Читать книгу Confessions of a Bookseller - Shaun Bythell - Страница 9

Online orders: 7

Orders found: 7

Another grey day, and miraculously, another on which I managed to find all the orders.

Patrick from Historic Newspapers dropped in to pick up the pile of overseas orders that had accumulated over the Christmas period. Our domestic mail goes out via Royal Mail, but international orders are cheaper using the courier that Historic Newspapers has a contract with, so we piggy-back on that.

Petra dropped in to ask if she could start a belly-dancing class in the big room upstairs. I’m not sure what sort of uptake she’ll have, but I told her that she’s welcome to use the room on Friday mornings.

A customer asked for my business card, but I couldn’t find one. It must be over a year since I was last asked for a business card. The idea seems charmingly old-fashioned in a world of hyper-connectivity. When I first bought the shop, customers—particularly other book dealers—would regularly leave them, but it just doesn’t happen any more, much like the calling cards of Georgian and Victorian times.

A German couple in their fifties browsed for an hour. The woman bought a copy of David Cecil’s biography of Jane Austen. As she was paying, she said, ‘Very nice to meet you at last,’ which seemed a little odd until she explained that the reason they’d come to Wigtown was because she’d read my partner Anna’s book, which is—in part—about Wigtown (and me). Shortly after they’d left, a man in an orange boiler suit who’d bought a copy of her Three Things You Need to Know About Rockets last week came back in and, inspired by Anna’s references to Moby Dick, bought a copy of that too.

Tom came round to discuss the project that Anna devised—the Writers’ House idea. She wants to set up a company to buy and convert a property on the square and run it as a creative space, with courses on writing, reading and art, in conjunction with Spring Fling (an arts festival in the area which happens every June). He wants to have a brainstorming meeting here in the shop and was looking for suggested names to invite, so I gave him a few. The meeting will be here in the big room where we host the Writers’ Retreat during the festival. It’s next Friday evening, and he’s organised food and wine.

Till Total £87.50

13 Customers