Шон Байтелл: The Diary of a Bookseller

Online orders: 3

Books found: 3

The sun shone all day, and it was warm enough to open the front door. Nicky arrived at her customary hour (fifteen minutes late), and we started to unload the boxes of books from Samye Ling. Nicky has found a company called Cash for Clothes, which pays £50 a ton for used books. She booked them to collect from the shop on Wednesday so we should be able to dispose of much of the rubbish from the Samye Ling deal.

A few weeks ago a woman bought a copy of Where No Man Cries , by Emma Blair. She told me, to my surprise, that Blair was not in fact a woman, but was a 6-foot 3-inch beer-drinking, chain-smoking Glaswegian man called Iain Blair who had only achieved success with his romantic novels when he gave himself a female nom de plume . Blair’s books have been among the most borrowed books from Scottish libraries in the past twenty years. Before becoming a writer, Blair had been an actor. Apparently his career ended abruptly when, after being called to audition for a part in Raiders of the Lost Ark , he was kept waiting for so long that when Steven Spielberg eventually came into the room and said ‘Can you come back tomorrow?’ he replied, ‘No, I fucking cannot.’ He died in 2011.

The chandeliers arrived just as Norrie was in the shop to collect some paint that had been delivered here by mistake. He offered to take them away and get them working again, as they have seen better days.

Till total £160.38

17 customers

Online orders: 8

Books found: 5

Just as I was returning from the kitchen with my cup of tea, a customer with polyester trousers about six inches too short and a donkey jacket almost knocked it out of my hand and asked, ‘Have you ever had a death in here? Has anyone ever died falling off a stepladder in the shop?’ I told him, ‘Not yet, but I was hoping today might be my lucky day.’

In the emails today was one from a former employee, Sara, who worked for me during school holidays a few years ago: ‘Yo Bitch-tits, I need a reference. Here’s the form attached. Make it good, you bastard or I will come and get you.’ So I wrote this and emailed it to her.

Tel. 01988 402499 www.the-bookshop.com

17 North Main Street, Wigtown DG8 9HL

Monday, March 24, 2014

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

REFERENCE FOR SARA PEARCE

Sara worked Saturdays at The Book Shop, 17 North Main Street, Wigtown, for three years while she was at the Douglas Ewart High School. When I say ‘worked’, I use the word in its loosest possible terms. She spent the entire day either standing outside the shop, smoking and snarling at people trying to enter the building, or watching repeats of Hollyoaks on 4OD. Although she was generally punctual, she often arrived either drunk or severely hungover. She was usually rude and aggressive. She rarely did as she was told, and never, in the entire three years of her time here, did anything constructive without having to be told to do so. She invariably left a trail of rubbish behind her, usually consisting of Irn-Bru bottles, crisp packets, chocolate wrappers and cigarette packets. She consistently stole lighters and matches from the business, and was offensive and frequently violent towards me.

She was a valued member of staff and I have no hesitation in recommending her.

Till total £109.39

12 customers

Online orders: 3

Books found: 3

Two of today’s orders were for 1960s bus timetables for the north of England.

Andrew, the volunteer with Asperger’s, turned up at 11 a.m. He was accompanied by the woman from the council, who came with him to make sure that he arrived safely and everything was in order. She suggested that I put him in charge of arranging the crime section into alphabetical order. By noon he had reached the Bs; then he went home.

Shortly after Andrew had left, an extremely rude old woman demanded a copy of Simon Sebag Montefiore’s biography of Stalin. We had one in the Russia section, which she brought to the counter. It was an unusually pristine copy in a mint jacket, clearly unread – original price £25. She asked how much it was; I pointed to the sticker that says £6.50. She pushed it away from her and turned, walking out muttering, ‘Too expensive.’ I’m pretty sure she’ll be back, so I re-priced it at £8.50.

Anna’s friend Lucy arrived for a visit. She’s staying until Monday.

Till total £34.50

7 customers

Online orders: 5

Books found: 4

Beautiful sunny morning. Continued sorting through the boxes of books from Samye Ling.

Isabel was in today to do the accounts. The happy ‘You’ve got loads of money’ comment after her last visit was long gone, and a measured warning about the state of the shop’s parlous financial affairs was her parting comment this time. I suppose that after she told me that I had loads of money I decided it was time to pay off some overdue bills.

No sign of Cash for Clothes, who were supposed to collect the books we can’t sell and rotated stock.

Carol-Ann arrived at 5 p.m. She stayed the night because she has to work in Stranraer tomorrow morning, and it is much closer for her from here than from Dalbeattie, where she lives. When Carol-Ann was in her teens, she worked in the shop on Saturdays; she is now in her mid-twenties and has become a good friend. She and Anna get on extremely well, and are forever hatching plans for unlikely businesses which mercifully never reach fruition.

Nicky is working tomorrow and decided to sleep over in the festival bed. The house seemed full and noisy with her, Carol-Ann, Anna and Lucy, all of whom talk a great deal.

Till total £95.75

8 customers

Online orders: 5

Books found: 5

Lucy, Carol-Ann and Nicky demanded a breakfast of bacon rolls, so I spent the first part of the morning chained to the frying pan. When I asked Nicky why Cash for Clothes hadn’t turned up, she told me that she hadn’t got back to them to confirm the collection because ‘you were in a grumpy mood, so I decided not to bother’. She’s now booked them, so hopefully they will be here soon and we can clear some space in the shop. There are roughly forty boxes of books to go, around about half a ton.

Top priority of the day was clearing the books off the table and onto shelves so that we can process more boxes of fresh stock, which seem to be piled everywhere, including in friends’ sheds. After lunch I went to the bank in Newton Stewart to lodge the takings, and came back to discover that Nicky had opened nearly every box (in flagrant defiance of my ‘one box at a time’ rule) and had only cleared about half of the table – the one job that I asked her to do before I left. A loud argument ensued and Lucy looked embarrassed, made an excuse and went upstairs. Carol-Ann, on the other hand, laughed like a hyena and goaded us into further conflict.

Someone posted a link on Facebook to a web site of Hungarian librarians being photographed holding books with photos of faces on the cover concealing their own faces. I spent the evening trying to persuade Lucy and Anna to do this but using the 1980s porn mags I bought about a year ago. It is not going well so far.

Till total £128

15 customers

Online orders: 4

Books found: 4

The old woman who complained about the price of the Stalin biography came back. When she found that I had put the price up, she told me that I couldn’t do that. I told her that I could. She was furious, but she bought it, muttering that she would never set foot in the place again.