Hello!! When I open the blank draft of a new Receipt each Friday morning, right after I open the front door, I type ‘Hello’ and then I think, I really should find a more fun way to say ‘Hello’ because this newsletter is repetitive at the best of times, and I keep claiming to be a decent writer. Elmore Leonard said never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue, which I 98% agree with, and he had a bunch of other rules about writing that I also generally agree with until I, personally, want to defy them, as is my write right, because as far as I’m concerned, the only real rule in writing is that you make your own rules, but that you make them consciously. Leonard isn’t keen on openings about the weather (this newsletter every bloody week, Elmore!) and he doesn’t like prologues, which could also be this bit before the day’s Receipts get going… so perhaps he wouldn’t enjoy my newsletter, but I think he’d appreciate the days I just say Hello, which like ‘said’ is a lot less embarrassing than the times I try to say it any other way, she guffawed, excruciatingly.
Sun’s shining today, Elmore! Lovely sky blue skies. Vans rumbling down The Crescent, buses shuddering too close to parked cars and pavements. People barking ‘Bookshop!’ into the cold air with their warm breath whenever they pass our window. You know, all that descriptive stuff that might delay us getting the heck on with this. And then suddenly (Elmore hates that word), a customer…
First customer today wants a book token and I get my first opportunity to use the Brand! New! Card! Machine! Now instead of actual buttons to press down, they’re all on a little screen and I can pick the entire thing up to offer to the customer to boop with their card, instead of insisting they angle their wrists strangely through the sneeze guard. One warning from Business Mum on usage - it’s a little bit too easy to accidentally press the power button on the side when you lift the console up from it’s cradle, so by the time you show it to the customer, the whole thing might have switched off. Fantastic. What an upgrade.
Second customer tells me that BM told him the story of how I met Tom Waits once, which is really my story to tell, but never mind. Customer pays cash so the card machine isn’t an issue.
A quick and uneventful picture book sale - a Chris Haughton (perfection, irresistible, tremendous). Card transaction goes through without disaster. 2-0!
A lady in a mobility scooter parks outside the shop and starts gathering a plastic bag up to bring in and I assume it’s more specs for the overseas charity that we collect old glasses for, so I leap up to go and take the bag from her but actually it’s just her shopping that she’s bringing in because she wants to buy a notebook. The next man who comes in actually is bringing a bunch of specs and realises as he hands them over that his own current glasses case is in the mix and retrieves it seamlessly. Imagine if you were at home, looking for your glasses, and then you realised you’d accidentally sent them to Africa.
Soo…. stuff yer!
(Another thing Elmore Leonard hates is regional dialect but sometimes you just have to write what you hear and she didn’t say ‘you’, she said ‘yerrr’)
Even though I was not expecting any deliveries today, two stacks of boxes arrive within a few minutes of each other. I guess I should open them but I feel like staying sat down for a little bit longer. I open my post instead, which is already conveniently located already on my desk, right next to my coffee. One of them (The Book of George) is in a jiffy, and opened in a jiffy, and the other is hermetically sealed into a cardboard envelope as if Heston Blumenthal was about to Sous Vide it himself. I attack with scissors. WAHHHH all is forgiven, it’s the new Curtis Sittenfeld. IT’S THE NEW CURTIS SITTENFELD. IT’S THE NEW CURTINN SITISSFELS. TIS SICURTENFELDENSITS.
My grandma and her friend with the same name arrive fresh from their church coffee morning, with a bag full of cake that I don’t get any of. They’re a bit giddy because BM has won a prize in the monthly draw (again!) and my gran’s friend hasn’t won in years. They’ve only come to say hello on their way to the shops, I hear Gran exclaim! loudly! on her way out that I am ‘such a good looking girl’ which is honestly one of the nicest things she’s never said to me. I haven’t even brushed my hair today.
A regular customer comes into collect his order and he calls me a ‘beautiful soul’ which is a nice way to start a transaction, and I retrieve his book, which says YOU ARE THE HERO across the cover, which I think is a nice way to start a book. Maybe I should start writing little compliments inside books on little slips of branded paper… what are they called? …oh yes, compliment slips. “Thank you for your purchase - you have a beautiful soul.” “Please come again, you’re such a good looking girl.” Can’t see any potential issues with this plan.
HIT THE POWER BUTTON ON THE NEW CONSOLE WHEN I PICKED IT UP, DIDN’T I??? Anyway, turns out it doesn’t immediately power off - it just checks whether you wanted to power off, or if you’re just a clumsy (but good looking, beautiful soul’d) girl.
