Шон Байтелл - The Diary of a Bookseller

Books found: 3

Flo and Nicky in.

A customer asked Nicky if we had any rare John Buchan titles in stock. She found a copy of The Scholar Gypsies , which was £100, and told her that she could have it for £80 since she was doing an event. She turned out to be his granddaughter, Ursula Buchan.

In the afternoon I picked up the Italian journalists and we drove to Cruggleton church, a Norman church in the middle of a field, with no glass in the windows or electricity.

The event in Cruggleton consisted of Tom Pow reading poetry, accompanied by Wendy Stewart on harp and Alex McQuiston on cello. Entirely candlelit, it was an extraordinarily beautiful event. On the journey home in the van I was emptying my pocket to show one of the journalists the programme (she wanted the performers’ names for her blog) and produced from it a teabag in a pouch that I had taken from the Writers’ Retreat. Unfortunately it looked exactly like a condom. Both of the Italians saw it and there was an awkward silence while I pathetically attempted to demonstrate that it was actually just a teabag as they edged slowly away.

Allison’s event – a play about Borges – was on at 6 p.m. in the old warehouse at the back of the shop. Anna had been directing her rehearsals here all week. We had to change the access from the garden to via the road because the lighting on the path in the garden had fused, so I led people there in small groups in the driving rain. In no time I was completely soaked. The event went well, although Anna did not look particularly pleased.

Heavy rain continued into the night. Before long the gutter was blocked and water was pouring into the Writers’ Retreat, so Laurie, Nicky, Anna, Stuart and I spent some time frantically racing about with buckets and saucepans. Despite our efforts to limit the damage, the water came down through the floor of the Retreat and into the shop.

Till total £239.05

38 customers

Online orders: 4

Books found: 2

Flo, Bethan and Nicky in.

Nicky opened the shop to find water still flooding into the building from the blocked gutter. We tried to clear the blockage with a broom handle from the bedroom window, but it wasn’t long enough, so I went down to the cellar and found a drain rod. Half hanging out of the third-floor window in the torrential rain, with Laurie holding my ankles, I eventually managed to clear it. It stopped dripping into the Retreat at 10 a.m., just as we opened.

Sally Magnusson and Margaret Drabble were in the Writers’ Retreat when I appeared, soaked, to check that everything was ready. Lucy (Maria’s helper) cornered Sally to ask her about journalism, which she very obligingly and enthusiastically discussed for a few minutes. Damian Barr bought some books from me. I had no idea who he was at the time.

At the start of the day I set up the GoPro camera behind the counter to make speeded-up video of life in the shop, just as Dylan Moran came in. I now have video of him buying a book from the shop. Flo served him. She was annoyingly unflapped about it.

Flo overheard a woman ask a man, as they walked through the shop, ‘So they didn’t have the book you’re looking for?’ To which he replied, shaking his head, ‘Aye, they did, but just the one copy.’

Ceilidh in the big marquee in the square in the evening. It was packed. Lots of girls dancing with girls and boys with boys, as well as the more traditional arrangements. In the early days of the festival nothing was particularly well attended, but the ceilidh was undoubtedly among the worst. For the first few years there were just a handful of us, and to avoid embarrassment we would all end up joining in every single dance. Now it is different. The event has to be ticketed and always sells out. It has become enormously popular. At one point I was standing next to Damian Barr, who was dancing with another man. I drunkenly asked him which of them was being the woman, then later discovered that he is gay. If he was offended, he hid it extremely well. Faux pas of the festival so far. Went to the house to try to convince Nicky (who had decided not to attend) to change her mind and come along. Bumped into Jen Campbell and her parents outside the shop, so they came in for a drink and a chat.

We all stayed up late: Colin, Peggy, Stuart, Nicky and Natalie Haynes, who was on the Booker panel of judges with Stuart. Peggy runs the Dundee Literary Festival and could easily have emerged from the same clutch of eggs as Stuart Kelly. Colin, her partner – who generally answers to the name of ‘Beard’ – is running the social media side of the festival. They are both Wigtown Festival institutions, and have helped carve the identity of the event as much as Eliot, Stuart, Twigger and Finn.

The shop was heaving all day: the last gasp before the long winter of penury.

Till total £1,274.03

87 customers

Online orders: 6

Books found: 4

Nicky and Flo in. I bumped into Nicky in the kitchen at about 8.30 a.m. She told me, ‘You smell as good as a bacon roll.’

As always on the final day of the festival, there’s a sense of end-of-holiday blues, as the party begins to wind down. Despite it being the last day, there was the usual chaos going on in the Writers’ Retreat, with the staff and Maria being magnificently serene.

Eliot roped Anna into chairing Jen Campbell’s event, a talk about her new book, The Bookshop Book . It went extremely well, apart from me asking a particularly stupid question. Both Anna and Jen were erudite and entertaining.

As with every year, on the last day of the festival, we turned the Writers’ Retreat into a cinema. This year we set up the projector and watched Dr Who with Stuart, Beth and Cheyney.

Till total £568.75

32 customers

Online orders: 5

Books found: 4

Nicky and Flo in. We spent the day shifting furniture and trying to get the place back to normal. Maria came in at lunchtime to sort out her stuff in the kitchen. Anna and I drove to the dump to get rid of cardboard boxes and empty wine bottles.

Nicky made herself cheese on toast for lunch and ate it in the middle of the shop, surrounded by customers.

This morning a busybody of an old man for whom I have always had an intense dislike came into the shop to try to persuade me to stock the self-published novel he has written. I am frequently presented with this sort of thing, and I take it on sale or return for purely diplomatic reasons. Without exception, one year later, I end up returning every single copy.

The big marquee came down today, leaving a pale yellow patch of grass beneath where it had stood, a reminder throughout the long winter of what had been here until it starts to green up again as the soil temperature warms up in March.

Anna and I went for supper at The Ploughman with the volunteers.

Till total £123.97

14 customers

Online orders: 5

Books found: 3

Nicky was in today.

The shop received an anonymous postcard this morning, so I posted it on Facebook. Hopefully it will trigger more. It was a picture of a bronze lion, and on the back it just read: ‘a large portion of the Oxford English Dictionary was written by a murderer from a mental institution’.

After lunch I dismantled the framework I had put up for Allison’s event in the old warehouse. Everyone had a slight case of post-festival come-down today.

We spent most of the day continuing the clear-up operation. After the shop was shut I cooked for the interns and we watched Wings of Desire on the projector in the Writers’ Retreat.