Several years ago, a woman came into the shop in a panic, wanting to buy her husband a present to celebrate his imminent retirement. When she told me that he’d always had an interest in Victorian industrial architecture, I showed her to the railway room, where – to her delight – she discovered a copy of Paul Karau’s Great Western Branch Line Termini, a book about railway stations. Her excitement at discovering this was matched only by her fury two days later when she returned to tell me that her bewildered husband had discovered that the book which the jacket was concealing was actually Helen Kaplan’s The Illustrated Manual of Sex Therapy. I can barely imagine the conversation in which she attempted to explain her gift, but if her torrent of expletives was anything to go by, I don’t think that it went particularly well.
There’s something rather charming about the giggling adolescents – you can hear them as you wander through the shop – desperately stuffing books back on shelves and running off in different directions as you approach them. Their parents – like the rest of us – were guilty of the same offence at that age, and would doubtless turn a blind eye to their offsprings’ curiosity, but children – particularly teenagers – are filled with the terror of being caught smoking, or with pornography, or showing any signs of growing up. They know very well how to fool adults into thinking that they’re pursuing more noble literary pursuits and following their flight from the erotica section when they hear their parents approaching, convincingly arm themselves with books about medieval Scottish church history, the branch line steam railways of Gloucestershire or the pre-Second World War works of Winston Churchill. These are the subjects on which they are now damned to receive books from their parents as Christmas presents for the rest of their lives.
One final group deserving of perhaps the most important mention in the erotica-browsing category is young women. This is the only group whose members don’t run away or try to conceal their reading material, and stands perfectly happily flicking through the section with the same openness as if they were reading The Complete Works of Thomas Carlyle. This is exactly how it should be. There is no shame in reading books from the erotica section, and if old men and teenage boys feel the need to hide the fact that they have an interest in the subject, then perhaps it reflects more on social mores than the content of the literature. Although when you do find women reading books from the erotica section, they often appear to be scrutinising them with a combination of curiosity and disappointment.
I have one regular erotica browser in my shop. He always comes in under the pretence of being interested in antiquarian books, but it never takes long for him to ‘wander’ into the erotica section. He always wears a wide-brimmed hat, of the sort that Crocodile Dundee wore, but I very much doubt that he’s ever seen a crocodile. Sometimes I wish that he had. Recently he’s taken to bringing in boxes of erotica from his own collection to sell, because ‘My daughters don’t want to deal with it when I’m gone.’ I have some sympathy with his daughters, but there is, of course, a difference between erotica and pornography. It can be a pretty blurred boundary, and one that eBay, Amazon and other online portals struggle with, but in his case I would defend him as a genuine collector of erotica. The last box he brought in to sell contained an abridged and illustrated edition of Cleland’s Fanny Hill, dating from about 1780. It was a beautiful book, small, and its contents were clearly not intended to be made obvious from its external appearance. It contained about half-a-dozen hand-coloured copperplate illustrations. Despite the illustrations being salacious by the standards of the time of publication, they seemed almost laughably innocent by what is considered acceptable today – about as erotic as a Werther’s original advert. I can’t remember what I paid him for the two or three boxes he brought in: probably £200. A couple of weeks later another book dealer came into the shop, spotted the abridged Cleland and snapped it up. He clearly had a buyer for it, as he didn’t even bother to argue with my price of £150. I often wonder where these books end up, but I certainly don’t judge the buyers for their interest.
Type two
SPECIES: CUNCTATIO IMPRUDENS (LOITERER WITHOUT INTENT)
I’ve touched on this species in previous books, as with most of the others. They are in the shop for the sole purpose of killing time while they await the fulfilment of a prescription from the pharmacy, or while some sort of repair is being carried out to their car in the garage. They’re stuck with nothing to do, so they decide to spend the hour in a bookshop, where at least they’re out of the rain and can find something interesting to read during the time they’re waiting. Not that they ever buy anything. They’re almost always locals, the downside of which is that they’ll want to waste your time by gossiping about other locals. If they’re waiting for a prescription, their conversation is usually about the medical ailments of the people in front of them in the queue at the chemist’s. Nine times out of ten, this means a discussion about who is about to die, and who has recently died.
My mother adores this kind of chat. She recently appeared in the shop while Ronnie the electrician was in. I’d messaged him several weeks previously about some work I need to have done in the house and he’d replied telling me that he’d been ill. He came to the shop to discuss the work and was in the middle of a lengthy description of his illness, which involved chest pains, breathing difficulties and a rich variety of other physical failings, when my mother called in to say hello. As soon as she heard the words ‘triple heart bypass’ her ears pricked up, and she made Ronnie start again from the beginning, detailing every last element of his condition.
