Шон Байтелл: The Diary of a Bookseller

The books were boxed, so, rather than go through them, I took them away and we agreed that I would sort through them later. It took two trips in the van to shift them, but thankfully there were a few of us so it didn’t take too long.

There was a piece in today’s Guardian about living in Wigtown called ‘Let’s move to Wigtown and the Machars peninsula’. It was subtitled ‘A little backwater, in the best sense of the word’ and included in the text was the following sentence: ‘There is always a friendly welcome wherever you go.’ The shop’s Facebook page was bombarded by comments like ‘They clearly haven’t been in your shop’ and ‘Obviously they haven’t met you.’

Anna and I took down the Christmas decorations in the shop after we had unloaded the boxes of books from the van. Hardly a great ordeal, considering how pathetic my efforts to celebrate Christmas were. Being Jewish, Anna was probably the only person in Wigtown less interested in Christmas than I was. Apart from Nicky.

Till total £63.98

12 customers

Online orders: 4

Books found: 4

Opened the shop at 9 a.m. By 2 p.m. the door had been opened just three times: first by Kate, the postie; second by my father, delivering a newspaper; and third by the howling wind about five minutes after my father, who hadn’t shut the door properly.

As I was picking the orders, I found Captain staring despondently out of the window. Two weeks after the shortest day is a depressing time, whether you are a cat or a bookseller.

I spent much of the day going through the boxes of books from the farmhouse, which were almost without exception disappointing.

Peter Bestel came round in the afternoon to discuss technical problems with the Random Book Club web site. Despite getting thirty-two new subscribers in December on the back of zero advertising, I have been putting off marketing it because the database management system we set up in 2013 isn’t best suited to dealing with the complications thrown up by people giving a subscription as a gift, or not renewing etc., so until we sort these problems out I don’t intend to seek out new members.

By 3 p.m. I was giving up hope of having even one sale when the Robinsons, a large local farming family, came in and bought some books. Ken, who had recently married into the clan, found a book about St Kilda that he had been waiting for me to reduce in price. I had spotted him looking at it a few times, so after his last visit I raised the price from £40 to £45. He wasn’t very pleased but bought it anyway. I reduced it back to £40.

Till total £50

2 customers

Online orders: 1

Books found: 0

In today’s Amazon messages was one complaining about The Universal Singular , a book that we had an order for a week or so ago: ‘The edges (especially the upper one) is covered with a thick layer of mould – which is a serious health risk to handle the book. It is now sealed and had to be removed out of the building.’

I sent an unnecessarily sarcastic reply that I would arrange for someone in an ebola suit to come and collect it from her, since she considered it such a threat to her health.

Till total £70.47

7 customers

Online orders: 3

Books found: 2

Wild, wet and windy day.

Another very quiet day. Three people came in after lunch. They were visiting from Rutland Water, where they are running an osprey project. They wanted to see what we have done with our (formerly) resident pair of ospreys. One of them bought a reprint of Bradshaw’s Rail Times 1895.

At 4 p.m. Tracy dropped in to say hello. She is now working in a pub in Newton Stewart.

A young couple came in at 3.55 p.m. and spent an hour and a half sitting by the fire reading things they had pulled off the shelves. At 5.25 p.m. I told them that the shop was closed. They left without buying anything and abandoned the huge pile of books by the fire.

Submitted the grant application to James Patterson’s web site. It looks pretty good, and I am quietly confident, which is almost a guarantee that it won’t be successful.

Till total £46.99

6 customers

Online orders: 3

Books found: 3

Further exciting developments in the saga of the mouldy copy of The Universal Singular.

Here is her reply to my sarcastic request for her address so that I could send someone in an ebola suit to collect it:

The address is:

Satellite 13RTX77 – X11

Venus orbit 3

Milky Way

I spent the first half hour re-shelving the piles of books that the couple who sat by the fire yesterday had built up.

Depressing news today was that last year global revenue from digital downloads of music overtook CD sales. As music, books and films are probably the three media that can most easily and cheaply be digitised, it seems as though it can only be a matter of time before our trade goes the same way, although it is reassuring that large numbers of people who visit the shop tell me that they much prefer the physical pleasure of reading a book, and dislike Kindles. The Kindle that I shot and mounted on a shield is, without question, the most photographed object in the shop.

Anna reminded me that I promised to take her to see Into the Woods in Glasgow tomorrow. She is incredibly excited about it. I am dreading it.

Till total £36.49

10 customers

Online orders: 1

Books found: 1

Nicky in, wearing her black ski suit as usual. After lunch she set to work on processing the remainder of the books from the farmhouse. She was far from impressed with the contents, which were mostly ex-library, many in Arabic, and a large number of autobiographies of vapid celebrities. She estimated that she was keeping one in thirty. I am not sure what to tell Ewan.

Anna has decided that we should produce a bookshop music video version of ‘Rappers’ Delight’ but rewrite the lyrics to make it ‘Readers’ Delight’ so we spent much of the morning doing that.

After saying goodbye to Nicky, Anna and I drove to Glasgow to watch Into the Woods . My expectations were extremely low, yet even they were not met. It was diabolical, and Anna was so upset that she suggested we leave early. Home at about 9 p.m. to find Nicky still in her ski suit, drinking my beer.

Till total £41.99

5 customers

Online orders: 2

Books found: 2

Nicky opened the shop.

In the morning I went to The Picture Shop in Wigtown to see about framing a print I had bought at auction last year. I was shocked to find Jessie, the owner, in her chair, looking very ill. She is keen to go to hospital, as she says she can no longer look after herself. Anna was worried and went to tell the doctor that he ought to visit her. Jessie is in her eighties, but works every day in her shop. She is the only person still alive to have been born in a house in the Mull of Galloway – the peninsula west of the Machars – before the hospital opened in Stranraer and the maternity unit was set up.

Anna, Nicky and I spent much of the day rehearsing our lyrics for ‘Readers’ Delight’. The Bestels came over for supper, and we worked out a loose choreography. The plan is to film it next Friday. Nicky is MC Spanner.

In the afternoon a customer dropped off two boxes of books, among which was a copy of Chattering , by Louise Stern. Louise came to the book festival in 2011 and was utterly wonderful. She is deaf and doesn’t speak. For most of the time when she was in Wigtown she had a signing interpreter, but in his absence she communicated by scribbling on bits of paper. The day after her event she told me that she wanted to go for a swim in the sea, so I took her to Monreith and we braved the October waters. The evening she first arrived in Wigtown she turned up in the Writers’ Retreat at about 10 p.m. There were quite a few of us there, and a lot of wine had been drunk. Her arrival brought with it a slight sobering of the atmosphere, purely because very few of us had encountered anyone who was deaf and didn’t speak. She sensed the tension and suggested that we each take it in turns to ask one another a question. She pointed at me, and Oliver (her interpreter) signed my nervously pedestrian question ‘Did you have a good journey here?’ to her. She replied, ‘Yes, thank you. My turn. When did you lose your virginity?’, at which point the atmosphere instantly turned back to the bawdy ribaldry it had been before her arrival.