The Bookshop Chronicles Part Neen: Cupid is buried in an unmarked grave near Baldwinstown

“Reality doesn’t always give us the life that we desire, but we can always find what we desire between the pages of books.” - Adelise M. Cullens 

Cupid is buried in an unmarked grave in a field beyond Baldwinstown. He was executed by Martin Luther for opposing the Reformation after a vicious knife fight on a burning boat entering Kilmore Quay.

“Where did ya hear this Abe?” I ask him.

He belches loudly, nearly falling off my wall and knocking over his cheap can of larger, and then gives me a look as if to insinuate that I’m the cause of his stomach problems. “It’s common knowledge. All these books you have and still you never knew Cupid was buried a few miles from here!”

A lad comes into the shop looking for a book to give his wife for Valentine's Day. A ‘novel’ gift as he keeps telling me, laughing insanely each time.

“What does she like?”

“Well she loves holidays and she’s fond of cheese.”

“Right. I mean, what sort of books does she like?”

“I haven’t a clue,” he says merrily. “Sure I don’t have time to be reading her books. I’m a busy man. Is that not your job to know what she reads?”

“Well I don’t know your wife in fairness. I have no idea what she reads. Has she ever been in here before?”

He snorts, shaking his head madly. “In here? She wouldn’t be caught dead in this place! She gets all her books new in town. I only came here cause I heard you’re cheaper.”

“Maybe she likes thrillers?”

“I don’t know. She’d like something romantic. Like meself.”

“We could try Nicholas Sparks or maybe Jojo Moynes?”

“Something with a pink cover,” he blurts out. “Women love pink sure.”

I sell him a biography of Herman Goring, with a faded red, almost pink cover. Very romantic.

Stout Trout is broke. He’s spent every penny he has sending Valentine’s Cards to every woman he knows, or knows of. Eighty four Valentine’s Cards sent out in the hope of netting at least one potential partner. Carpet bombing love.

All containing snazzy odes penned when he was high on espresso and pain killers.

Roses are Red, 
Violets are Blue, 
I have arthritis 
but I can still pleasure you! 

“Very touching Trout. How is your arthritis by the way?”

“Arthritis is an aphrodisiac Bookman. Women love the early onset of joint stiffness.”

“Mmm, I think you might be mistaking your joints there.”

“If this doesn’t work, I’m leaving the country,” he tells me. “Do you know how much An Post is charging for stamps these days? It’s a disgrace in the current economic climate and half the country on the dole. No wonder the nurses are on strike.”

“It was your decision to send eighty four cards out Trout.”

“Oh that’s right, take their side. That’s why the hospitals are banjaxed and the nurses are on the verge of armed rebellion. They’re able to keep us all divided.”

“What does your Valentines Day cards have to do with the nurses striking anyway?” I ask.

“Everything! Come here, could you lend me a tenner please? I have a few cards left to send still.”

“Trout, why don’t you just go out to one of these singles night’s and try to meet someone real?”

“Have you seen the women at those things?” he cries. “They’re all slobs. Single grannies with pot bellies and missing teeth and walking frames. Jaysus it’s like going into a red cross tent in a third world country when you walk into those nights. And none of them would bid you the time of day. Ignorant women biased against me because of my good background.”

An elderly lady enters the store towards closing time. “I’m looking for a book,” she says.

“Great, we have a few,” I grin.

She doesn’t even smile. “Do you have the one I want?”

“I’m not sure. What book are you looking for?”

“I actually can’t remember the name,” she says, ever so careful to draw her words out, as if that level of sophistication would make up for not knowing the name of the book she’s looking for.

“Ok, who’s the author?”

“The author?”

“The person who wrote the book.”

“I know what an author is,” she snaps. “I’m not an imbecile.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean….”

“I just can’t remember who wrote this particular book,” she continues. “So you can’t remember who wrote the book or the title?”

“Exactly!”

“So what do you want me to do?” I ask.

“Well, do you have it in stock?”

“What?”

“The book I’m looking for!” she spits.

“But I don’t know what the book is that you are looking for. You don’t know what the book is that you are looking for.”

“Good God, I never had this trouble in Easons.”

“Do you know what the book was about?” I say, growing desperate.

“Of course I don’t. If I knew what it was about, why would I be wanting to read it? You’re bloody dreadful.” She heads out, screaming back that she'll be giving me a zero star rate on Facebook.

