The Diary of a Bookseller

FRIDAY, 11 APRIL

Online orders: 3

Books found: 3

Foodie Friday. Today Nicky brought in two egg custard tarts that she had pillaged from the skip. She had accidentally sat on one of them in her van.

At 11 a. m., as I came downstairs from making a cup of tea, a customer in socks and sandals accosted me and said, ‘I want to talk to you about the price of your copy of The Busconductor Hines. It says it is £65. Surely that can’t be right.’ So I checked online, and ours was indeed the cheapest first edition in a mint jacket available. He tutted and eventually came to the counter with a paperback edition of it priced at £2.50. Last week a similar thing happened involving a copy of Iain M. Banks’s Feersum Endjinn.

During lunch I overheard a group of customers in their early twenties discussing the shop. One of them said it was the ‘coolest shop’ she’d ever been in. Presumably she was referring to the temperature.

As I was locking up the back of the shop, I noticed that there were several large rafts of frogspawn in the pond.

Till total £182.49

19 customers