Шон Байтелл - The Diary of a Bookseller

The last customers of the day – a young couple who bought a few sci-fi titles – told me that they spend their holidays visiting second-hand bookshops all over the UK. A glimmer of hope still flickers for us.

Till total £78

7 customers

Online orders: 7

Books found: 4

Forgot to set the alarm and slept in. Opened the shop at 10 a.m. to discover that the ladies’ art class was supposed to have started at 9.30 a.m. and they were waiting, shivering, outside.

Till total £64

3 customers

Online orders: 2

Books found: 1

Decline and Fall arrived in this morning’s post, so I telephoned Mr Deacon to let him know.

Sandy the tattooed pagan came in with his friend. He dropped off six sticks and found a book on Celtic mythology.

Customer came in at 4 p.m. with a box of modern paperback fiction which included a copy of José Saramago’s brilliant book Blindness and a copy of Pereira Maintains , by Antonio Tabucchi, both of which had been given to me by an Italian friend who was horrified by my ignorance of contemporary European fiction. Pereira Maintains was a book I greatly enjoyed, but Blindness was astonishing. There are few other books in which I have felt so completely immersed and – ironically – visualised so clearly. The filth and pathetic chaos of a world in which everyone has gone blind, the fragility of the social contract and the rapid disintegration of society following the loss of a single sense are so vividly painted by Saramago that it draws the reader in almost as a participant in the story rather than an observer and – like Hogg’s Justified Sinner – spits you out at the end asking more questions of the world around you.

Till total £90.55

9 customers

Online orders: 8

Books found: 6

The Christmas tree went up in the square today.

A group of three Russian women came into the shop, and one of them (clearly the only English-speaker) asked if we had any books in the Russian language. She seemed genuinely surprised that we had quite a few, but they didn’t buy any.

We received an AbeBooks order this afternoon from a customer in Ireland. It was for an eight-volume set of books which had clearly been incorrectly priced on Monsoon:

Title: European History: Great Leaders & Landmarks

Author: Rev. H. J. Chaytor, William Collinge, Walter Murray

Price: £3.48

Shipping: £8.85

Total: £12.33

The total weight of the set is 8.2 kg, which would put the postage to Ireland at £88. I emailed the customer and explained the situation.

Three people independently asked ‘Do you buy books?’ one of whom brought in three Harry Potter books and very ponderously showed them to me, pointing out the fact that one of them was a first edition. When I told him that the later Harry Potter books had such huge first-edition runs that they’re practically worthless, he hastily put it back in the bag he had brought it in and left. I don’t think he believed me.

While locking up, I was treated to the extraordinary sight of Mr Deacon sprinting towards the shop as only an overweight man in late middle age can. The tails of his ill-fitting jacket (slightly too small) flapping about and his comb-over (which had flipped up vertically) appeared together like a pair of vestigial wings and the dorsal fin of a sailfish: the former struggling to push him along, the latter to steer him. He was clearly trying to get to the shop before it closed. I held the door open for him, and he paid for his book, then shuffled off, panting, into the half-light.

Till total £88.99

6 customers

Online orders: 1

Books found: 1

Nicky arrived at 9.15 a.m., as usual. Straight away she offered me a plastic tray of what might have passed for food were it a few days fresher, asking, ‘Would you like a cinnamon roll?’ (Tesco ‘Reduced to 27p’ sticker clearly visible). I replied, ‘I’d love one, thanks, Nicky.’ And as I reached for one, she swatted my hand aside and said, ‘I wouldn’t go for that one. I licked the icing off it on the way into work this morning.’

The only order this morning was for a book called A Toast-Fag.

While I was pricing up books from the many boxes from various book deals piled up in the shop, I found a copy of a book called The Restraint of Beasts , by Magnus Mills. Finn had recommended this to me, so I put it aside and will start on it when I have time.

Nicky decided to stay the night so that we could drink beer and gossip. Predictably we both drank too much. I offered her a bottle of Corncrake Ale and she told me that she doesn’t like any beer that has a bird’s name in it. This is the kind of logic that she applies to all of her decision-making.

Till total £62.50

5 customers

Online orders: 1

Books found: 1

Nicky opened up, so I had a lie-in.

Today’s order was for a book called A Young Man’s Passage , by Mark Teller. Julian Clary used the same title for his autobiography, but I can’t imagine he chose it for the same reasons.

As Nicky and I were putting fresh stock out, we both commented at the same time (as we went into the gallery) that it was extremely cold in there. And the fire was lit too. Since we put in the air source heater at the bottom of the stairs last year, the gallery has gone from being the warmest room in the shop to one of the coldest, probably because it has a stone wall with no lining or insulation, so I telephoned Callum to see what he thinks about it. He is going to come over and have a look at it.

Till total £100

10 customers

Christmas and the run-up to it is possibly the quietest time of the year in the shop. The business is so dependent on footfall from tourists – of whom there are barely any in December – that we would almost be better-off closing the shop between November and March. The few people who give second-hand books as gifts for Christmas are usually eccentric, though, so it is worth opening purely for the entertainment these characters afford. They are the most interesting customers. And it wouldn’t do to close; if the shop wasn’t open, it would disappoint those few souls who do venture into rural Galloway in the winter months, and they would be unlikely to return another time. Occasionally they spend some money, and the short, cold winter days permit little by way of alternative occupation if I was to close the shop, so it is better to be open on my own and take what slim pickings there are than to be closed and take nothing. The one week for which it is certainly worth opening is that between Christmas and Hogmanay – that’s the week when people return to the area to spend the festive period with their loved ones, whom they quickly discover that they love considerably more from a distance of several hundred miles than they do when confined to the same house as them. During that week the shop is busy, bustling with people who have spent far too much time in close confinement with their kin during the year’s darkest month; desperate for any means of escape, they flock to the shop and while away the hours browsing, and – usually – buying books.