Receipt from the Bookshop #154

Oh, hi. I’ve been sitting in the shop for about twenty minutes, checking some messages on my phone, opening some post, and wandering around looking at the books, all without even telling you every single thing I am doing and thinking! That’s not the deal, is it?! Not on Fridays, when I am here only for you, beloved readers of this newsletter. I’m like Mariah Carey or Michael Bublé, but instead of being defrosted every December, I just crash through your door of your inbox once a week singing my greatest hits ‘we barely sell any books’ and ‘what sort of business is this anyway?’

We’ve had some rain this week, which has been very welcome indeed, except that time I was out on the sand dunes and the wind was whipping it all into my eyes, but today is bright and sunny and the skies are blue and the trees are green and the books are… well, mostly green and blue too, but they’re also ‘life-affirming’ and remarkable’.

Let’s see if we can get rid of some of them, eh?

“We never go in there, do we?”
- A couple walking past. I’m off to a great start.

A man spends a few moments looking at our window, stepping back every now and again to look at our sign, then back into the shop, scowling. He looks entirely unimpressed, completely confused, and possibly slightly offended. After some further consideration, he shrugs, and continues on his way.

A customer who usually brings a dog arrives alone to pick up a small paperback to read on the train, because the book he’s reading at home is too heavy to carry around. He buys a Stephen King novella and even though I can remember his first name, I have a mental block on his surname, so I can’t locate him on BM’s loyalty spreadsheet to give him his points, but then it turns out he isn’t on the list anymore anyway, because BM brutally strikes people off the list every now and again when she thinks they haven’t been in very recently. Of course, sometimes they have and I just haven’t told her they have - she wants me to put a date on the spreadsheet of their last purchase to track this, but we don’t do that for the real regulars, and you never know if a semi-regular is going to up their game and become a regular-regular, or drop down to a hardly-ever, so I never bother putting the dates in because I am an optimist and assume everyone will come back! Anyway, it’s very easy to reinstate the guy onto the list, and I give him his points and he doesn’t know how close he came to oblivion.

Mr and Mrs Lovely are here with their daughter and their new granddaughter who potters around the shop saying things like ‘hug!’ and ‘food!’ and then when herlittle legs get tired she says ‘pram!’ and Granny treats her to a new book, of course!!!

A lady trips into the shop over the step, which is taped in hazard warning stripes to alert people to its existence, but still manages to snap a few sandals throughout the course of the day. The lady says she has bad eyesight anyway. She wants to order a book, that she read sometime ago and suddenly has the urge to re-read, but thinks she has given it to a friend. I get that order placed her and tell her we’ll phone her on Monday to confirm its arrival, and then she says she knows that people order books for themselves online, but that she doesn’t know how to do it. Or rather, she hasn’t tried to do it because she doesn’t know how to do the payment. I tell her that you have to put your card details into the website, and that you have to check that it’s a safe website so I mention Bookshop. Org as a good one, even though, of course, I’d rather she just bought all her books directly from me. “Oh, you can just put your card details in?” she says. She is not nearly as horrified as I thought she might be. “You don’t have to sign up for PayPal?”

“No.” I sigh. Resigning myself to being helpful instead of in-business. I explain to her that it’s very straight forward and easy to do, but gently remind her that online orders incur postage, whereas she can come and pick this book up from us for free. Which she is going to do; we’re still doing the order, and that’s all fine, but I do also understand that this customer might well go on to buy books online and never understand it as a loss to us. You can tell that some people think all books are sold from the one great well of books, and that we’re all paid from it equally, so in buying a book from any outlet, you’re still supporting everyone. This lady does not need a lecture on how to live her life from someone young enough to be her granddaughter, so I won’t go into it. “I’ll ring you on Monday!” I tell her again. “Mind the step.”

Right, I must tell you that included in the post that I opened this morning there was, perhaps, a death threat.

It’s a postcard, a photograph of Grasmere Lake and Helm Crag. On the back it says ‘IN YOUR BEGINNING IS YOUR END’ and there are some co-ordinates, a date and a time.

I text my friend in Grasmere to see if they’ve casually predicted my death and popped it over to me on a postcard, but they have not. The co-ordinates are somewhere in the Orkney Isles, and the date is just far enough in the future for me to completely forget this menacing premonition. Orkney is exactly the sort of place I would go. Is this one of those Final Destination things where my fate is already sealed, even if I were to actively avoid Orkney in 2035, would I find myself there anyway, on the 9th of December, at 8.36 am? Who can say.