Locking up, I spot Honest Abe still sitting on the wall, still drinking cans of cheap beer.

“Did ya get any Valentine’s Cards Abe?”

“Of course I did,” he slurs. “They have to take on extra postmen every year on the fourteenth just to deliver all the cards from my admirers.”

“That’s great. At least you’re humble and wouldn’t go around mouthing about it while you’re on the piss all day on someone else’s wall.”

“The only card you’ll get is from the ESB,” he sniggers, staggering around on the wall but somehow defying gravity to keep his perch. “Looking for money off ya.”

“Good night Abe.”

“Hold on! Did I ever tell you about Cupid being buried in an unmarked grave in Baldwinstown?”

“Good night Abe!”

The Bookshop Chronicles Part Ayght: Black Magic, the Golden Goose and the Book Buddha

“These days, we've got booksellers in cities, in deserts, and in the middle of a rain forest; we've got travelling bookshops, and bookshops underground. We've got bookshops in barns, in caravans and in converted Victorian railway stations. We've even got booksellers selling books in the middle of a war. Are bookshops still relevant? They certainly are. All bookshops are full of stories, and stories want to be heard.” – Jen Campbell 

I find myself leaving the bookshop less and less. Socialising has ended. Holidays are an encumbrance. My body has learned to resist hunger and the need for a bathroom for longer and longer periods.

There’s something very reassuring about being literally surrounded by books. All around me, above me, in front and behind. Cocooned in a nest of literature. Hibernating in a cave of the thoughts, aspirations, phobias and vivid accounts of a hundred thousand scripts. A book womb that sometimes I think perfectly reflects the inside of my head.

But sometimes you have to go outside.

“Can we stop at McDonald’s?” Stout Trout asks again.

“No, we're not stopping again and we're certainly not stopping at Mc-fecking-donalds,” the Book Buddha snaps. “McDonald’s ya know! That place will give you cancer. No wonder you’re so fat Trout.”

“I have a thyroid issue actually,” he sulks. “Look, I need to use the bathroom.”

“Again? Christ man, did you not go before we left? We’re only in the car fifteen minutes.” The Book Buddha’s face has gone red and, though he’s still grinning, I know he’s getting angry.

“I have a very weak bladder.”

“From all the fecking McDonald’s!”

We’re driving up Mount Leinster in search of a cache of books. The Book Buddha, a learned scholar of Irish History and rare literature, has heard an old woman is selling off her dead husbands collection. A collection that the Book Buddha believes may contain the Golden Goose.

“Is this area fairly remote?” Stout Trout asks, looking out the back window and obviously noticing a lack of houses and signage.

“There’s no fecking McDonalds up here anyway Trout,” the Book Buddha grins. “You may go hungry for awhile. Do ya good anyway.”

“I don’t like this Bookman,” Trout says. “Did you ever see that film Deliverance? With the hillbillies and squeal like a pig?”

“We're a couple of miles from Enniscorthy Trout! It’s not the bloody outback or anything.”

“Feels like it. Anyway, do you not have enough books? Why don’t you sell the ones you have before you buy more?”

I’m always amazed by why people who don’t have an interest in books can’t understand a book dealers over-riding compulsion to keep purchasing new stock, even when he's overflowing with books. The simple fact is that customers expect to see new titles and, if they don’t, they’ll move onto another bookshop. Our survival as book sellers is hinged on the anti Maria Kondo philosophy of horde and buy and gather. Kinda like squirrels with ADHD.

We eventually pull into a stone paved yard where an old farm house leans perilously over the edge of the mountain. A frail old hag wrapped all in black is watching us as we try to pry Stout Trout out of the back seat of the Passat.

“It’s my back,” he moans. “And your seats are too low.”

“You’re too fat,” the Book Buddha cries.

“I have a medical condition damn it!”

The old woman in black introduces herself as Mrs Mahon and leads us into the dark depths of her mildew encrusted home. Stout Trout complains quietly as we progress deeper into thick stale air.

“Excuse me ma’am, has this place got public liability insurance? If I fall, I could break my leg. I have brittle bones.”

“You’re too fat,” the Book Buddha sneers.

Mrs Mahon leads us into a room completely enclosed with bookshelves and lit by two old gas lamps. It’s hard to see the book titles and the lamps project grotesque shadows across the room. Stout Trout looks physically Ill as he gazes around.

