Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Evening and Good Night (delete as appropriate for your personal reading time.) It’s Friday morning and I’m opening the bookshop. We’ve had exactly one day of Spring this week in which I dared to shed my third layer of fleece. It wasn’t even a nice bright day, it was just like standing too close to a thunderstorm, or being on the tube. Muggy and threatening (but without the threat of being mugged). Anyway, I celebrated by having an ice cream, like a true British hero. Today it’s back to grey skies and grey overshirts. Let’s see if any colourful customers come along to brighten up my day…
Big thanks at the top to all my new subscribers and upgraded subscriptions this week, it’s been a bit of a blinder for me and I’m genuinely so grateful to all of you who read and share and support this newsletter. No punchline. I just really mean it.
First customer in is one of our regulars with his lovely carer. He buys a joke book today and then walks around the shop touching the spines in his specific way saying “I just need to do this” which is absolutely fine with me. I chat to his carer about the stupid temperatures this week and he says “I don’t know what weather to dress for” and then as if to prove our point a man walks past the door in sliders and long socks and shorts and a baseball cap and a full-on snow jacket.
Some massive car just gave up on doing a parallel park into a space outside the shop. The space was HUGE! He definitely could have got in it! Maybe I should start a car parking cheerleading service from the pavement, You! Can! Do! It! Just! Keep! Turning! Give me a right turn! Give me a left turn! Keeeeeeep Reversing! Don’t hit that car! clap-clap-clap- I’m nothing to do with this! clap-clap-clap- You were the one driving the car! This! Is! Not! My! Fault! YAAAAYYYY *puts down pom-poms*
There doesn’t seem to be many people around this morning (scared of parallel parking?) so I’ll tell you about my post this week as we drag ourselves towards 11 am aka no you can’t have your lunch yet.
The good people at 4th Estate have sent me the new short story collection from Eley Williams. I love her first collection Attrib. I haven’t read her novel (why? why? I don’t know why!?) but I’m very excited to get stuck into these stories. Actually my second post ever on Substack included a review of Attrib. - you can read that here.
We interrupt this post unpacking for some Customers! Oh no wait, just a couple wanting tickets to the next play that (Show)Business Mum is in.
It’s 11.20, I’ve had a biscuit, but no more sales.
Back to the post. Next mailer has Everyone I Know is Dying by Emily Slapper. I know it’s very easy for us all to feel fed up of these young-messy-adult stories but I don’t think there’s much point in saying we’re fed up with them because you don’t have to read them all and the one you do read might be great? (I reserve the right to write one when I feel like it and y’all have to read it.) Anyway, Emily Slapper is a graduate of my beloved alma mater RHUL which makes me like her instantly even though I’ve never met her or read her or heard of her before I looked at the bio on this proof. I also like the painting on the cover.
Final proof this week is a real whopper. It’s called The God of the Woods and it’s by Liz Moore. It has a hand-drawn map in the front and something about the chapter names is instantly appealing 1. Barbara. 2. Bear. 3. When Lost. 4. Visitors. 5. Found. 6. Survival. 7. Self-Reliance. Consider me intrigued!!
“The sleeves and the legs, I’ll have to shorten them.”
(one of these things sounds easier than the other.)
Two customer collections! One was this and the other was this (pictured).
“GIMME ALL YOUR MONEY!!!” A young man suddenly screams at a woman passing by. She doesn’t break her stride but says “F**k Off, Ben.”
…Yeah, Ben, you twerp, I nearly had a heart attack!
Some grandparents come in looking for a couple of books for their grandson who has fallen into a bit of a rut with reading (football fact books). I send them on their way with the first book in the Dragon Realm series by Katie and Kevin Tsang: Dragon Mountain, plus Ben Miller’s The Boy Who Made the World Disappear (that one because the book’s hero has the same name as the grandson in question!) Anyway we have that conversation about how important it is that children continue to read books and the Grandmother says it ‘gets them off iPlayer’. I assume she means the ipad, but as I only watch quality drama series on iPlayer I suddenly feel a bit more affectionately towards the boy.
Super remote customer sends her mega monthly order (she’s super like a super hero, not super-remote like she lives on a small island or anything). Anyway she sends me her shopping list for May and I manage to process the parcels even though I am now rubbing my hands together like Scrooge McDuck going mwhahah we’re rich, rich, riiiich!!! Incidentally, I read a great article this week from a small publisher about the breakdown of costs in publishing. You can read it here, and if you click one link today let it be this: What does a book cost?
A customer comes in to ask if we close for lunch because she wants to come back in a bit. No, no, I say, we’re open until 5. She enquires about a book in the window and I pass her a couple for her to look at. Another couple come in when I’m stood in the window and want to buy a book token, which I go to load up while the other lady contemplates the two books. Sometimes on the National Book Token service you have to do a two-step authentication to get access to your account, it’s no bother and happens very sporadically, but of course, it happens only when you get the sense that the customer you’re serving is perhaps a little pressed for time. Or you have another customer waiting. This time, I’ve got both, as coming-back-later lady is suddenly ready to pay for her purchases which include both window books and a third surprise book she didn’t know she came in for. Great! Anyway, after hours of no customers, I’m now taking too long to serve two. Both of them are very nice about it and it all works out fine, but it is typical, isn’t it?
