The Diary of a Bookseller

THURSDAY, 1 MAY

Online orders: 0

Books found: 0

No orders again today and still no word from Monsoon.

Nicky arrived at the shop dressed in her medieval tabard and a pair of trousers so yellow that they had the appearance of the yolk of an egg that has been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. She announced that she is going to supplement her income by turning her van into a mobile DIY shop. She disappeared during her lunch break and turned up later with an enormous piece of fungus that she had cut from a tree near the Martyrs’ Stake, just at the bottom of Wigtown Hill, a hundred yards past the last house in the town. She has decided that it is edible and is most likely Chicken of the Woods. She spent much of the day trying to convince me to eat some. The only thing I’m convinced of is that she is trying to kill me.

Monsoon eventually replied to my email and logged on to our system remotely, and repaired whatever was blocking the orders.

In the middle of the afternoon, as Nicky and I were in the middle of an argument about evolution (we had just reached the usual ‘you might be a monkey but I’m not’ stage), Mr Deacon appeared. He had, apparently, lost his copy of A Gambling Man before he’d finished it and wanted to order another one. The evolution argument resumed as soon as he had left.

Till total £99.50

10 customers