The Diary of a Bookseller

SATURDAY, 11 OCTOBER

Online orders: 2

Books found: 2

Nicky was in today, so I went to the river with my father in the morning. He caught a 12lb salmon; I blanked. We were fishing a pool called Wilson’s, on the top beat of the river – the pool in which I caught my first salmon (under my father’s watchful eye). It was 9lb, caught on 9 September, and I was nine years old. If I believed in luck, I suppose that nine ought to be my lucky number.

I returned to the shop at lunchtime and gave Nicky a break, during which a customer came to the counter and announced, ‘I don’t want to appear rude, but your railway section is mainly pot-boiler coffee-table-type books, and I am looking for something very specific blah blah blah …’ He continued in this vein for a couple of minutes before getting to the point and telling me the title of the book he was looking for, by which time I was incandescent and his wife was cringing and mouthing ‘sorry’ at me from behind him.

Within a minute of being told the title I had located a copy of the book, at which point he decided that he didn’t actually want it after all.

Prefacing a sentence with ‘I don’t want to appear rude, but …’ flags up the same alarm bells as ‘I am not racist, but …’ It’s quite simple: if you don’t want to appear rude, don’t be rude. If you’re not a racist, don’t behave like a racist.

Till total £312.30

22 customers