Me: ‘Oh good, in that case can I take your credit card details and your mother’s name? I’ll put it to one side once you’ve paid for it.’
At this point she hung up.
Tracy and I went for a pint in the pub after work today. A local farmer dropped in and asked, ‘Does anyone want a turnip? I’ve got some in the pick-up.’ Laura, working behind the bar, told him that she would like one. He appeared with the most enormous turnip I have ever seen. Apparently he had a bumper crop this year.
Started reading The Restraint of Beasts.
Till total £28
4 customers
TUESDAY, 2 DECEMBER
Online orders: 3
Books found: 2
Callum dropped in, and we discussed the possibility of insulating the stone wall in the gallery. It should make a significant difference to the temperature. He has agreed to do the work, starting some time this week.
Today was a golden, sunny day; the low light of December and January illuminates the Penguin section in a way that never happens at other times of the year. The undoubted highlight of the day was selling a book called Donald McLeod’s Gloomy Memories, published in 1892, to a customer who had been looking for it for six years.
Till total £33
2 customers
WEDNESDAY, 3 DECEMBER
Online orders: 4
Books found: 2
Cold morning, so I lit the fire and processed the online orders. As I was walking to the post office with the mail, I passed a man carrying a brick, with his car keys dangling from his mouth. As he mumbled a friendly ‘Hello’, the keys fell from his mouth and landed – conveniently – on the brick.
At 2.30 p.m. an elderly man came in with a box of military history books to sell, including several on the KOSB (King’s Own Scottish Borderers, the infantry regiment that – despite Galloway not being a border county – Gallovidian men traditionally joined). Agreed a price of £120 for them.
Till total £46
4 customers
THURSDAY, 4 DECEMBER
Online orders: 3
Books found: 3
Callum arrived at 10 a.m. to start work on insulating the wall. Spent much of the day boxing up books and dismantling the shelves on the wall he’s going to be working on.
Till total £48
5 customers
FRIDAY, 5 DECEMBER
Online orders: 1
Books found: 1
Nicky in. She arrived early and visibly excited; ‘Oh, have I got a treat for you!’ This ‘treat’ was supposed to be some sort of compensation for the cinnamon swirl that she had licked the icing off last Friday morning. She produced a box that was covered in ‘reduced’ stickers and contained a Peppa Pig cake.
Callum was in all day, working on insulating the wall.
Once I’d set Nicky a few jobs (which she nodded enthusiastically about and then decided not to do), I left for a book deal in Sorbie – six miles from Wigtown – at 11 a.m. It was the collection of one of my father’s friends, Basil, who died earlier in the year. His nephew was dealing with the estate. There weren’t many interesting books, and most of them were engineering textbooks, but I took a couple of boxes and wrote him a cheque for £100.
When I left Bristol to return to Scotland in 2001, death was something with which I was relatively unfamiliar, other than the loss of elderly grandparents and great-aunts. Perhaps I am fortunate never to have lost a close friend. Rural life, though, throws you into contact with people of all ages and backgrounds in a way that it is easy to avoid in a city. Back when I bought the shop in 2001, customers would often comment that I appeared ‘very young for a bookseller’, and perhaps I was. It is five years since I last heard that said, and the number of funerals I attend increases year by year. Many of my parents’ friends have died in this past year. My mother recently told me, ‘Your father and I are in the minefield now.’
After work I went for a pint with Callum. We invited Nicky along, but she said she wanted to stay in, so I lit the fire for her and bought some craft beers for her from the co-op (nothing with a bird in its name this time). When I came back at about 8 p.m., she was sitting in front of the fire sewing together a stuffed toy cow which apparently she has been working on for over twenty years. It bore no resemblance to a cow.
Several customers this week have come into the shop and complained that they had forgotten to bring their reading glasses. This is far from uncommon. When I mentioned it to Nicky, she pointed out that she too frequently does it.
Till total £22
2 customers
SATURDAY, 6 DECEMBER
Online orders: 2
Books found: 2
At 8 a.m. I heard Nicky making her breakfast, so I had a lie-in and she opened up. I was woken shortly afterwards by the sound of Callum’s hammer drill battering away at the wall downstairs. I spent much of the afternoon running a speaker cable from the stereo, which we have now moved to the front of the shop, out of the reach of children, who seem incapable of passing it without tinkering with it – usually increasing the volume.
Till total £72.29
9 customers
MONDAY, 8 DECEMBER
Online orders: 9
Books found: 8
The shop was extremely quiet all day, the first customer appearing at 11.30 a.m. and asking, ‘Where do you keep your books on marketing and financial strategy?’ Someone is in for an exciting Christmas present.
As I was sorting through the mail, I found a letter from the council onto which Nicky had executed a very crude sketch of a round face with glasses and curly hair – clearly supposed to be me. When I presented her with it and asked, ‘Nicky, what’s this?’, she replied, ‘That? It’s a mirror.’
Till total £78.44
6 customers
TUESDAY, 9 DECEMBER
Online orders: 2
Books found: 1
Anna telephoned to say that she isn’t going to work on the film that she has been developing with her friend in America because she thinks the budget is too small, so she’s booked a flight back to London and is arriving in Dumfries on Thursday.
One of today’s customers, an old man, shuffled towards the counter clutching a book with a look of excitement on his face. ‘How much do you want for this?’ It was a Latin school textbook, and he hurriedly opened it and pointed to the name written in fountain pen on the endpaper, ‘It belonged to my father.’ The book was £4.50, but I told him that he could have it for free. I don’t recall how I came by the book, but he was so delighted to have found it that it seemed like the right thing to do. He was here on holiday from Kent, so it may have come from a large collection I bought from a house outside Canterbury several years ago.
Till total £80
9 customers
WEDNESDAY, 10 DECEMBER
Online orders: 1
Books found: 0
Nicky came in today so that I could get away to look at a library near Stirling, on the eastern shore of Loch Lomond. The house was in a stunning glen, and the road was lined with ancient broadleaf woodland and dotted with grand Victorian villas, of which this was one. It belonged to a couple who were about the same age as my parents, and was full of fine furniture and art. They were congenial and friendly, and kept me fuelled with tea and biscuits as I worked my way through the thousand or so books in the various rooms. Their sons had been to a boarding-school in Perthshire, and one of them was my age, so undoubtedly our paths would have crossed at some point, probably a rugby match. As with so many book deals, they were selling the house and looking for somewhere smaller, on this occasion a flat in the West End of Glasgow.