Шон Байтелл - The Diary of a Bookseller

Till total £164.50

15 customers

Online orders: 3

Books found: 3

Nicky in.

Just before 1.30 p.m. I remembered that I had arranged to look at the books in Port Logan and headed over there. I overshot and ended up at the neighbouring, almost identically named, Old Schoolhouse. I knocked on the door and was met by an elderly couple, who explained that I had driven past ‘Bob and Barbara’s house’ and pointed me in the right direction. As I was leaving, the old man said, ‘Give my regards to your parents. Your father and I used to do the commentary at the Lochinch Game Fair.’ I have no idea who he was, but, following their instructions, I drove the short distance to the correct house and was greeted by Barbara and her two dogs.

The house was a beautifully converted Victorian school with stunning views across the Irish Sea. There was a ruined pier here in days gone by, but that was replaced by a quay and a bell tower designed by Thomas Telford in 1818. What is left is what Seamus Heaney might have described as ‘the hammered shod of a bay’. Bob and Barbara – a retired couple – showed me through the house to their library. Both Bob and I had to drop our heads because of the low door into the room. They left me to go through the books, which were mostly paperbacks in near new condition.

We chatted about living in so far-flung a village for a while, and I was surprised how well we got on: most book deals involve the minimum of conversation. I picked out five boxes’ worth, gave them £65 and drove back. The books included some excellent, very saleable material: sets of Hemingway, Steinbeck, Chandler, Buchan, all in uniform editions, and a good number of Penguin Modern Classics. Their taste in books was remarkably similar to mine, and I wonder not only whether that was why I found them so agreeable but also whether I would have enjoyed their company as much had I not been aware that our reading tastes were so compatible.

Alastair and Leslie Reid came over for supper. Alastair’s response to the question of what he would like to drink is invariably ‘Whisky’. This time I was prepared and had a bottle of Laphroaig handy. It is unfortunate that Anna has gone back to London, because it turns out that Alastair used to share a lift to Sarah Lawrence College with her hero, Joseph Campbell. She would have been ridiculously excited. Alastair has rubbed shoulders with many of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, once famously incurring the wrath of Robert Graves in Spain by eloping with his muse, Margot Callas.

Till total £196.90

25 customers

Online orders: 8

Books found: 5

Laurie was in today. Her cat had kittens last night and she was up for most of the night looking after them, so she was barely functional today.

Hamish Grierson called again about his books. He had a list of the more valuable titles that he was cross about. Laurie checked and found that they had already been listed online. She had mistaken them as coming from the Glasgow deal from the first week of the month, which she had been working on. So at least we’ve found them and I can work out a fair price for him.

Till total £385.98

26 customers

Online orders: 5

Books found: 5

Laurie was in today, so I brought the June random books over from the store in the garden for her to pack up. The number of subscribers is about 150.

After lunch I went to look at the book collection of the woman who telephoned last week with the weeping sore on her leg. The house was in Creetown, about ten miles away, and I bought about twenty Folio Society titles, including some good John Buchans as well as a few others. She is a very elderly woman, and is house-bound. In the driveway to her house – a modern bungalow with a sea view – there was a rusting old Ford Capri, up on blocks with the wheels removed. A middle-aged man, who seemed to know even less about car mechanics than I do, was tinkering nervously with bits of the engine. The transaction was straightforward, and we had a chat about the reason she is selling the books. She retired here from Yorkshire, and her granddaughter has just been offered a place at Oxford, so she’s trying to help her out financially by selling the books to raise some cash. I gave her £70 for a box and a half of books.

The Intimate Thoughts of John Baxter, Bookseller is turning out to be almost as entertaining as William Y. Darling’s The Bankrupt Bookseller . In the editorial notes Augustus Muir (with reference to Jimmie Scriving) describes him as ‘a young ruffian, with no thoughts higher than his stomach’.

Hamish Grierson called and we agreed a price of £225 for his books.

Till total £123

14 customers

Online orders: 3

Books found: 3

Laurie in. One of the orders was for a book called A Guide to the Orthodox Jewish Way of Life for Healthcare Professionals.

Kate, the postie, arrived in with the mail at exactly the same time as Mr Deacon appeared. Among the post was a parcel containing his copy of In Patagonia . He paid for it and left, offering not the slightest clue as to what he had been doing in Patagonia, and not affording me the opportunity to ask. Not that I would have asked. It is none of my business, although the fishing there is among the best in the world and I admit that I am curious that he may have been over there in pursuit of trout.

I spent much of the day filming at the Galloway Activity Centre on Loch Ken. They have built two eco bothies and need videos to promote them. Over the years all the money I have generated from making films for people in the area has been ploughed back into that side of the business in the form of equipment, and we now have what amounts to an impressive amount of kit, including a jib, several very good camcorders, microphones and even a drone. Anna went to film school in Prague, but – apart from an MA in Creative Sound Production – I am completely self-taught and consequently probably incompetent. Although the income generated by Picto (the film business) is relatively small in comparison to that of the shop, I am confident that, if the bookselling business was no longer viable and I had more time, we could build this up into a good business. At the moment, though, it is more of a hobby for which I am paid, and I never actively seek out work: enough comes our way to be manageable. Any more would not be.

In the evening there was a piece on Front Row on Radio 4 about the author James Patterson’s crusade against Amazon. He is a staunch advocate of bookshops and a vocal critic of Amazon. In his interview he announced that he intends to give £250,000 to UK bookshops in the form of grants of up to £5,000 each for initiatives that encourage children to read. It seems like a perfect fit for expanding the Random Book Club to include a children’s section and overhaul the web site, which is now causing me enormous headaches.

Till total £343.67

33 customers

Online orders: 3

Books found: 2

Online order for a book called Experiences of a Railway Guard: Thrilling Stories of the Rail.

Sandy the tattooed pagan came to the shop just after lunch and dropped off a dozen sticks. We have sold quite a few since his last visit. They sell particularly well at this time of year. He spent £33 of his credit on books about Celtic mythology.

In the early afternoon a young woman brought in three boxes of books to sell. Most of them were antiquarian calf-bound sets of the usual suspects: Gibbon, Scott, Macaulay, that sort of thing. Not particularly valuable or sought after, but they look nice on a shelf, and occasionally someone will buy them for this reason. They make good wedding presents. She had inherited them from her grandparents and wasn’t interested in keeping them, so I gave her £200 for them. As I was pricing them up, I noticed that volume I of the set of Scott’s Poetical Works (from around 1830) had eight different names written (in different hands) on one of the publisher’s blank pages, each one a life about which I know no more than the name. I wonder whose name will be added to the list next.