Shortly after Bethan arrived, Anupa, one of the festival artists in residence, dropped in for a cup of tea. I was desperately trying to catch up with a backlog of jobs, but we chatted for an hour or so anyway. We discussed Thursday’s vote, and the possibility that when we next meet, in a week or so, it might be in an independent Scotland. If nothing else, at least the co-op will be open again.
A shuffling old man with a beard asked for books on ‘Cumbriana and Northumbriana’, further fuelling my dislike of people who try to make themselves sound more intelligent by using unnecessary words. Philately will get you nowhere in The Book Shop. A few minutes later he returned, unable to find the topography section, and asked ‘Where’s Northumbria?’ Resisted the urge to tell him that it is just south of Scotland. His wife came to the counter with seven books on Northumbria, including a mint first edition Highways and Byways. The total was £27. He looked at the floor and mumbled, ‘What’s your best price?’
Till total £211.17
28 customers
TUESDAY, 16 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 1
Books found: 1
Bethan was in again this morning, so I spent most of the day building the ‘creative space’ in the old warehouse for Allison’s puppet show during the festival. Last year I converted part of the warehouse into a sort of clubby drawing room, and we advertised it as The Festival Club. Maria, who catered for the whisky supper back in the Spring Festival, supplied food, tea, wine, beer and soft drinks, and it was an enormous success. But this year Maria is catering for the Writers’ Retreat during the festival, and we haven’t been able to find a replacement caterer, so it is being used as an events venue, mainly for Allison.
A woman arrived in the shop at 4 p.m., wiping blood from her arm. She was convinced that she had found Captain near the tennis court and had tried to bring him back to the shop, but when she got to the co-op the cat started scratching her and hissing, then ran away.
In the afternoon I did a short interview with Border TV about the impending book festival. Life in Galloway, with its thinly spread population, often involves being badly served by things that other people take for granted, such as public transport, but nothing quite encapsulates this epic failure in the way that our local television station does. They do their best, but Galloway is not part of the Borders, and our ‘local’ television station is broadcast from the far coast of another country. Gateshead, the headquarters of ITV Border, is in England and nearly 200 miles from the west of Galloway. This would be analogous to London’s local news being broadcast from Swansea and attempting to cover everything in between the two places.
Till total £152.49
13 customers
WEDNESDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 0
Books found: 0
Bethan was in again today.
As we were going through the last of the boxes from the Haugh of Urr deal, Bethan came across a copy of The Collected Poems of Kathleen Raine. Ordinarily I would expect to know little or nothing about most of the authors whose works are on our shelves, but Kathleen Raine is someone whom I learned a little about when I was buying books from an elderly man who lived near Penpont, about forty miles from Wigtown. Six years ago he had telephoned me to tell me that he was selling his books, so I drove to his house – an attractive laird’s house with an Andy Gold-sworthy sculpture in the garden. Before I started to work my way through his substantial library, we sat down to a pot of soup which he had made, and over which he explained that he had recently been diagnosed with terminal leukaemia. He was clearly struggling to accept the diagnosis, repeatedly telling me that two years previously, on his seventy-fifth birthday, he had climbed Kilimanjaro. His wife had died some years ago, and he had obviously expected to live considerably longer than the medical experts had now told him he could reasonably expect. There was a clear and understandable sense of injustice and anger in his language. Of his library of about six thousand books I bought about 800, and paid him £1,200. The most interesting thing among it was a letter to him from Kathleen Raine, which he had used as a bookmark in Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water. When he produced this and showed it to me, I had to confess that I had never heard of Kathleen Raine, so he explained that she and Maxwell had been good friends until, during a visit to Camusfearna (his home at Sandaig on the west coast of Scotland), he banished her from the house during a storm in 1956. Raine cursed Maxwell under a rowan tree in the garden. She blamed all his subsequent misfortunes – which were swift and many – on this curse and believed that Maxwell’s friends also blamed her for the series of disasters that befell him. The letter in the copy of Ring of Bright Water was a reply to an invitation to the opening of the Gavin Maxwell memorial at Monreith, near where Maxwell grew up. Raine turned down the invitation because she believed that Maxwell’s friends would be hostile towards her. The elderly man died within a few months of selling me his books.
There was a reported sighting of Captain at the Martyrs’ Stake car park, at the bottom of Wigtown hill. Anna set off straight away and returned with him. Clearly the cat found at the tennis court yesterday was not Captain, which would explain why he started scratching the well-meaning woman who attempted to relocate him.
No sign of the swallows on the wires any more.
Till total £158.50
16 customers
THURSDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 2
Books found: 1
Bethan and Nicky were both in today, so I set them to work picking and packing the Random Book Club mail-out. I don’t think I trust either of them enough to pick the sort of books that I imagine the subscribers would enjoy, but with the festival looming I am stretched to capacity, so I have no choice but to delegate. Nicky asked Wilma if she would mind sending the postman to collect the sacks tomorrow.
One of the books from today’s orders that we couldn’t find was one that I had sent to Ian in Grimsby when he had taken our online stock, but which I had failed to remove from Monsoon back then, so it was still listed as available from us. This normally results in negative feedback, as we are obliged to cancel the order.
I spent some of the afternoon interviewing more local business people for the radio station that will be broadcasting from the Martyrs’ Cell in the County Buildings during the festival. One of the interviewees was Nicky, who described me as ‘a big ginger conundrum’.
The co-op re-opened today, to much excitement, but by the end of the day everyone was complaining that they couldn’t find anything any more.
Referendum day: I had my own vote, and Callum gave me his proxy vote. He has gone off on the Camino – the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela. After the shop closed, Eliot and the festival interns, Beth and Cheyney (they get the glamorous jobs, such as stacking chairs and answering the office telephone), came round and we watched the results coming in. Eventually went to bed at 2 a.m., depressed at what was obviously going to be a ‘no’ vote to Scottish independence.
Till total £237.96
20 customers
FRIDAY, 19 SEPTEMBER
Online orders: 3
Books found: 3
Bethan and Nicky both in the shop again today.
Spent the day recording more interviews for the festival radio station, leaving Nicky in charge. She arranged for the postman to pick up the six sacks of random books at 3 p.m. This time next week the festival will be starting.
Till total £157
10 customers
SATURDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER