Receipt from the Bookshop #40

vroom vroom, toot toot

Hi folks,

It’s Friday, I’m live from the bookshop and I’m actually meant to be here today. We’re open all day, and ideally, so is the door. Dark clouds gossiping in the distance and a slick breeze from the sea likely means there’ll be a yellow weather warning by lunchtime and I’ll have to swim home, but for now let’s enjoy what we have; hot coffee, an almond croissant and an empty bookshop. Fun fact: Business Mum actually offered me today off because the schools are still off and I have a child to look after but I valiantly declined because a) I’ve been looking after the child all week and actually coming to the silent bookshop is a little bit of a treat for me, and b) I am away myself next week and I couldn’t leave you Receipt-less for a fortnight! That said, there better be some good material today because this meeting these shoes could have been an email slippers.

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First customer is ideal. He’s a regular and often turns up with an elegant plain postcard (off-white, corrugated), pre-printed with his name, address and phone number (black, serif) and on it he writes a list of books, their author and the preferred edition. He says Hello and I say “Have you got a shopping list for me?” and he says “yes I’m one of those awful people” and I say, firmly, “No! No, you are the very best kind of people.” I take today’s card and say “I’ll ring you when we’ve got them.” And off he goes and that folks, is how you do it.

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Next customer needs some presents and is worried he’s going to pick the wrong thing. How can it be wrong? I say. A book is a kindness! A book is a gesture! A book is an invitation! It’s the most perfect gift of all! He selects two of the gorgeous little clothbound editions including an obscure Japanese novel that really enraged a lot of my book club so perhaps, in hindsight, that one might actually be wrong.

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Awwww, a little bookshop
- we’re so cute! feed us!

I’ve missed some drama in the bookshop this week as BM had a ROBBER in the shop. According to BM, the perp (locally known, I’m afraid) wandered into the shop and shouted The Gruffalo, which was shining goldly on the shelf in its new 25th anniversary edition. The robber wandered about looking at things and then BM noticed a book fall from her coat. BM retrieved the book and asked the robber to leave, which she did without aggro. Anyway, lady-thief wandered off up the street and when BM spotted her in the distance, she was waving a golden book around. Of course, when BM went back to check the shelf, The Gruffalo was gone. Anyway, the book that she didn’t successfully get away with was the Animalium Activity Book, so who was the real winner?

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A young girl enters the bookshop, throws her arms in the air and whispers “It’ssss Iris!” which, honestly, is an energy that a lot more of us should bring when we enter retail premises. I’m already excited for my encounter with Iris (It’sss Iris! I can’t believe it’sssss Iris!) but then her mum also enters the bookshop and picks up a book by Jenn Ashworth and goes YESSSS! before revealing herself to be Kerry Clare Canadian! Author! Substacker! (these are a few of my favourite things.) I chat with every member of Kerry’s family about books and then they buy a big stack of them including Sleep Donation (American Gothic edition), Fault Lines (my recommendation), Pablo and Splash, The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels and Little White Lies before heading off to get some lunch at the nearby chippy. Kerry also gives me a copy of her new book, Asking for a Friend, and signs it to me and also recommends this novel, The Husbands, which she’d just read and sounds absolutely brilliant.

In the Venn diagram of people who read these Receipts, and people who have actually been to the bookshop, Kerry is in the very select few of people who knew the shop before the newsletter, and the even more prestigious subset, because she’s comes all the way from Canada. Thanks for visiting us again, Kerry Clare

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Husband comes to the bookshop to bring me some lunch and absentmindedly drinks half of my cup of tea.

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A mournful trumpet plays outside the shop and I casually sprint to the door to see what’s occurring. An aged rocker in a motorbike jacket is looking at the window display of one of our neighbouring shops, trumpet in hand. He plays another few sad notes and then walks off up the hill. This would be thrilling by itself, but the motorbike is parked right outside the bookshop, which means at some point he’s going to come back and ride the motorbike and we’ll all learn the answer the age old question, where do you put your trumpet when you’re riding your motorbike? I can’t wait!!!