Hey, you know what would be pointless? If I saved up my Halloween picture book recommendations until Halloween. You need them now! Or like, a fortnight ago. But now is still better than next week. Here are some of my favourite Halloweeny picture books for children lovingly collected for you in this here clickable list.
Shop goes quiet for ages but it’s okay because BM stopped by and chatted for an hour. Then just as she was leaving I sold a Richard Osman (HB, cash) and another giant Taschen Art book to our very best customer (this one didn’t come in a cardboard sleeve, but was shrink-wrapped and very heavy.) This payment was a card transaction and I did whack that power button again as I picked the console up, urgh, c’mon Clapham, get it together!!!
A customer enquires about some Iain M. Banks. She’s looking for a friend who wants to upgrade his current Iain M. Banks paperbacks to Iain M. Banks hardbacks. Which, unfortunately, I can’t supply, because they’re not currently in print in that format. Ah. You can of course get some of the Iain Banks books in hardback, BUT WHAT FAN OF IAIN M. BANKS WOULD WANT THOSE???
No. It’s not a bookshop. (it is.) No. *peering closely into the window* It can’t be. (it is.)
A man comes into collect a copy of David Walliams’ Grandpa’s Great Escape. I’d usually make a snide remark about Walliams, but the fact is that it was a nice Grandpa who was making the purchase and that just warms the snide right out of my heart.
Loyal Book Club member comes in and we have a sly pre-book club discussion about the current book because she’s feeling a bit ‘?!!?!’ about it at the moment and I reassure her that I also feel ‘?!?!!?’ about it, and I’ve finished it! So that’s a discussion I’ll look forward to having at the end of the month with the fifty people that I made purchase it…
1pm. Had a particularly good cup of tea!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Elmore hates exclamation marks)
A customer wants to know if we have any books about Titanic, or other ships, for a seven year old. I order in the DK Eyewitness on Titanic and this very handsome Prestel book on Boats because the subtitle ‘Steamers, Icebreakers and Ghost Ships’ cannot be ignored.
It’s 2.15 pm. I guess the rain is due soon because someone is definitely playing with the dimmer switch in the sky. I have another cup of tea and think about sitting in the armchair. In the same way that hanging washing outside will entice a downpour, sitting in the armchair is sure to summon a customer. The armchair is almost hidden from the front door of the shop, and it’s next to the radiator. This is why BM can’t stay awake when she sits in. I don’t sit in it often; not because I think I’ll fall asleep, but because something about the act of leaping up from it like a startled salmon is really embarrassing and makes me feel as if I should apologise for getting too comfortable while there were no customers. Here’s the armchair.
I’m sitting in it. I feel like Jackson Lamb.
“There are these places that we never see. Because we never walk around here!”
A man comes into drop off some glasses and is tempted into browsing every single bookshelf we have. Ha! I feel like we tricked him. He buys a paperback. Look, these boxes of glasses are genuinely collected by a charity that sends them abroad, but I’m telling you, if you are looking to boost the footfall in your small shop, there would be worse crimes than popping a cardboard box in your window with a ‘we collect old glasses’ label on it…
Town feels like it’s gone to bed already. BM appears again because she’s just had her nails done at the shop round the corner. Her new manicure is sort of light pink with light red speckles, like an eggshell or a crime scene. Then my sister-in-law and niece turn up. Then my husband and my daughter appear and luckily no one who isn’t related to me tries to come in or they’d feel very out of place. This is a family bookshop, for family only.
No more sales today. Time to take the bookwormlet home. I’m sending an order today so BM will have loads of unpacking to do tomorrow to keep her busy, because I’m thoughtful like that. One last piece of writing advice from Elmore Leonard before I go: he says: ‘Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.’ I mean, Elmore, those parts are literally the premise for the entire newsletter… she said, obnoxiously, into the early evening skies, suddenly airforce blue and cool to the cheek!!!!!!!!!!!!!
These posts are a perfect read for the end of a working week, Katie. Your descriptions of the card machine remind me that my first bookshop job was way back when you had a slidey thing that you put the dockets for credit cards into and then you had to pull it across very firmly so that the carbons worked, tear off one copy of the docket for the customer and put the rest of the paperwork into the till. It was a bit like the machines for measuring children's shoe sizes where you slide a metal bar down to their toes. One of the first things I was taught was to fold the card docket and the till receipt for their purchase very neatly in three so that they would fit easily into the customer's wallet. Funny how early training stays with you!
Yay for scarves! Because I always regret a polo neck once I've left the house and spend the rest of the day wrestling its woolly clingyness away from my neck. And another exclamation mark for Elmore! Which old school journalists/typesetters used to call Screamers!