The Diary of a Bookseller

MONDAY, 24 NOVEMBER

Online orders: 5

Books found: 4

Yesterday I had the slightly unsettling experience of waking up after a lie-in, going downstairs to the kitchen, making myself a cup of tea and wandering into the sitting room with my dressing gown a-flap to encounter the window cleaner staring into the room from his ladder. I beat a hasty retreat. Neither of us spoke of it this morning when he dropped in to collect his £5.

A customer came to the counter with a book on Scottish history, leather-bound, dated 1817. He pointed at a price marked in pencil on the endpaper of £1.50, which was clearly not our price. I checked on our database and we had it priced at £75, and our copy was the cheapest online. I told him that there was no way he could have it for £1.50, and he stormed out. Nicky later told me that she had seen him writing something in a book in the shop and suspected that he had removed our sticker and written the price in himself. Years ago there was a notorious book dealer who would regularly trawl the bookshops of Wigtown, waiting until he saw a fresh face at the counter – someone who he suspected knew less than he did – and erase pencil prices in rare books and reduce them to steal himself a bargain. As far as I know, he is now dead.

The last customers of the day – a young couple who bought a few sci-fi titles – told me that they spend their holidays visiting second-hand bookshops all over the UK. A glimmer of hope still flickers for us.

Till total £78

7 customers