Our evening
commenced with one of our members, an emeritus professor, recounting his
stressful day when he had lost his four-year-old grandchild whilst collecting
his seven-year-old sibling from school. Fortunately, the “lollipop lady” had
found him but our professor had been quite traumatised. Severely rebuked by his
wife, he wished to talk. So we listened sympathetically and after a respectable
time moved on to the evening’s main activity.
The proposer had
chosen this book to give us some light summer reading. It had been recommended
by a friend, as an amusing, short and easy holiday read.
He didn’t know too much about the author, as he
hadn’t found too much about him “on line”. However the book tells us that
he had been brought up in Wigtown, the son of a farmer, had been sent way to
public school. (Interestingly, four of our last five authors have strong
Scottish connections.) Bythell remembered the bookshop opening in the 1980’s
when he was 18 and thinking it wouldn’t survive a year. After attending Trinity
College and leaving without his intended degree in law, he bummed about for a
while, returning to Wigtown in 2001, aged 31, with no definite plans. He
happened to visit the shop looking for a copy of Three Fevers. He confessed to the owner that he was struggling
to find a job he enjoyed. The owner, who was keen to retire, persuaded Shaun to
purchase it for £150,000. He regrets not reading George Orwell’s Bookshop Memories, which dispels the myth that selling second hand
books is not the idyll many people think. Orwell’s comments “many of the people
who came to us were of the kind who would be a nuisance anywhere but have
special opportunities in a bookshop.”
Wigtown, during the
author’s childhood, had been a thriving county town with imposing County
Buildings and a population of under a thousand folk, despite being isolated in
the rural peninsula of the Machars, in southwest Scotland. A creamery and a
whisky distillery had sustained the economy. With their closure around 1990,
the economy of the town suffered greatly. However, in recent years, Wigtown had
reinvented itself, with the establishment of a community of bookshops, small
businesses, the reopening of the distillery and a successful book festival. It
is now known as Scotland’s official Booktown. The Bookshop, the subject of the
diaries, had grown to be the largest second hand bookshop in Scotland with
100,000 books spread over a mile of shelving. A few of the group had visited
Wigtown, the book festival and the writer’s premises. One, having read the
book, was keen to visit.
Those who worked in the shop commented that
customer interactions produced ample material for a book. He started jotting
down incidents as they happened and so his aide memoire became a diary.
The author provides
an insight into the trials and tribulations of the second hand bookselling
business. From his idiosyncratic Jehovah’s Witness assistant, Nicky, to a huge
cast of eccentric customers, his buying trips to old houses and his insight
into the workings of Amazon, the book is full of interest and amusement.
We all enjoyed his facetious, sarcastic and almost
downright rude descriptions of staff and customers. The book, although in diary
format, was easy to dip in and out of. It didn’t have a continuous narrative,
like Arthur Gould Lee’s diary “No
Parachute: A Fighter Pilot in World War I” we had recently read.
The author’s
rudeness worked both ways with him giving as much as he received. He didn’t
suffer fools gladly. Some of our group felt that his discourtesy compared
favourably with the late proprietor of a renowned hostelry in the south of
Edinburgh. Others observed that he seemed less offensive about identifiable
Wigtown locals than he was to anonymous visitors. Perhaps he didn’t wish to
offend too many residents.
He ranked his
customers accordingly:
- The dream customer is the
collector who buys £200 worth of illustrated poetry books.
- A good customer is someone who
buys even a single book without attempting to haggle the price down.
- A bad customer doesn’t buy
anything.
- And a really bad customer gets
their laptop out and shamelessly checks the bookshop’s prices against
those listed on Amazon.
- Then there are the customers who aren’t really customers – those waiting for the chemist up the road to fill their prescription, or for the garage to finish their car’s MOT.
The book is packed
with amusing anecdotes, fascinating characters and insights into the second
hand book business. The proposer’s friend who runs a second-hand furniture and
book business in Kingussie knows many of the regular customers and they are
real!
His Jehovah’s
Witness assistant, Nicky, with a penchant for wearing home-stitched tabards or
a black ski-suit, arriving late, stealing food from skips, sloppily eating her
breakfast whilst driving her car, misfiling books and creating a mess in the
shop, came in for a lot of stick. Despite this, he was totally reliant on her
so that he could go off fishing, swimming and buying books. She was also of
“value beyond measure” with her amusing remarks. When a customer asked if they
had a “rest room” she replied “there’s a comfy seat by the fire if you need a
rest”.
Some of the regular
characters are Bum Bag Dave who carries at least two bum bags and various
beeping electronic devices. Smelly Kelly who reeks of Brut 33 and relentlessly
woos Nicky, Sandy, a pagan and the most tattooed man in Scotland who makes
walking sticks for sale in the shop, and Mr Deacon, who doesn’t wear his well
cut clothes well. “It appears as though someone has loaded his clothes into a
cannon and fired them at him, and however they have landed upon him they have
stuck”. Mrs Philips starts her phone calls with “ I am ninety three years old
and blind, you know.” And of course we have the cats, his own black cat,
“Captain” and a stray cat which was an unwelcome visitor and subsequently “had
had his balls chopped off” by the Cats Protection League, much to his owners
displeasure.
We enjoyed his
brutally honest job reference he wrote for a former employee, Sara, following
her discourteous request. This inevitably led the group to discuss the value of
written references. References seem to be written differently depending on
their country of origin, some being pretty bland whilst others are pretty
frank. Telephone discussions seem more truthful.
One member
questioned his annoyance at customers haggling. But “he’s in the haggling
business”. Others were amazed by the amount of travelling he did.
One of our email
contributors had thoroughly enjoyed the book and its different format. The
portrayal of all the weird and wonderful characters he is surrounded by, both
staff and customers, was most amusing and kept the book ticking along. The
constant fight with online giants, particularly Amazon, gave the book bite and
a bit of anger and it was good to see him kicking back. Witness “The best thing
that could happen to Kindle”. Interestingly, of the six members attending this
evening, only three had read a hard copy of the book. Two had read it on Kindle
and one had listened to it on Audible. No one had shot their Kindle!
One member had considered opening a second hand
bookshop but hadn’t taken it any further. He had also bought a book at a local
Church of Scotland jumble sale “The
Story of O” which he later discovered was all about sexual bondage. He
was intrigued about the reading material of the congregation but felt his
purchase had been excellent value at 10p! Others were less enthusiastic about
running a second hand bookshop. Another found that some books could give off an
unpleasant odour that he didn’t fancy. And yet another argued that he preferred
books for their reading content and not their presentation or value. He didn’t
see the point of having a first edition or a signed copy.
There was
discussion of the author’s concern about his shop’s rating on social media. How
accurate was it? One member had been a regular reviewer on TripAdvisor but had
become sceptical of its value and had stopped contributing. He however felt
that household equipment was now much more reliable thanks to customer feedback
and consumer pressure. Another was concerned about the dominance of Amazon and
had stopped using them, preferring to support local businesses. Another felt
that time was our most valuable resource and Amazon allowed him speedy
searching and purchasing.
Discussion moved
onto the success of book festivals, the tourist invasion of Edinburgh, the
proposal to have a tourist tax and even the shocking suggestion that Scottish
football might move from Hampden to Murrayfield.
As our discussions
drew to a close, our emeritus professor, still reeling from his earlier trauma,
mentioned that on the journey home from the state primary school, the seven
year old saw a sign outside a large educational building saying “Private
School”. What does this mean? The trauma of the day was too much for our
professor “Things will become clearer when you get older…”
Time to depart
after thanking the host for providing some delicious home made brownie cakes.
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