – mum, dad and four girls aged between six and sixteen. When the time came to pay for their books, the mother told me that they had all been out for a walk in the morning and the girls had been miserable, despite the sunny weather. She had asked why they were so unhappy and they replied in unison that all they wanted to do was visit The Book Shop as they hadn’t been here for two years and were really excited about returning. They spent £175 and left with six bags of books. These things happen far too rarely, but when they do they serve as a welcome reminder of why I chose to enter the world of bookselling, and of how important bookshops are to many people.
My mother came in at 4 p.m. and dropped off a box of three Creme Eggs for Easter. I’m not overly fond of chocolate, but my appetite for it is quite unsophisticated. Anna is very partial to extremely strong dark chocolate, as is Callum, and they regularly gang up to mock me for having the same taste as a small child. On the rare occasions during which I am afflicted by a craving, mine is for sugary milk chocolate and Creme Eggs are exactly what I want.
After I had locked up I went to the co-op for milk and bread. Mike was working there, and he told me that the Cats Protection League had neutered the spraying cat he had trapped. He and Emma (his partner) have decided to keep it.
Till total £288.48
14 customers
APRIL
Our shop had an exceptionally interesting stock, yet I doubt whether ten per cent of our customers knew a good book from a bad one.
George Orwell, ‘Bookshop Memories’
Of course, one person’s good book is another person’s bad book; the matter is entirely subjective. One of my friends is a fine jewellery dealer in London. I once asked him how he decided what to buy and what not to buy when he was at auction. He explained that when he’d started out in the trade, he bought things that looked inoffensive and that – he considered – would have universal appeal. He quickly learned that these did not sell particularly well and rarely commanded a high price, so he changed his strategy – ‘Now, if I see something which evokes a strong reaction in me, I’ll buy it. Whether I absolutely adore it or utterly hate it, I can guarantee that I’ll get a good price for it.’
Plenty of booksellers specialise. I don’t. The shop has as wide a range of subjects and titles as I can cram into it. I hope that there’s something for everybody, but even with 100,000 titles in stock many people still leave empty-handed. Whether someone buys a Mills and Boon for £2.50 or a bashed paperback copy of Spinoza’s Ethics for £2.50 is irrelevant. Each will, I hope, derive equal pleasure from the experience of reading.
TUESDAY, 1 APRIL
Online orders: 2
Books found: 2
Norrie came in and replaced the strip lights with chandeliers, plunging the Scottish room into darkness for the entire morning. They look infinitely better than the hideous strip lights, which lent the place the atmosphere of a hospital corridor. Over the years I’ve been replacing them and only have four left to do out of the twenty-two that were here when I took over in 2001.
Andrew (the volunteer with Asperger’s) came in at 11 a.m. and worked until noon. He’s made it as far as the Cs in the crime section now but became very flustered when someone asked him where the railway books were, and had to have a sit down.
This morning I received an email from my mother, who had to borrow my father’s iPad to send it because hers is ‘constipated’ – could I come down and fix it some time soon? I replied that I’d get round to it as soon as I could.
At 3 p.m. I drove to the bank in Newton Stewart, returning just before closing to discover that Cash for Clothes had been and collected the boxes of books, and paid me £25 for them. They pay by weight and took away half a ton of books.
In today’s post was a letter from Mrs Phillips (‘ninety-three and blind’) addressed simply to ‘Shaun Bythell, Book Dealer in Wigtown, Scotland’, which by virtue of Galloway being so unpopulated found its way here. As always, it was a request for a book for one of her great-grandchildren: this time Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Till total £71
10 customers
WEDNESDAY, 2 APRIL
Online orders: 1
Books found: 1
The first visitor of the day was a wild-haired woman who regularly drops off the Green Handbook for Southwest Scotland, a booklet full of addresses of homeopaths and crystal healers. She came round when I was on the telephone. Every time she visits I’m on the telephone, so I never have the opportunity to tell her that I don’t want her to drop them off any more because nobody ever picks them up.
She was closely followed by a couple in their late sixties, clad in clinging Lycra cycling gear. They came to the counter with four Wainwright Lakeland climbing books in nearly mint condition. The man put them on the counter and asked, ‘What can you do for me on those?’ so I added them up. The total came to £20, and I told him that he could have them for £17. He visibly winced, then replied, ‘Can’t you do them for £15?’ When I pointed out that would be a 25 per cent discount, he said, ‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get.’ Finally they coughed up the £17 and left a trail of resentment in their wake.
Till total £115.94
10 customers
THURSDAY, 3 APRIL
Online orders: 6
Books found: 5