But back to the loiterers without intent: the worst offenders in this species are undoubtedly farmers, particularly unmarried men. These poor creatures lead fairly solitary lives, often on a windswept, damp hillside up to their elbows in the southern end of whatever livestock they’re farming, so human contact is something to be treasured for them. It can be a rare thing. Another consequence of their isolation is that it gives them time to think, so they usually have quite a considerable range of opinions, but no opportunities to share them. A bookshop is the perfect place in which to do this. My friend Sandy is a lovely man who farms a few fields to the south of Wigtown, but when I see him wandering towards the shop, I know that the morning is lost.
Type three
SPECIES: CONIUNX VEXATA (BORED SPOUSE)
This is not a gender-specific species. It never fails to baffle me that someone could be bored in a bookshop, with the possible exception of someone who can’t read, which pretty much excludes all adults. Loath as I am to quote the creator of Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin, it’s hard to argue with his observation that ‘a reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.’ Nevertheless, the bored spouse can be recognised immediately because the first thing they’ll do is find the most comfortable seat in the shop and remain there until their partner has finished browsing, or becomes acutely aware that their waiting spouse’s patience is a finite commodity, and one that is being rapidly exhausted. The mobile phone is a mixed blessing, but since its advent at least bored spouse can play Candy Crush Saga to distract themselves until their partner has satisfied their craving for literature. The signals that the bored spouse has had enough are easily recognised: folded arms, plenty of sighing, frequent checking of their watch. It’s probably not fair to lump them in with loiterers as a genus but they’re certainly not in the shop to buy a book, so I think the classification can remain. Bored spouse is often accompanied by a dog, which provides them with the perfect excuse to harass their other half in the relationship, complaining that the dog is bored. In most cases, the literary spouse will be more concerned about canine ennui than that of their partner, and capitulate after the statutory fifteen minutes of browsing which they’re granted on these rare occasions.
Type four
SPECIES: HOMO QUI LIBRUM SUUM EDIDIT (SELF-PUBLISHED AUTHOR)
The reason for putting this type of person in the category of loiterer is that they�
�re impossible to get rid of until you accede to their demands. The last thing I wish to do is belittle anyone else who has written a book. My own literary endeavours have met with considerable criticism, and it’s not a pleasant experience to read an online review in which a complete stranger makes assumptions about you. Besides which, self-publishing no longer carries the stigma of being ‘vanity’ publishing which it once did, and indeed historically it has opened doors for literary giants such as Marcel Proust: Swann’s Way – the first volume of Remembrance of Things Past – was self-published. Even Beatrix Potter self-published The Tale of Peter Rabbit. But while self-publishing has opened doors for some of literature’s most respected figures, it has also opened the floodgates for huge numbers of literary dwarves, many of whom – in the absence of the marketing power, promotional machinery and distribution networks of a larger publisher – are left with no choice but to take on all of those roles themselves. This largely appears to involve going around bookshops, boring the pants off booksellers who really don’t want to sell anything by anyone who has self-published but who eventually, reluctantly agree to take three copies on spec just to get the author out of the shop. It is a war of attrition in which they are unfairly armed with the ample time and grim determination of retired people who can see their way around your Maginot line of defence in an instant. Their books are inevitably memoirs of their working lives or stories they’ve written for their grandchildren. Nothing appears to bring them more delight than wasting several hours of a bookseller’s time without fear of anything other than a slight dent to their ego if their book is politely rejected. It rarely is, though: attrition has won many wars. They always carry a carbon-copy receipt book, the signing of which feels like waving a white flag and bidding a guilty farewell to the Sudetenland. This is a diary entry from 2 March 2020:
At 4.30 p.m. I came down from the snug (where I’d been catching up on emails) to see if Gillian (the Ginger Menace) was OK. As I approached the counter I could see the back of a woman with long blonde hair in a ponytail talking to her. Gillian’s face looked ashen. My instinct was to return upstairs and abandon her to the obviously unwanted conversation of this woman. There was something intangibly annoying about her very presence, but foolishly I kept going, more from a sense of curiosity than chivalry. The second I arrived at the counter, Gillian took the opportunity to escape. