Шон Байтелл - The Diary of a Bookseller

We set off for Arran at 2 p.m., in an intermittent wind, so we motored and sailed, depending on what was most favourable.

We arrived at Lamlash at about 7 p.m., accompanied by a pod of porpoises. Callum inflated the tender, and we rowed ashore to The Drift Inn for a meal and a few drinks before heading back to the boat for the night.

Till total £102

11 customers

Online orders: 0

Books found: 0

Explored Holy Island just off Lamlash.

3 p.m. message from Laurie to say that there is a power cut.

Till total £389.45

29 customers

Online orders: 0

Books found: 0

I got back to the shop from the sailing trip at 4 p.m. to a startled Nicky, who had no idea when we were due to return. She was visibly upset to see me home safely. After I had shut the shop, a man telephoned to say that he is moving into a care home from his house, and wants to sell his book collection. He lives just outside Kelso, in a small village. I have arranged to visit him towards the end of the month.

Till total £288.98

38 customers

Online orders: 0

Books found: 0

Laurie was in today, a lovely sunny day.

Monsoon was still not working, probably a consequence of the power cut on Friday, so I emailed their tech support team.

The first customer of the day was an Irish woman, who turned up at the shop at 9.09 a.m. and asked, ‘Tell me now, does everything in Scotland open at 10 a.m.?’

After work I went to a meeting organised by the council, chaired by someone called ‘The Shop Doctor’, whose job it is to help retailers improve their businesses. It turned out to be a complete waste of time, and I spent three pointless hours being tortured by his PowerPoint presentation, an abomination rich with revelatory insights like ‘If you keep your door open, more customers will come in than if it is closed’ and ‘The name of your business should reflect what you sell’. Well, I think I managed to nail that one. There’s not a lot of ambiguity about ‘The Book Shop’. I reached my limit and left when he showed a series of photographs of seriously run-down shops and asked us – like a group of pre-school children – ‘Can anybody see what’s wrong with this one?’ By this point everyone was seething, and for a brief moment I feared a lynching, a fear that rapidly became a hope the moment he addressed me. ‘You. You’ve been very quiet. What do you think is wrong with this shop front?’ he oozed, as his projector clicked to a photograph of a shop with no sign, a smashed window and a burned-out car in front of it.

Till total £187.60

30 customers

Online orders: 4

Books found: 0

Laurie in again and another sunny day. She spent the day listing books for sale on Fulfilled By Amazon. Once we’re up to four boxes she will organise for them to be taken to the Amazon warehouse in Dunfermline.

A customer came to the counter when Laurie was having a break, and pointed at a sealed box with an address label on, which contained a set of Statistical Accounts that we are shipping out to a buyer in the USA.

Customer: ‘I am a bit confused, that box over there …’

Me: ‘Sorry, the books in that box aren’t for sale. They’ve already been sold.’

Customer: ‘I thought not.’

I still have no idea what that was about.

Nicky sent me an email in which she described a customer on Saturday who had come into the shop in full Highland fighting dress: ‘Glorious green gilet and hand-knitted socks, capercaillie feathers dancing on his bonnie Glengarry.’ Apparently he ‘marched proudly into the shop accompanied by a whinging dog which didn’t shut up until he marched back outside. Kind of ruined his image. And he didn’t acknowledge me. Probably English.’

Booked in to have my hair cut tomorrow by Richard, the barber three doors down the street from my shop.

Monsoon’s tech support finally contacted us and managed to take over the computer and fix the problems.

Till total £268

27 customers

Online orders: 13

Books found: 9

Laurie in. Yet another stunning, sunny day.

I wandered down for a haircut at 10.45 a.m. Richard was, as always, friendly and chatty. As I was leaving, I met Mr Deacon coming in for whatever treatment he has applied to his comb-over. He faintly acknowledged me in a slightly confused fashion. Perhaps out of the context of the shop he couldn’t place me.

Laurie managed to locate and pack all but four of the books that have been ordered since Friday. We had several angry emails and telephone calls about books that were ordered at the start of the month and still have not arrived. There might be a shipping problem with Historic Newspapers, so I will look into it.

Historic Newspapers is a local business that ships old newspapers around the world, and consequently they have a very favourable contract with a courier, DHL, so we put all our overseas orders through them. They drop in twice a week and pick up any parcels we have for non-UK customers.

After lunch I drove to Carsluith again to look at more of the books belonging to the woman with a weeping leg sore. She is slowly clearing her stuff out, and there was a lot of good Folio Society material – one box worth. Gave her £55 towards her grand-daughter’s Oxford fund.

After work I went for a swim in the sea at Monreith with Maltese Tracy.

Till total £236.49

16 customers

Online orders: 5

Books found: 3

Laurie opened the shop on what was the hottest day of the year so far: the garden thermometer read 29 degrees.

As we were putting books on the shelves, a couple came into the shop. The wife mauled her way through the antiquarian shelves, coughing and moaning, while he looked at books in the Scottish room. The moment he joined her, she complained loudly about having a headache, catarrh and sore knees. When she finally stopped talking, he offered her some sort of homeopathic crystal to cure her headache. Despite being remarkably annoying, they spent £250 on an eighteenth-century Scottish botanical book.

Laurie organised the collection of four boxes for sale through FBA. They will be delivered to the Amazon warehouse in Dunfermline, and sold and shipped directly through Amazon.

Possibly triggered by our brief encounter in the doorway of the barber’s yesterday, Mr Deacon dropped in and ordered a copy of Alison Weir’s Eleanor of Aquitaine. He looked suspicious when Laurie took his order, slightly as I suspect the character of Mr Pumpherston did in The Intimate Thoughts of John Baxter, Bookseller , in which Alec, the young apprentice, serves him instead of Baxter himself: ‘I think he would admit he has his doubts about that young shaver’, although, unlike Alec, Laurie is perfectly competent to deal with any customer.

Laurie and I spent the rest of the day packing and labelling books for the Random Book Club. Two subscribers failed to renew for another year. After we had finished with the Random Book Club I asked Laurie to sweep up the shop window. It was like a furnace in the summer sun.

Till total £449.99

16 customers

Online orders: 5

Books found: 5

Nicky was in the shop today. She spent the day dealing with the postage for the random books, a job that she particularly dislikes, and which I endeavour to ensure falls to her every month.