Helen, the secretary of the Wigtown Agricultural Society, emailed me about the video, which I have yet to start editing.
There was a delivery of two boxes of books this morning. It turned out to be the erotica collection from the widow in Norwich. I had forgotten all about it. I checked their values online and decided to offer her £75 for the lot. It is difficult buying erotica, as very little of it can be sold on Amazon or eBay because they violate the puritanical sensibilities of the prudes in charge of both organisations.
Eliot arrived at 7 p.m. for a board meeting and seemed to be in pretty good form, although his shoes were on the floor in the kitchen within minutes of his arrival.
Till total £407.97
29 customers
MONDAY, 18 AUGUST
Online orders: 6
Books found: 5
Katie was working in the shop today. She complained about being ill, so I made her a Lemsip. By lunchtime I was starting to feel pretty unwell too.
Monsoon was down until 2 p.m., at which point one of their tech support team in Oregon woke up and finally took over the computer again and fixed it, so that we were able to process the orders and find the books.
In the afternoon a customer asked where we keep the ‘illustrated poetry books’. I explained that we don’t have a specific section and that he would have to trawl through the whole poetry section. He emerged two hours later, looking delighted with a pile of £200 worth of books, explaining that he had just taken up book-collecting and thought that illustrated poetry was an interesting subject on which to build up a collection. I genuinely thought that this type of person had ceased to exist. I could have hugged him.
By the time it came to close up I was feeling pretty rotten – sore throat, headache, runny nose. Callum called by, and we went for a pint.
I still haven’t unloaded the van from the Haugh of Urr deal on Friday, so I really ought to prioritise this and start listing the more valuable books online to recover some cash.
Till total £469.33
36 customers
TUESDAY, 19 AUGUST
Online orders: 3
Books found: 3
Katie called in sick, so I was on my own in the shop. I suspect that I have the same malady she has; I felt awful all day, but the Random Book Club mail-out is due tomorrow so I packed all of the books up and processed them on the Royal Mail web site. We are back up to 153 members. The postage was £247.53. When I dropped off the orders this morning, I asked Wilma if she could send the postman over tomorrow to collect the six sacks. William greeted my ‘Hello William, lovely day again’ with his customary ‘What’s lovely about it?’
Till total £270.98
30 customers
WEDNESDAY, 20 AUGUST
Online orders: 2
Books found: 2
Both Katie and Laurie called in sick, Laurie at 11 p.m. yesterday, Katie at 8 a.m. today. Tremendously inconsiderate of them both to be ill at the same time.
As I was tidying the shelves in the garden room, I found a copy of The Odyssey in the fishing section. I have yet to question Nicky about this, but the answer will almost certainly be, ‘Aye, but they were on a boat for some of it. What do you think they ate? Aye. Fish. See?’
The postman came and picked up the Random Book Club parcels just after I had locked up, but fortunately I was still in the shop and heard him knocking on the door.
After closing I texted Katie, who has promised that she will cover the shop despite being ill, so that I can drive to Grimsby and collect books from Ian, a bookseller with whom I have had a long working relationship.
Till total £276.70
30 customers
THURSDAY, 21 AUGUST
Online orders: 4
Books found: 4
Katie managed to struggle in today. I left at 5 a.m. for Grimsby and arrived at 10.45 a.m. Ian’s place is an old church right in the middle of Grimsby. He took it on three years ago with the intention of listing ten thousand or so books online. He has now decided to pack it in because it is becoming impossible to compete with the mega-listers, who put through such volume that Amazon and Royal Mail give them massive concessions that smaller dealers do not get.
Ian and I went through the boxes of stock I had sent to him two years ago to list online for me. I took out about ten boxes of material that I thought I could sell in the shop and sold the remainder to him for £500. He then offered me £1,500 for the books that he had already listed but hadn’t yet sold, which I accepted gladly.
My back is stiff after thirteen hours of driving and shifting boxes. Tonight I will sleep like Chichikov after his successful day of harvesting the names of the deceased in Plyushkin’s estate in Gogol’s Dead Souls – ‘a deep and sound sleep, into that wonderful sleep which only those fortunate folk enjoy who are unacquainted either with haemorrhoids, or fleas, or overly powerful mental capacities’.
Picked up a copy of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying from the Penguin Modern Classics section of the shop and began reading it again before going to bed. It was on the curriculum when I sat my ‘A’ levels, and I remember enjoying it back then.
Till total £603.63
41 customers
FRIDAY, 22 AUGUST
Online orders: 3
Books found: 2
Laurie was in today.
A less than friendly email this morning among this morning’s messages:
It is now 22nd August and I HAVE STILL NOT RECEIVED POMFRET TOWERS.
I LIVE IN CUMBRIA JUST ACROSS THE SOLWAY FIRTH FROM WIGTOWN.
A BOOK ORDERED VIA ABEBOOKS FROM SOUTH AFRICA ARRIVED IN TWO DAYS AND ALL OTHER ORDERS HAVE BEEN DESPATCHED AND RECEIVED PROMPTLY.
12 DAYS TO RECEIVE A BOOK FROM WIGTOWNSHIRE TO CUMBRIA IS FRANKLY UNACCEPTABLE. PERHAPS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER AN ALTERNATIVE METHOD.
After lunch I went to my parents’ house to get my shotgun and shoot a Kindle (broken screen, bought on eBay for £10), imagining it was the missing copy of Pomfret Towers. It was remarkably satisfying to blast it into a thousand pieces.
Before closing a man brought in three Ian Fleming first editions, including Dr No (lacking jacket), for which I gave him £150, then immediately regretted it. With hindsight, £100 would have been more than adequate.
Till total £296.47
20 customers
SATURDAY, 23 AUGUST
Online orders: 2
Books found: 2
All the girls were off today. My back is excruciating, and now my left leg is numb. I called Carol-Ann, who has recently done something to her back. She told me that these are the symptoms of sciatica.
Two emails from Amazon customers complaining that they had been obliged to collect their parcels from the post office and pay extra because we had not stamped them. They were sent out on 14 or 15 August, so I checked the diary. On the 14th both Katie and Laurie were working in the shop. On the 15th it was just Katie. Someone is going to get a roasting when they recover and return to work.
I was looking for this morning’s orders when a customer asked, ‘What’s the oldest book you have in stock?’, then demanded to see it. It is a book called Martialis, dated 1501, so it misses the holy grail of being incunabula (the grandiose name for any printed book published before 1501) by the slenderest of margins. She then told me that she had an older book. I had been unaware that it was a competition. Our copy of Martialis – although not an incunable – has the distinction of being published by the Aldine Press, one of the most prestigious early Venetian printers, and famous in the world of typography for introducing italics to printing and for being the first printer to publish smaller books in the – now standard – ‘octavo’ size. It is also iconic for its device: an anchor with a dolphin weaving around it.