In the meantime, this puts me in mind of the joke about the man who went to the Yamaha store to buy a motorbike. After the purchase was complete he said, “Right, I’m off to buy a keyboard now” The sales assistant says “you’re not going to believe this…”

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A customer not called Emily, rings to tell me the book I’ve just sold him is signed by the author, and dedicated to Emily. I’ve given him the wrong one from the customer order shelf - oops! - he’ll bring it back tomorrow and I’ve just got to hope that Emily doesn’t turn up in the meantime…

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A man enters the bookshop and his companion (I think his carer) says “I don’t think this shop is what you think it is, mate.” Anyway, undeterred, the first man walks around the shop for a while, looking at things very carefully. He seems genuinely delighted by everything, and then he leaves. So even if it wasn’t what he thought it was, I think he had a nice time and I’m glad about it.

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OMG OMG OMG the motorbike fired up and it went vRROOmm VrrOOom VRrooomMM and I was like this is it this is it and I ran to the door so fast and it turned out that it wasn’t the trumpet man’s bike after all. Devvo’d.

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We haven’t had a delivery today and I haven’t had any book post this week so there isn’t much to tell you about new book-wise, but I can tell you which books are coming in tomorrow’s delivery that I will be purchasing for myself, and this also let’s BM know which ones to put on my private orders shelf. i.e. don’t sell these ones to any actual customers!!

The Little Book of the Brontes by Sara O’Leary is a must have for me because I cannot, and will not, resist any book illustrated by Briony May Smith. Also, of course I’m partial to families of writers (by the way, my essay this week was all about having writers in the family and I reviewed this book.)

I’ll also be buying the next three Charlie and Mouse books by Laurel Snyder and Emily Hughes. I’ve been waiting for them to publish in paperback so that they’d match the first three books we have at home, but it seems like they’re just not going to, so I’m plumping for the mini hardbacks because the series is too good for us not to complete.

I’ll also need This House of Grief by Helen Garner, as I read The Children’s Bach this week and was sort of floored by it. It isn’t until you read something extraordinary that you realise how ordinary most things are. It’s dynamic. Invigorating! And it made me feel braver as a writer. I need more.

And I want This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things - the new collection of short stories from Naomi Wood - and not just so I can hold the front cover across my face and take a selfie, though I will do that too. I really enjoyed Naomi’s novel Mrs Hemingway, and these short stories sound like my cup of tea (don’t drink that - it’s mine).

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Me: I’m just leaving you to browse, is that ok? Let me know if there’s anything I can help you with.

Customer: Thank you, I’m really enjoying myself!

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Sometimes you go in and you just see what you want.
(They didn’t come in so they didn’t see what they wanted.)

I hear the trumpet again and go to the door, but this time it’s lacklusterly. He’s less interesting to me now he isn’t going to ride off on a motorbike with a trumpet tucked under his arm? gripped against the handle? strapped to his back? Ugh! God I would have liked to see that! Anyway now he’s just swaying outside Starbucks. We’re all sad now, pal.

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Can you believe this is the 40th edition of Receipt from the Bookshop? Where’s my gold foil cover? The 20th edition coincided with my first full year on Substack, and I wrote this silly little interview with myself about it. Twenty receipts on and this month sees my first full year of paid subscriptions. I’m not offering any birthday discounts because it’s already set at the lowest price option, and special offers are manipulative, but if you felt like upgrading your subscription to this newsletter to access the bonus weekly essays, that’d probably make me feel as good as if I had seen that guy riding the motorbike while holding a trumpet. Maybe even better than that.

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As I said, I’m on a wee holiday next week, so there won’t be a Receipt from the bookshop next Friday, but I’ll be back the following week with all the best bits and most boring bits from the bookshop. Any purchases made through the links in this newsletter directly support the bookshop, and you can shop any book with us here. Bye bye for now *zooms off into the distance on a motorbike playing a trumpet*

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