A lady comes in to order a cook book specific to her appliance at home. “It’s a Ninja” she says, “Speedy Ninja.” I search for ‘Ninja cookbook’ which I assumed would give me loads of hilariously incorrect search results but disappointingly does actually have a page of results that are for the Ninja appliance. Anyway, I read out all the titles: imagine me saying this, hopefully: “The Ninja Foodi Cookbook. Ninja XL Recipes. Ninja Foodi Air Fryer. Ninja Foodi 2-basket Air Fryer. Complete Air Fryer Ninja. Ultimate Ninja Cookbook. The Big Ninja Cookbook. UK Ninja 2-Basket Air Fryer Cookbook. Ninja Foodi Multi-Cooker Cookbook. Ninja Foodi Grill for Beginners. Ninja Foodie XL Air Oven Complete Cookbook. Ninja Foodi XL Pro Complete Cookbook…." *two hours later* “…666 Easy Delicious Ninja Recipes (weird number to stop at for a Ninja?”
Anyway, it turned out the key word we needed in this lot was Speedy, because that’s the specific appliance the customer has. I google Speedy Ninja book and it turns out there are obviously loads of books for this specific appliance but I was spelling it wrong. It’s ‘Speedi’ with an i, because that’s how Ninjas spell it.
I ordered a Speedi Ninja specific recipe book but I was curious now. I asked the customer what the Speedi Ninja actually did and she said it does everything, but she needs a book because she tried to do carrots and parsnips in it and they had to go straight in the bin. *imagining this scene with slick martial arts editing, close up on the ladies’ eyes, fast carrot chopping cut to Speedi Ninja cut to high pitched shriek, *fighting sound effects* thwack! whoosh! the carrots fly into the bin*
12.50 pm and that’s lunch! BM has left me some treats in the fridge from the local farmers market that runs in town on the first Thursday of the month, which was yesterday because today is Friday*. Yum yum, lucky me. Thanks, Mum!
*this is foreshadowing
I sneak off to the back of the shop and take my first bite just as a voice in the front of the shop says “HELLO!” The lady from the charity that we have a donation tub to has come to swap our container over. This is just a coin collection jar on the till that people put their spare pennies into but it supports a local charity that funds holidays for disabled children and their families across Lancashire. She says they’re funding 32 holidays at the moment so it all really does add up! This box was stolen from our till once by a local thief that I still see walking about the town. Every time I see him I shout “ROBBER!” in my head, or if I’m with BM I say it to her. Anyway, we keep the collection box behind the sneeze guard now.
Eat the rest of my lunch undisturbed, make a cup of tea and pop the radiator on for a quick blast behind the desk. It’s May.
“What it is… well, I’ll just show you” (oh no) “… I’m a local author.”
Long story short, I took a copy of the book and his contact details. He isn’t sure what shelf it should go on. “Spiritual or Travel, perhaps?” I’ll put in local so he can tell his friends we stock it.
Just wanted to show you these Roald Dahl Classics Editions. They’re so chic.
Her: All we need now is a bit of sun!
Him: it’s too late for that now…
Me: (existentially?)
Flurry of customer collections to put some money in the till. One customer stops on the way out to ask me what day it is and even though I am exclusively here on Fridays, it still took me a moment.
Dog on lead tries to enter the shop. Owner pulls it back. Owner’s companion says “does he want a book?” and laughs, but like, what if he does??*
No delivery today which saves me buying all the books I’ve ordered (Patricia Highsmith, obviously) and my daughter wanted a copy of Kate Pankhurst’s Fantastically Great Women Who Changed History because she saw it at school and decided she loved it (*proud of of my fantastically great tiny woman who changed my world*).
A lady comes in to ask if we stock ‘health books’ and I say we don’t have a specific shelf or anything but perhaps I can order something in and she says she needs it today but thank you, anyway the point is that she was wearing a purple jumper and then a rain jacket that was the exact same shade of purple and she had a shopping bag that had flowers that were also her particular purple. I know you could buy a matching jumper and a jacket from the same shop but a knitted jumper and a technical raincoat in the same exact shade seems significant. Anyway, she must feel fantastic when she wears it all at the same time.
Some guy whizzes past on a skateboard really fast and a dog sounds really angry about it, then an old couple in sunglasses laugh their heads off at the silly dog and I bet that dog is so embarrassed. *NB. This actually happened right before the other dog tried to enter the shop that I told you about up there (↑) but I rejigged the order so it wasn’t two dog anecdotes next to each other and now I feel like James Frey.
This doesn’t count as things I’ve heard people say outside the bookshop but I need you to know that I heard one car playing ‘Out Of Your Mind by True Steppers feat. Dane Bowers and Victoria Beckham’ and then another car went by where someone was singing along with their whole soul to Kelly Clarkson’s Since U Been Gone and I’m just sitting here, thinking to myself… what a wonderful… world.
Have a great weekend folks. It’s a Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK which means most schools and doctors surgeries and actually useful places are all closed on Monday but retail workers probably still have to go to work because maybe everyone will get carried away and spend loadsamoneyyy. We will be closed because we will take any excuse to have another day off but you can shop with us online here any day of the week. We appreciate it! If you enjoyed reading this Receipt, share it with your bestie! Thanks.
James Frey 😂 These posts are so good, Katie!
Blimey, that Truesteppers song is a blast from the past. Never a truer word sung/spoken than "This tune's gonna punish you!"