Of the other type of person to which Orwell refers – the person who orders books without intending to pay for them – there certainly used to be such people until just a few years ago. Now we are rarely asked to order books thanks to the ease with which people can do it themselves from home. Or anywhere. Ordering books for customers was never a particularly lucrative exercise, but it was a small supplement to the shop’s income, and one that is now lost.
TUESDAY, 1 JULY
Online orders: 4
Books found: 2
Laurie couldn’t make it in to work today because her cat was hit by a car and had to be taken to the vet. Unfortunately it died, leaving her with four very small kittens to look after.
Among the orders this morning was one for The Colliery Fireman’s Pocket Book, 1935 edition. For some reason Nicky had listed this as being shelved in the chemistry section, but it was not there.
The lease on Anna’s flat runs out at the end of this month, so she has asked me if I can drive to London with the van and bring all her possessions back to Wigtown.
Matthew, a book dealer who sells at fairs and specialises in high-end material, came in and fished out a few things from the Glasgow deal, much of which was still boxed. He is another of the handful of dealers who still regularly visits the shop to buy. Fifteen years ago dealers were regular customers, coming in and buying up stock on their particular specialism. Now they are so rare that it is unusual to see them at all. Matthew deals in rare books, and mainly sells at book fairs: not the provincial fairs, but the big antiquarian fairs – Olympia, York – and the others where the average price of a book is in the thousands of pounds, rather than the tens. He only buys books in fine condition, and usually it is modern first editions. He travels all over Europe looking for books to buy and sell on at fairs, and he is like a terrier when it comes to negotiating.
Till total £291.44
21 customers
WEDNESDAY, 2 JULY
Online orders: 6
Books found: 6
Laurie was absent again today due to kitten-minding duties. One of today’s online sales was to someone called Keith Richards in London, and another to someone with the unlikely name of Jeremy Wildboar-Hands.
Email from a widow in Norwich wanting to sell me her late husband’s book collection. Emailed her to ask what it was.
Till total £280
21 customers
THURSDAY, 3 JULY
Online orders: 3
Books found: 1
Today I was supposed to drive to London to clear Anna’s flat, but I have postponed it because Laurie couldn’t make it in as she is on kitten duty. She didn’t seem to mind, and the flat is hers until the end of the month, so she is not about to be turfed out onto the street.
Today was a warm day, although several customers came in dressed as though it was January.
The swallow chicks have started to fly. Captain is keeping a close eye on them.
The widow from Norwich replied to my inquiry about her late husband’s book collection. Apparently it is mainly erotica. She is going to organise a courier to ship it up to the shop.
Till total £247.88
17 customers
FRIDAY, 4 JULY
Online orders: 4
Books found: 3
Nicky was in to work in the shop today. She was unable to disguise her delight on hearing the news that I would be away for the next two days, first to clear Anna’s flat, and then on to Somerset for my cousin Suzie’s wedding.
I bade Nicky as fond a farewell as our relationship permits and left for London in the blazing sunshine at 11 a.m., arriving in Hampstead at 7 p.m., after I had dropped books off at the auction in Dumfries en route. Normally I send anything really rare to Lyon & Turnbull’s Edinburgh saleroom, and the Dumfries auction has become more fussy, so I can’t dump rubbish there any more, but occasionally I find myself buying something that I know will sell there but not in the shop: sets of reasonably good bindings, for example. They tend to be bought by antique furniture dealers at the saleroom because – when they’re selling bookcases – they are far easier to sell if they have nice-looking books on them.
Till total £307.89
36 customers
SATURDAY, 5 JULY
Online orders: 3
Books found: 3
Nicky covered the shop again, and since I haven’t heard from her, I am naively assuming that all is well.
Anna and I drove from London to Taunton on the hottest day of the year. The van has no air-conditioning, and we were stuck on the M25 for three hours.
Suzie’s wedding was a splendid affair, and everyone turned up to cheer them on. There was dancing and drinking long into the night: my mother had booked a huge holiday house about a mile from the reception, and a dozen or so of us stayed there, including Irish cousins, and my sister Lulu and her husband, Scott. There is always much amusement when we all get together, and people outside the gene pool of the family with whom we are in relationships compare notes about how indecisive all the Bythells are. All of our partners/husbands/wives formed a group and started telling stories about our emotional incompetence; there were frequent hysterics, which were invariably followed by a chorus of ‘mine does that too’.
Till total £351.46
35 customers
MONDAY, 7 JULY
Online orders: 5
Books found: 4
Laurie eventually managed to make it back to work following a week of Pet Rescue with the orphaned kittens.
Anna and I drove back from Taunton and arrived home to Wigtown before 7 p.m., just in time for a meeting in the County Buildings about a proposed wind farm that is to be built on land at Kirkdale. We went along and objected, on the grounds that it will be clearly visible from Wigtown (across the bay), and it is unclear whether we will be within the eligible zone for the community cash bribe that usually accompanies such enterprises. The predicted annual turnover of the wind farm is somewhere in the region of £30 million, and the amount to be given to the residents (to be decided by committee) is just £100,000, or 0.3 per cent of turnover. As most of the visual impact of the development will be from our side of the bay, we are unlikely to benefit much, if at all, because we are furthest away. Those to whom the wind farm is nearest stand to gain the most, and very few of them will even see it. It has angered a great many people in the Machars.
Till total £213.48
17 customers
TUESDAY, 8 JULY
Online orders: 3
Books found: 1
The first order for a book today was about the history of level crossings.
Laurie made it in on another beautiful sunny day.
Much of today was spent editing the video for the Galloway Activity Centre on Loch Ken. When I came downstairs to cover Laurie’s lunch break, she told me that she had been ‘shhh-ed’ by a customer for eating an apple too loudly. Apparently this was shortly followed by some deliberately audible whispering along the lines of ‘Kids today’ and ‘Doesn’t she know that this is a bookshop?’
A customer brought in three books on music, for which I gave him £10.
I received an extremely ominous text message from Nicky about working this week. It ended with the words ‘Wait till you see what I have got for you THIS week! You’ll love it!’
The time has come to replace the van. It has done 172,000 miles, and I have reached the point where I am starting to wonder if it can cope with long journeys, so I went to Wigtown Motor Company and spoke to Vincent about looking for a replacement.
Till total £254.98
25 customers