The Diary of a Bookseller

WEDNESDAY, 4 FEBRUARY 2015

Online orders: 5

Books found: 4

Nicky came in so that I could head up to Edinburgh to look at a private library in the afternoon.

We failed to locate a book about medieval Gothic art that Nicky had listed as being in the India section.

In the afternoon the film crew arrived and we filmed part of the documentary that Ishi is presenting. The shop was funereally silent all day until the moment the crew started filming, at which point customers suddenly started flooding in, asking questions and tripping over cables. One tall, elderly man in a crumpled black suit made a particular nuisance of himself before settling down in front of the fire. As I passed him to put a book in the poetry section, I noticed that he had removed his false teeth and put them on top of a copy of Tony Blair’s autobiography which had been left on the table.

While we were filming, I spotted Nicky grubbing around in a box of books that I had earmarked for the recycling plant in Glasgow. She and I had a discussion about death. Nicky: ‘If I die before Armageddon, my pal George is going to make me a coffin out of an old pallet, put me in the back of my van and dump me in the woods somewhere.’ I told her that I want a Viking ship burial, to which she responded, ‘Ye cannae do that. The only way around it is to have a Romany funeral. You’ll have to build yourself a caravan and set fire to it. Oh, wait, you’ll be dead. You’ll have to get someone else to set fire to it.’

When the old man in the crumpled suit came to the counter to pay for the copy of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, I discreetly pointed out that his fly was open. He glanced down – as if for confirmation of this – then looked back at me and said, ‘A dead bird can’t fall out of its nest’, and left the shop, fly still agape.

Mr Deacon came in at 4 p.m. to order a book, The Princes in the Tower by Alison Weir. His arm is no longer in plaster. Today’s exchange was typically brief and pragmatic until I had a coughing fit as he was on the point of leaving. He said, ‘You have my sympathy, I am ill too.’ Curious to find out what his ailment was, I took the unprecedented step of inquiring, to which he replied, ‘Alzheimer’s. Can’t remember words very well these days.’ Following this rather sad revelation we had the first conversation about his life that we have ever had, other than the announcement that the companions he once brought to the shop were his daughters. He had been a barrister and was finding his inability to find the correct words deeply frustrating.

I left the shop at 4.30 p.m. to go to Edinburgh. As the door swung shut behind me, I turned around to see Nicky sellotaping another of her home-made labels onto the edge of a shelf. It appears that ‘Home Front Novels’ have made an unwelcome return.

Till total £18.50

4 customers