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her move so fast – Usain Bolt would have struggled to keep up with her. This left me to deal with the woman. The first thing I noticed was her strange mid-Atlantic accent, and the fact that she instantly told me that she’d worked for a well-known bank, as though being associated with a company which almost collapsed in 2008 under a cloud of incompetence and greed somehow lent her a degree of credibility. Over the course of the next twenty minutes she talked incessantly, not allowing me a single word. Even now I’m not entirely sure what she was talking about. There was something about the Knights Templar, some fairies and some monks. None of it made a great deal of sense, and she kept saying ‘to cut a long story short’ in the middle of what turned out to be an extremely long, and utterly unintelligible, narrative. At 4.50 I noticed that Gillian had sensed my frustration at being trapped by this extraordinarily dull woman, who, it eventually transpired, had written a book (I think) and seemed to think that we held the key to her finding a publisher. To my delight, Gillian started switching off lights and closing doors. I don’t think either of us was able to conceal our relief when Amanda (her name is now indelibly etched in my mind, in part thanks to the several business cards she left behind) took the hint and left the shop. As soon as she’d gone, Gillian and I exchanged the kind of knowing look that inevitably follows a shared encounter with a narcissist. She told me that she’d been trapped behind the counter by her for half an hour before I came down, and that Amanda had mentioned the bank four times in the first minute, and had spoken at considerable length about how well travelled she was. She’d been to Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Somalia, South Africa …
The icing on the cake when it comes to self-published authors trying to market their books is when they tell you ‘My grand-daughter illustrated it’ and ‘my friends all told me they really enjoyed it’. For most booksellers, the first reaction to this situation is to say, ‘I’ll just go and find the boss’ and then to find the lowest paid member of staff and pass on the unenviable task of explaining that we don’t want to stock their book. In my case, the boss and the lowest-paid member of staff are unfortunately the same person: me. These authors also have a habit of sneaking into bookshops and planting copies of their dreadful books in the most visible places when you’re not looking. Reviews are almost always by immediate family or terrified neighbours who risk boundary wall disputes if they fail to positively endorse the author’s ‘extraordinary tail’ (yes, tail) ‘of a cat’s travels around the garden’.
The only exception to the horror of the self-published author is the local historian. These people have a passion that is matched only by their humility. They usually come into the shop quietly and, with a noble sense of embarrassment, will eventually tell you that they’ve spent several years researching the history of an RAF base in the area, or the names on the headstones of all the local cemeteries, and mumble that they wonder if you might be interested in stocking their book, the answer to which is an emphatic ‘YES’. They have engaged in hard work, research and produced material that future generations will thank them for. Often they’ve spoken to and recorded the words of people who are now dead, and without their efforts vital historical information would have been lost. And not only that: these are books which will sell. Yes, perhaps not in vast numbers, but a print run of 500 copies of a book about the origins of field names of the farms on a local estate will burn off the shelves when it comes out. People are interested in these things. Admittedly only within a small geographical area, but the work of these writers is invaluable.
5
Genus: Senex cum barba (Bearded Pensioner)
This genus includes both males and females, although it tends to be dominated by males (by a whisker). Almost everyone in this genus travels the country in a motor home or a caravan, like a swarm of geriatric locusts, complaining about everything and never buying anything. The top travelling speed is 45 m.p.h. (also favoured by farmers who cruise country roads with piles of dead sheep in the back of their pick-ups), ensuring that everyone else is perpetually late for appointments. Apparently this is the optimal speed for fuel efficiency and, coincidentally, the optimal speed for annoying people who are trying to get to work. The drivers of the motor homes rarely care about other road users because they’re retired and – until they happen to require an emergency blast from a defibrillator – don’t understand why other road users are in ‘such a rush’. They seem to gain particular pleasure from pulling over in scenic country spots overnight, then in the morning depositing the contents of their chemical toilet on the side of the road, moving on ten minutes before rush hour starts so that they can begin their daily routine of holding up miles of traffic once again. The bearded pensioner will – given the opportunity – park their huge, ugly ‘Crusader’ motor home (they all have names like ‘Crusader’ and ‘Marauder’) right in front of your place of business so that they can walk straight in, and obscure it from public view for as long as possible, while buying nothing.
A distant acquaintance whom I’ll call Jan, because that’s her name (thank you, Rikki Fulton for that classic Revd I. M. Jolly line), has a motor home (an Autotrail Scout, apparently), which she drives so slowly that she could be overtaken by a melting glacier. Combine harvesters have been known to honk their horns when stuck behind her on country roads. I’m convinced that she has caused more lost hours of work than anything else – except Covid-19 – in the past ten years. She did ask me to point out, though, that her van doesn’t have a chemical toilet. Like the pope, she shits in the woods. Or is that a bear? I can never remember.
I should also mention at this juncture that both of m
y parents are pensioners, although neither of them has a beard. They do, however, share with some other bearded pensioners a troubled relationship with modern technology. My sister once attempted to show my father how to use his new iPad to find things online. After she’d left, he decided to use his new-found knowledge to search for the cheapest source of gravel with which to resurface their driveway. In his charming innocence, and his first use of Google, he entered the words ‘cheap hardcore’ into the search engine. It took us months to convince him to try using the internet again.
Type one
SPECIES: VESTIMENTIS STRICTIS AMICTUS (LYCRA-CLAD)
Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops Page 4
