The Diary of a Bookseller

THURSDAY, 30 OCTOBER

Online orders: 6

Books found: 4

Today’s post brought four more anonymous postcards, including one quoting from The Meaning of Liff, a book in which Douglas Adams and John Lloyd took an assortment of British place-names and ascribed them meanings, as though in a dictionary. One of the postcards today read: ‘Moranjie (adj.) Faintly nervous that a particular post box “won’t work” when posting an important letter.’ But I think my favourite definition in The Meaning of Liff is ‘Mavis Enderby (n.) The almost-completely-forgotten girlfriend from your distant past for whom your wife has a completely irrational jealousy and hatred.’

Shortly after I had opened the shop, a family of five came in. The father – wearing a baseball cap and drinking a can of Tizer – wandered about muttering ‘ferret books’ repeatedly to himself. I had no idea it was still possible to buy Tizer.

At about 1 p.m., as I was sitting at the counter chatting to Eva, a large man came into the room from the back of the shop with his wife and headed towards the front door. As they were leaving, the wife asked him, ‘Are you going to buy anything?’, to which he replied, ‘No, I haven’t seen anything I like.’ Eva stared at me in open-mouthed disbelief, then told me that he had been sitting in the armchair by the fire since 10 a.m. working his way through a large pile of books that he had accumulated. Needless to say, he hadn’t bothered putting any of them back on the shelves, a task that Eva and I split evenly once he had left.

Eva’s mother emailed this morning asking if she could come home tonight because they are unexpectedly going away for a few days, so I telephoned Flo and asked if she could cover the shop for the afternoon – her first time locking up. Amazingly, she didn’t make a mess of it. I drove Eva to Dumfries in time to catch the 5.58 p.m. train. Sad to see her leave; she was splendid company to have in the house as the winter draws in and I am left alone with the cat.

Till total £292.99

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