The Diary of a Bookseller

SATURDAY, 1 NOVEMBER

Online orders: 6

Books found: 6

Nicky stayed overnight and opened the shop this morning. When I asked her which was the winning postcard from the competition, she pointed to one that she had obviously written herself. It even had our Royal Mail stamp on it:

‘Cinderella!’ roared the wicked step-mother, splattering the customers in saliva and red hairs, ‘WHY is the stove lit and WHY are those 40 boxes of mouldy books neatly stacked and WHY have you dealt with all the orders efficiently?’ ‘You drive me INSANE! Go and water down the soup and spoon feed cream to the cat.’ ‘AND WHY is all this money in the till?’ ‘No more mouldy trifle for you, wretch.’

I’ve decided to read Andrew McNeillie’s biography of his father, John McNeillie, who wrote The Wigtown Ploughman, a novel published in 1939 whose depiction of the crude standards of sanitation and hygiene in rural Scotland revolutionised social welfare in the country. Andrew and I have been friends since I bought the shop, and I’m curious to see how he writes, and to see what use he made of a letter that his father wrote to one of his readers that I found in a book and gave to him as part of his research material.

Till total £233

15 customers