Шон Байтелл - The Diary of a Bookseller

The timing of the festival was originally intended to prolong the tourist season for shops in the town and it has succeeded to such an extent that the infrastructure is starting to creak with Hotels and B&Bs nearing the capacity they experience at the summer peak. The extent to which it brings people and money to the town more than justifies the costs of putting it on.

I rarely have the luxury of attending any events, and spend my time driving to the dump and the recycling skips with bin bags and bottles from the Writers’ Retreat; but when I am in the shop, I have the opportunity to meet writers and other famous (or not) visitors in the Retreat, where they tend to be far more relaxed than at their events, so it is an extraordinary privilege to have the chance to talk to them in a more natural environment.

Eliot is excellent at making a point of introducing me to people although if he’s not around, occasionally – seeing me help clearing up plates, or filling up the log basket – they will assume that I am hired help, and a few behave disparagingly.

One year, as I was putting logs on the fire, a well-known newspaper columnist who was sitting at the table in the Retreat drinking free wine and eating free lobster, clicked his fingers and shouted ‘sugar’ at me, while pointing at an empty sugar bowl on the table.

Those are the visitors whom I dislike second-most. Worse than them, though, are those who – once they find out that it is my house – suddenly start to treat me differently from the girls helping Maria in the kitchen or the Retreat, or Nicky and Flo, or Bethan in the shop. I suppose the charge could be fairly levelled at me that I don’t make a great deal of effort to find out about my customers, but I am never rude to waiters, waitresses, cleaners or shop staff and hope that I have never treated anyone as a second-class citizen, and instead merely reflect rudeness back at people who are rude to me. I can afford to be rude back to customers – it’s my shop, nobody is going to fire me – but most people who work in shops are not in this position, and to exploit that by not showing them the slightest courtesy is something that offends me greatly. And while I do make observations about the appearance of some of my customers, they are just observations – not judgements. In most cases.

Till total £143.90

14 customers

Online orders: 6

Books found: 4

Just before lunch a customer offered £10 for a book that we have priced at £80. I told him that if he asked politely he could have £10 off. He slammed the book down on the counter and walked out in ‘disgust’, at which point I decided that escapism from customers was the order of the day, and found a new book to read and hid in the office with Kidnapped – a fate I would quite happily have seen befall that last customer.

Till total £264.49

19 customers

Online orders: 3

Books found: 3

All of today’s orders were from Amazon.

The shop was quiet today. The contrast with last week is extraordinary.

One of the few customers was a woman who spent ten minutes wandering around the shop before coming to the counter and asking, ‘So what is The Book Shop? Do you sell the books or what? Do people just come in and take them?’ Temporarily stupefied, I was unable to answer. Thankfully, she broke the silence and ploughed on, ‘I am not from here, I am a tourist. Do people just hand you the books in? What happens in here? Is that what happens in here?’ I began what with hindsight was a pointless attempt to explain the basic principles of retail, which frankly, she ought to have grasped by the age of roughly fifty, but she meandered out of the shop while I was explaining it to her.

Sandy the tattooed pagan appeared at about 3 p.m. and found two books. Have deducted them from his credit.

Till total £222.45

19 customers

Online orders: 3

Books found: 2

The missing book from today’s orders was yet another one that we had failed to delist before sending our old warehouse stock to Ian.

At 11 a.m. a customer came to the counter with some maps of Ireland, demanding to know the year in which each was published. He then started the dreaded ‘Let me tell you why I am looking for old maps and books about this area, it’s because I am doing family history research and my great-grandfather …’ for about five minutes before I could explain that the maps were undated, but probably from around 1910.

I am going to get a mask and paint ‘I DON’T CARE’ on the forehead and put it on when such occasions arise in the future.

Someone in the planning department came to inspect the book spirals. It appears that a complaint has been made about them, so now I have to get planning permission. She was remarkably decent about it all and said that if it were up to her she would just ignore the fact that I hadn’t applied for permission for them, but because there has been a formal complaint and the shop is a listed building, they have no choice but to go through the process.

The Guardian published ‘Weird and wonderful bookshops worldwide’; we are number 3 again. I’m not sure if these things go in cycles, or whether bookshops are suddenly becoming fashionable places. Perhaps it is the hipster movement driving the trend to be seen with vinyl and real books instead of iPods and Kindles.

Till total £133

15 customers

Online orders: 2

Books found: 2

Nicky was in today, so I went to the river with my father in the morning. He caught a 12lb salmon; I blanked. We were fishing a pool called Wilson’s, on the top beat of the river – the pool in which I caught my first salmon (under my father’s watchful eye). It was 9lb, caught on 9 September, and I was nine years old. If I believed in luck, I suppose that nine ought to be my lucky number.

I returned to the shop at lunchtime and gave Nicky a break, during which a customer came to the counter and announced, ‘I don’t want to appear rude, but your railway section is mainly pot-boiler coffee-table-type books, and I am looking for something very specific blah blah blah …’ He continued in this vein for a couple of minutes before getting to the point and telling me the title of the book he was looking for, by which time I was incandescent and his wife was cringing and mouthing ‘sorry’ at me from behind him.

Within a minute of being told the title I had located a copy of the book, at which point he decided that he didn’t actually want it after all.

Prefacing a sentence with ‘I don’t want to appear rude, but …’ flags up the same alarm bells as ‘I am not racist, but …’ It’s quite simple: if you don’t want to appear rude, don’t be rude. If you’re not a racist, don’t behave like a racist.

Till total £312.30

22 customers

Online orders: 4

Books found: 2

Flo in.

As I came down the stairs with two cups of tea at 11 a.m. I literally bumped into Mr Deacon, covering his shirt with hot tea. He didn’t seem to mind in the slightest and pointed out several other stains he had inflicted on the shirt while he was having his breakfast that morning. He asked if we could order him a copy of Kate Whitaker’s A Royal Passion .

Went to the river after lunch and caught a 7lb salmon.

Till total £352.99

27 customers

Online orders: 2

Books found: 2

Two complete strangers came into the shop at the same time and in an extraordinary coincidence both asked at the same time for a copy of Gavin Maxwell’s House of Elrig . Sadly we don’t have a copy or I could have orchestrated a bidding war.