Шон Байтелл - The Diary of a Bookseller

Smelly Kelly appeared at the precise moment that Nicky had disappeared for her lunch break. I suspect her nose is now finely tuned to detect the advance of Brut 33 and give her enough advance warning to escape when he is approaching. Disappointed that she was not here, he reluctantly talked to me briefly instead. Apparently he is going into hospital next week for a hip operation.

A Northern Irish customer (an old man in blue tank-top) came to the counter with two books and asked, ‘What can you do for me on those?’ The total came to £4.50, so I told him that there was no way I could possibly give him a discount on books that were already cheaper than the postage alone on Amazon. He reluctantly conceded, muttering, ‘Oh well, I hope you’re still here next time I visit.’ From his tone it wasn’t entirely clear whether he was suggesting that my refusal to grant a discount on a £4.50 sale would mean that customers would leave in their droves, never to return and the shop would be forced to close, or whether he genuinely meant that he hoped the shop would survive through these difficult times.

One of today’s orders was for a biography called E. D. Morel: The Man and His Work . Author is F. Seymour Cocks.

Till total £119

19 customers

Online orders: 5

Books found: 5

A customer came in at 10 a.m. and asked if we had anything on the surnames of Scotland, so I directed him to Black’s Surnames of Scotland . He looked at it briefly, then told me that it was ‘too comprehensive’. Once he had left, the shop was empty so I went to the post office and asked Wilma if she would mind sending the postman over later. William the surly Ulsterman completely blanked my ‘Good morning, William. Isn’t it a lovely day?’

When I returned to the shop, there was a young couple waiting at the counter with two boxes of books, all modern fiction in mint condition. They had recently married and were moving into their first flat together, and had agreed to each halve their book collections. The situation seemed charmingly old-fashioned. I gave them £45 for the books.

A customer brought a few books to the counter, including a very tatty facsimile of Burns’s Kilmarnock edition. The total came to £14.50 – no haggling. I asked him if he would like a bag, to which he replied, ‘Probably.’ I am quite certain that is the first time anyone has given that answer in the shop.

The postman arrived at just before 5 p.m. and collected the five sacks of random books.

Till total £110.99

15 customers

Online orders: 5

Books found: 5

Another warm and sunny day and Nicky was in, so I went for a bike ride with Callum in the afternoon on the mountain-bike trails in Kirroughtree Forest, about eight miles away. We both managed to complete the red circuit without mishap, unlike the first few times we rode it several years ago. For the first ten or so attempts, one or both of us would end up crashing into a tree, or misjudging a corner and ending up face down in a ditch.

Till total £217.50

16 customers

Online orders: 6

Books found: 5

All orders today were from Amazon, one of which was for a Patricia Wentworth first edition that should have been £50 but sold for £4. The discrepancy arose because of the price-matching software that comes with Monsoon, which is set to match the lowest price on Amazon. When we listed our copy it was the cheapest, but subsequently it had dropped to match another copy which had undercut ours. Occasionally, to try to steal a bargain, people put up fake listings of expensive books that they want, but with ridiculously cheap prices. They then wait for the price-matching software to kick in, and the copy of a genuine listing to drop to the price of the ghost listing that they have put up. They buy the book, then remove the ghost listing.

A customer who bought a copy of Pepys’s diary read the Einstein quotation painted on the front of the counter (‘Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not sure about the former’) and asked, ‘Is that a genuine quotation from Einstein?’ Apparently it is highly contested, and many people don’t think he said it.

After work I sat in the garden, watching the swallows and house martins swooping and looping.

Till total £309

15 customers

Online orders: 4

Books found: 4

The first customer of the day was an Australian woman whose inability to pronounce the letter T left me confused as to whether she was asking for ‘Noddy books’ or ‘naughty books’. It turned out, after I’d shown her to the erotica section, that she was after Enid Blytons.

It is a strange phenomenon that, when customers visit the shop for the first time, they tend to walk very slowly through it, as though they are expecting someone to tell them they have entered a forbidden zone, and when they decide to stop, it is invariably in a doorway. This, of course, is incredibly frustrating for anyone behind them, and since that person is usually me, I exist in a state of perpetual frustration. Anthropologists insist that it is an instinctive human response on entering a new space to stop and look around for potential danger, although quite what sort of danger might be lurking in a bookshop – other than a frustrated bookseller whose temper has been frayed to the point of violence by the fact that somebody is blocking the doorway – is a mystery.

Two customers asked what had happened to the spirals of books. The book spirals were large columns of books that were piled in a helix and coated with fibreglass resin. They stood on each side of the door into the shop. Last year some children tried to set fire to one of them – unsuccessfully, as the resin eventually cracks and the rain gets in. I have asked Norrie to make a new pair out of concrete in time for the festival in September.

Till total £324.49

20 customers

Online orders: 5

Books found: 4

Today was a cold and grey day, not spring-like at all. Atmospheric conditions affect the radio in the shop, which is tuned to BBC Radio 3. If there is damp in the air, it won’t pick up the signal. Today it spent most of the day completely silent, occasionally popping on for a few seconds of Mahler or Shostakovich.

There was another invasion of Lycra-clad septuagenarian cyclists this morning, most of whom bought a book or two, and who were flattering about both the shop and the stock.

After they had left, a customer came to the counter with a book, opened it, pointed at the £40 price label and said, ‘What price is this? Surely not £40.’ I explained that, yes, the book was £40. He dropped it on the counter, from where it bounced and landed on the floor, damaging one of the corners. He looked at it for a couple of seconds, then left without another word.

Most of the books sold today were from the collection of railway books I bought in Glasgow a few weeks ago. I wonder if word has got round the railway community that the collection ended up here. The same thing happened with an ornithology collection that I bought from a collector in Stranraer last year. For weeks there were twitchers in the shop, and it only took a few days for me to recoup my investment.

Till total £281.99

18 customers

Online orders: 4

Books found: 4

Sunny and warm all day. Nicky was in. She has bought a job lot of 1,000 pens on eBay. They are horrible little red things, and she insists on bringing them into the shop, despite the fact that I have a box of far better pens. At the moment there are about a dozen of them in various locations about the place. I keep putting them in the bin, but she retrieves them and redistributes them throughout the shop again.