The Diary of a Bookseller

MONDAY, 3 NOVEMBER

Online orders: 7

Books found: 7

Five orders from AbeBooks, two from Amazon.

One postcard in the mail today: ‘The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters.’ It had a local postmark. Kate the postie dropped off a ticket from Royal Mail telling me that there is an item for which no postage had been paid. It is in the sorting office in Newton Stewart. I will collect it tomorrow.

Callum came in to rebuild the counter area. We are going to incorporate an oak gantry that I bought at a farm sale on the Buccleuch estate about ten years ago. It is intended to form a more substantial barrier to protect me from customers.

A man in his thirties with a luxuriant beard came in and asked if we would be interested in 2,000 books he has in a farmhouse outside Newton Stewart. I said that we would; he will be in touch soon. Just as he left, another customer asked, ‘Do you have a toilet in here?’ I told him that we don’t, but that there’s one in the town hall, just at the end of the square. Customer: ‘Oh, that’s very disappointing. And it’s raining outside.’

Till total £238

15 customers