Читать книгу Confessions of a Bookseller - Shaun Bythell - Страница 8

Online orders: 10

Orders found: 10

Back to normal hours, after a week of opening at 10 a.m. rather than the usual 9 a.m. A grey day, but at least the wind and rain have gone. The end of the festive period is always marked by a sharp fall in the number of customers, but today that feeling of emptiness in the shop was ameliorated by the fact that the first customer was Jeff Mead. Jeff is the Church of Scotland minister for the nearby parish of Kirkinner, and his public persona is probably best summed up by my friend Finn, who once told me that ‘Jeff is more comfortable doing funerals than weddings.’ This, though, belies his true character, which is mischievous, witty and remarkably intelligent, with a formal theological education. He’s close to retirement, and is a large, imposing man. Shortly after I’d bought the shop, back in 2001, he came in for a browse. I’d bought a life-size skeleton which I’d planned to suspend from the ceiling (I have no idea why, but it’s still there, playing a violin) and which I had temporarily placed sitting in one of the armchairs by the fire, with a copy of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion in its bony fingers. I heard a howl of laughter from the depths of the shop, and shortly afterwards Jeff appeared and announced, ‘That’s how I want to be found when my time comes.’

Telephone call at 11 a.m. from a woman in Ayr. She has books that she wants me to come and look at next week.

On the news this morning was a story about four men who have been abducted from a bookshop in Hong Kong for disseminating literature critical of the Chinese regime. Bookselling can be a perilous business, but mercifully only financially so in Wigtown.

Amazingly, I found all ten of today’s orders, which is something of a miracle. Most of them were recently listed and came from the collection of a man who brought in four boxes just before Christmas.

My friend Mary, an antique dealer, brought in a box of fishing prints, and a stuffed badger, which I’ve put in the shop with a price tag of £100.

Callum and Petra appeared at lunchtime and asked if I was going to the whisky tasting at 4 p.m. in Beltie Books. I told them that I would see how busy the shop was. At 3:30 the shop had been quiet for an hour, and just as I was considering closing early and going to Andrew’s whisky tasting, about a dozen people in their twenties and thirties came in. They all bought books.

Till Total £136.50

10 Customers