Шон Байтелл - The Diary of a Bookseller

Picked up a copy of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying from the Penguin Modern Classics section of the shop and began reading it again before going to bed. It was on the curriculum when I sat my ‘A’ levels, and I remember enjoying it back then.

Till total £603.63

41 customers

Online orders: 3

Books found: 2

Laurie was in today.

A less than friendly email this morning among this morning’s messages:

It is now 22nd August and I HAVE STILL NOT RECEIVED POMFRET TOWERS.

I LIVE IN CUMBRIA JUST ACROSS THE SOLWAY FIRTH FROM WIGTOWN.

A BOOK ORDERED VIA ABEBOOKS FROM SOUTH AFRICA ARRIVED IN TWO DAYS AND ALL OTHER ORDERS HAVE BEEN DESPATCHED AND RECEIVED PROMPTLY.

12 DAYS TO RECEIVE A BOOK FROM WIGTOWNSHIRE TO CUMBRIA IS FRANKLY UNACCEPTABLE. PERHAPS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER AN ALTERNATIVE METHOD.

After lunch I went to my parents’ house to get my shotgun and shoot a Kindle (broken screen, bought on eBay for £10), imagining it was the missing copy of Pomfret Towers . It was remarkably satisfying to blast it into a thousand pieces.

Before closing a man brought in three Ian Fleming first editions, including Dr No (lacking jacket), for which I gave him £150, then immediately regretted it. With hindsight, £100 would have been more than adequate.

Till total £296.47

20 customers

Online orders: 2

Books found: 2

All the girls were off today. My back is excruciating, and now my left leg is numb. I called Carol-Ann, who has recently done something to her back. She told me that these are the symptoms of sciatica.

Two emails from Amazon customers complaining that they had been obliged to collect their parcels from the post office and pay extra because we had not stamped them. They were sent out on 14 or 15 August, so I checked the diary. On the 14th both Katie and Laurie were working in the shop. On the 15th it was just Katie. Someone is going to get a roasting when they recover and return to work.

I was looking for this morning’s orders when a customer asked, ‘What’s the oldest book you have in stock?’, then demanded to see it. It is a book called Martialis , dated 1501, so it misses the holy grail of being incunabula (the grandiose name for any printed book published before 1501) by the slenderest of margins. She then told me that she had an older book. I had been unaware that it was a competition. Our copy of Martialis – although not an incunable – has the distinction of being published by the Aldine Press, one of the most prestigious early Venetian printers, and famous in the world of typography for introducing italics to printing and for being the first printer to publish smaller books in the – now standard – ‘octavo’ size. It is also iconic for its device: an anchor with a dolphin weaving around it.

Till total £270.85

28 customers

Online orders: 2

Books found: 2

Katie managed to shuffle in to work today. I brought up the subject of the parcel with the missing postage stamp on it. She conceded that it had probably been her fault.

Sandy the tattooed pagan brought in five sticks to replenish the stock.

My back is still agony. I had planned to go to the doctor but forgot that it is a bank holiday, so I telephoned my pharmacist friend Cloda. She recommended co-codamol, after which I went to the chemist only to discover that it was shut too, so I ended up buying paracetamol and ibuprofen from the co-op.

Telephone call from Mr Deacon asking if he could order a copy of Alison Weir’s Eleanor of Aquitaine . I asked him if he was quite sure, as we had recently ordered a copy for him. He paused, then replied, ‘Oh yes, I can see it on my desk. Where’s my list? Yes, I meant David Starkey’s Henry . Could you order that?’ I assured him that it would be here by the end of the week.

I left Katie in charge and drove to Glasgow to drop off forty boxes of reject stock at Cash for Clothes in Partick.

My memory is terrible, so I have made another note to apply for the James Patterson grant. It is now on my expanding list of things I will kick myself for not doing.

Till total £367.05

72 customers

Online orders: 2

Books found: 1

Laurie was in to work today. Moments after she arrived an enormous woman with a ginger Fu Manchu moustache bought a book about the making of the Lord of the Rings film.

A book dealer whom I hadn’t previously met came to the counter and asked if we had any rare firsts, so I told him that he could have the three Flemings that I had just bought for £200. He declined, but bought our War of the Worlds first edition for £225 and paid by cheque. He is the first person who has used a cheque in the shop this year. We used to bank two or three cheques a week when I first bought the shop, but now it’s mainly credit cards.

I had an appointment at the opticians in Newton Stewart after lunch. Following several tests Peter, the optician, told me that my eyesight was very similar to four years ago, when I was last there for a test. When I explained that I was having trouble reading in the bath, he asked, ‘Can you read in there better during the day?’ to which I replied that, yes – I could. He suggested changing the light bulb. We spent most of the appointment discussing mountain-biking and sailing, as usual. On the way out I ordered two new pairs of glasses.

Carol-Ann came round at 6.30 p.m. and asked if she could stay tonight. I called Callum and invited him for supper. Anna and Carol-Ann drove to the Chinese restaurant in Newton Stewart and picked up a take-away. This is what passes for ‘cooking’ in Anna’s world.

Till total £287.96

56 customers

Online orders: 3

Books found: 2

Nicky in.

Foodie Friday has apparently moved to Wednesday this week, and this morning I was greeted by a grinning Nicky: ‘Look, eh, I’ve brought you a packet of caramel digestives. They’re all melted into one massive lump though.’ She also brought in a bike to sell. I told her that there was no way anyone would be stupid enough to buy it. Shortly after she had put a ‘For Sale’ sign on it and leant it against the bench in front of the shop Smelly Kelly appeared and asked how much she wanted for it. She told him that he was a bit optimistic buying a bicycle, considering he is now walking on two crutches.

An older woman, probably in her late seventies, came in with a bag of books to sell. They were all erotica, and all photographic books from the 1960s. I checked one or two of them and they were reasonably valuable, so I gave her £50 for them. Just before she left she picked one of the books up and said, ‘See if you can work out which of the models in this book is me.’

Carol-Ann stayed the night again.

Till total £461.39

34 customers

Online orders: 5

Books found: 5

Katie was in today.

To my enormous irritation, Nicky’s bike sold. Her Facebook update read:

Sorry people, the bike has sold!

In its place though is a bespoke wooden table with a lift-up

lid! How cool is that! Yours for £20.

An elderly woman came to the counter with a book: ‘I’ll take this book, thank you. It’s for my son, you see. He’s a primary school teacher and he’s teaching the children about dinosaurs. I don’t know anything about them, and neither does he, so I have bought him this book. I’m seeing him next week and I’ll give it to him then. It’s his auntie Florence’s seventieth birthday. Do you know, she doesn’t look a day over sixty …’ And so it continued for a further ten minutes.