And, if this is just some sort of smugly mysterious indecipherable promotion for a book, I’ve got no fucking clue what that book is.

The other post I opened was much better - another lovely hand-written letter from someone who has read my book. I tell you, what’s incredible to me is that the writers are not readers of this Substack, so they don’t know that I’m already talking about this. I know I said the same thing last week, but I am so charmed by, and grateful for, people who read a book they like and then write to the author without the knowledge or hope of being featured in a mildly successful newsletter. This letter came on lovely Pigeon post paper, which pleasingly folds into its own envelope and it makes you feel like a Jane Austen character when you open it up.

My other other post is a couple of books from most excellent M at Daunt Books. Today she’s sent me Bad News by Anjan Sundaram - ‘a heart-racing account of the battle for free speech in modern-day Rwanda.’ ‘it is a story of newspapers being shut down, of the power of surveillance, terror and corruption, and of great courage.’ I’m making an effort to read some things out of my natural comfort zone and this sounds like a book I want to make time for. M always sends her books with very persuasive letters, and I trust her impeccable taste! She’s also sent me something that is very much in my natural comfort zone, my preferred postcode in fact, because this short novel is Danish. A Change of Time by Ida Jessen, translated by Martin Aitken, is a book of diary entries (swoon!) of a doctor’s wife after her husband has died. Daunt describe it as ‘an intimate portrait of a woman rebuilding her identity’ ‘for fans of Solvej Balle, Alice Munro and Elizabeth Strout.’ THAT’S ME!!! Big thanks to M for always sending me the goods, as well as the gifs.

“Isn’t it a nice shop, that!”
”It is a nice shop, that. I’ve been in it before.”
Maybe once was enough to last a lifetime.

The Bookwormlet and The Very Capable Husband stop by to say hello on their way to find Pokémon. I suggest they might find some at the shop that might also sell us some lunch? Gotta catch’em all!

BM is on her way to pick up a parcel for the post office. It’s the copy of Receipts from the Bookshop, as purchased by the exceptionally generous TW to gift to one of my subscribers. The winner in July was Joti, who lives in Argentina, so off it goes all the way to South America! There’ll be another recipient in August. As always, we are incredibly moved by, and grateful for, TW’s plans to buy books for strangers.

Alfie arrives with his aunt and uncle. Alfie is a border terrier, a handsome little chap who is absolutely desperate for tummy tickles. BM obliges and then as soon as she stops, Alfie is like I DON’T THINK I SAID IT WAS TIME TO STOP and jumps up until the rubs resume. Eventually, his uncle takes him outside because otherwise nothing will ever get done, and while his auntie makes a purchase, I glance outside to see Alfie already receiving more fuss from two ladies walking by.

Auntie rolls her eyes, “Babe-magnet.”

Before she left, BM mentioned there was fresh milk in the fridge, so I could have a cup of tea. She didn’t mention that she’d also, for who knows what reason, put a bottle of perfume in there, and an envelope.

“I’m trying to work out what sort of shop this is.”

The pub across the road that plays music that drifts through my door has, genuinely, played Linger by The Cranberries six times today. This is the sixth time today they have played Linger by The Cranberries. I want to make it clear that I'm not exaggerating. I have counted the number of times they have played Linger by The Cranberries, and this is the sixth.

“I don’t want the movie cover. No one wants the movie cover.”

A grown-up daughter and mum are in the bookshop, talking about having book clubs at their work. Both of them have them, but only one has worked out how to do it during work hours (“we have to also invite clients”). Very clever. They think our shop must have been closed last time they were in St. Annes because it is ‘definitely the sort of shop we would have come in!’. Very happy to hear it. They buy Remarkably Bright Creatures, because it doesn’t have the film tie-in cover, even though they both really enjoyed the film.

I forgot to mention last week that my episode of Sarah & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club was now available to listen to. Here it is!

I’m afraid I am closing the shop slightly early today as I’m off to the outdoor theatre at Lytham Hall to see The Three Musketeers. Not really my sort of thing to be honest, theatre, but the Bookwormlet will enjoy it because she’s been watching Dogtanian. “All for one and one for all, muskehounds are always ready!” Obviously it won’t be dogs in the show tonight, but there will also be a picnic so I expect I shall have a very nice time indeed. Hope you have a lovely weekend. I’ll see you next week!