Шон Байтелл - The Diary of a Bookseller

After work Tracy and I went for a drink to mark the end of her contract with the RSPB. Her summer of sitting in the Osprey Room of the County Buildings telling people that there are no ospreys in the nest has finally drawn to an end.

Till total £245.99

8 customers

If it was dealers confusing authors and titles in Orwell’s day, it is customers who are guilty of it today. I have been asked if we have a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four by Aldous Huxley on a number of occasions, and it’s not unheard of to be asked for a copy of Tom Jones by Helen Fielding. Nicky reminded me recently that Homage to Catalonia has been attributed to both Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene in the past month by customers. And the ‘trade papers’ to which Orwell refers have all but disappeared in the age of the internet. Even when I took over the shop, there was a good deal of trade within the industry, and networks whereby dealers contacted others to try to track down a book for a customer were still reasonably healthy. Now, of course, customers do not need us to track down titles. Two minutes online and they have a copy on the way to them. Occasionally now I still have a visit from a dealer looking for the odd bargain or – if they are a specialist – combing through a particular section to find titles they need to maintain a credible stock, but this is a rarity. Back in the early years it was common; one or two a week would make their presence known and eventually turn up at the counter with piles of books, present their business card and receive the standard 10 per cent trade discount. These days even customers demand a discount, and it is usually a lot more than 10 per cent. The demise of inter-trade business has also put an end to the career of the ‘runner’ – someone who would know the trade and a number of dealers and trawl the country’s bookshops, loading a van with stock bought from shops, which they knew they could sell at a small profit to other dealers. Much of the runner’s stock-in-trade would be topography – prior to the internet, a book about Galloway would be of little value to a bookshop in Dorset, and vice versa, so the runner would clean up by redistributing these things to a more appropriate geographical location. It makes no difference on Amazon now, though, where on the planet that book is. As for the ‘humane trade’ – it certainly was, but Amazon has rendered it cut-throat and barbaric.

Online orders: 6

Books found: 6

Nicky stayed overnight and opened the shop this morning. When I asked her which was the winning postcard from the competition, she pointed to one that she had obviously written herself. It even had our Royal Mail stamp on it:

‘Cinderella!’ roared the wicked step-mother, splattering the customers in saliva and red hairs, ‘WHY is the stove lit and WHY are those 40 boxes of mouldy books neatly stacked and WHY have you dealt with all the orders efficiently?’ ‘You drive me INSANE! Go and water down the soup and spoon feed cream to the cat.’ ‘AND WHY is all this money in the till?’ ‘No more mouldy trifle for you, wretch.’

I’ve decided to read Andrew McNeillie’s biography of his father, John McNeillie, who wrote The Wigtown Ploughman , a novel published in 1939 whose depiction of the crude standards of sanitation and hygiene in rural Scotland revolutionised social welfare in the country. Andrew and I have been friends since I bought the shop, and I’m curious to see how he writes, and to see what use he made of a letter that his father wrote to one of his readers that I found in a book and gave to him as part of his research material.

Till total £233

15 customers

Online orders: 7

Books found: 7

Five orders from AbeBooks, two from Amazon.

One postcard in the mail today: ‘The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters.’ It had a local postmark. Kate the postie dropped off a ticket from Royal Mail telling me that there is an item for which no postage had been paid. It is in the sorting office in Newton Stewart. I will collect it tomorrow.

Callum came in to rebuild the counter area. We are going to incorporate an oak gantry that I bought at a farm sale on the Buccleuch estate about ten years ago. It is intended to form a more substantial barrier to protect me from customers.

A man in his thirties with a luxuriant beard came in and asked if we would be interested in 2,000 books he has in a farmhouse outside Newton Stewart. I said that we would; he will be in touch soon. Just as he left, another customer asked, ‘Do you have a toilet in here?’ I told him that we don’t, but that there’s one in the town hall, just at the end of the square. Customer: ‘Oh, that’s very disappointing. And it’s raining outside.’

Till total £238

15 customers

Online orders: 6

Books found: 5

Callum came in again at 9 a.m. to continue with fitting the gantry. He had to dismantle some of yesterday’s work to get the plaster-board in.

Eliot arrived at 9 p.m. for a board meeting later this week. I lit the fire, which he sat in front of, complaining about how cold it was. Presumably that’s the reason he didn’t kick his shoes off the moment he arrived in the kitchen, as he normally does.

Till total £82.50

8 customers

Online orders: 2

Books found: 1

Awoke at 6.30 a.m. to the sound of doors slamming and stomping feet, then I remembered that Eliot is staying, so went back to sleep. Finally got up at 8.30 a.m. to brush my teeth, to find that Eliot was having a bath, so I went downstairs to make some breakfast. His clothes were all over the kitchen floor. I made a cup of tea and went into the big room to find the evidence of his breakfast all over the table – plates, mugs, cutlery, crumbs. He had also managed to shut the cat in there. He doesn’t consciously do these things, and I am quite sure it is because his mind is awash with the information that he will have to present to the board at the meeting.

This afternoon Mrs Phillips telephoned (‘I am ninety-three and blind’), looking for a copy of Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk . We had a copy in stock. Helen Macdonald was one of the speakers at this year’s festival, and hers was one of the most popular events.

Callum was in after lunch to continue work on the counter. As he was underneath it, he was startled by a voice saying ‘Hello’ and – temporarily distracted – let go of the hammer at a vital moment, sending it crashing through a pane of glass. The guilty party was Mr Deacon, who was in to order a copy of Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate – ‘Not for me, that sort of thing. Present for my daughter. Don’t read fiction. It’s largely written for women.’ We had a copy on the shelf, so I didn’t have to order it for him.