I look to the Book Buddha and he shrugs. We both know instantly that the Golden Goose isn’t here. The Golden Goose is our Ark of the Covenant. Our Excalibur. A near mythical book find that will make us both instantly rich so that we never have to worry about bills, or the leaking roof in the bookshop, or the Passats NCT or Stout Trouts passive aggressive sexual harassment again.

“They’re all old books anyway,” the Book Buddha murmurs. Old books but not the Golden Goose.

“The Satanic Mass, Black Pullet, the Book of Witchcraft,” I read out from the titles in front of me. “These are all books about….”

“Black magic,” Mrs Mahon says.

“Black magic?” Trout squeals. “as in the chocolates or the occult?”

“As in the use of supernatural forces for ones own selfish desires,” Mrs Mahon sighs. “My late husband and I established a coven up here. We pledged our souls to the dark one in exchange for earthly pleasures and riches while we lived. Now he’s dead and I don’t have much life to live.”

“So how much do ya want for the lot?” the Book Buddha asks suddenly, breaking the silence with no regard for the poor woman’s tragic story. “They’re not worth a whole lot now mind so don’t be asking big money.”

“Do you think you’re husband is down there now?” Trout whispers, theatrically pointing down into the ground.

Mrs Mahon seems to think about this for a moment and then smiles. “No, he’s out back in the garden where I buried him. He was dead you see.”

“Maybe we should go?” I whisper to the Book Buddha.

“Not without doing the deal,” he hisses. “Hey Missus, would you take fifty for the lot?”

“These books contain the collective dark knowledge of a most forbidden art!”

“Sure lads are looking that up online nowadays,” the Book Buddha says. “We're doing you a favour by taking them I reckon.”

“I’m sorry for your troubles ma'am,” Stout Trout says taking the old woman’s hand in his own and kissing it gently. “But you're still a young woman with everything to live for. And a very beautiful woman if I may say so.”

Mrs Mahon smiles and nods gently.

The Book Buddha immediately starts clearing books off the shelves and into cardboard boxes. “I knew we brought that gobshite for a reason.”

It takes nearly two hours to clear the house and load the Passat to the hilt. There’s no golden goose here in the lot but maybe that’s for the best. The real thrill is in the hunt. If we ever found the golden goose, it would probably only kill our love for this life.

Trout emerges from the house covered in lipstick stains, his shirt hanging open. Mrs Mahon waves out the window after him and he blows her a kiss. “Remember,” he says, “You’re still a beautiful woman and a sensual lover.”

“Get in the fecking car,” the Book Buddha roars.

The Bookshop Chronicles Part Zeven: Censorship, gimpsuits and Pooh Bears decadency

“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.” - Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Sodom MacPurity has placed a picket on the bookshop. He’s upset because I barred him for desecrating books in the store. So now he’s marching up and down outside with a placard shouting about blasphemy in literature and communist bookshop owners.

Yesterday I caught Sodom, our local anti imperialist, anti capitalist and anti refugee activist, tipexing out whole sentences in one of my books at the front of the shop.

“What the feck are you at?” I had asked him, brandishing a hardback edition of War and Peace menacingly in my hand.

“I’m removing pro British propaganda from this book,” he had replied. “Before it influences the children in the village and turns them into little West Brits Thatcherites. Not on my watch boy!”

“Ah Jaysus, you’re after destroying that lovely edition of the Jungle book, ya great galoot.”

“Everyone knows Rudyard Kipling was the Goebbels of British colonialism,” Sodom screamed. “And the Jungle Book is a modern day work of Islamic fundamentalist allegory.”

“How can it be a modern day work when it was wrote in the 1890s?”

“If you have any bit of decency in you, you’ll turn a blind eye while I finish amending all of your Kipling’s and Conrad’s.”

“Conrad?” I yelped, pulling a copy of Lord Jim off the shelf. It was covered in tipex marks. Whole sentences eradicated by Sodom MacPurity’s unhinged sense of reality.

“And the others,” he went on. “Rider Haggard, London, Golding, Orwell…”

“Orwell? You can’t tell me you think George Orwell was an imperialist?”

“He was a communist! And a founding member of the New World Order and it’s attempts to wipe out freedom through a combination of feminism, socialism, veganism and Justin Bieber.”

“Oh god,” I muttered. “Any other enduring literary legacies you want to smear in Tipex?”

“AA Milne.”

“The creator of Winnie the Pooh?”

“Absolutely. That bear represents everything that’s decadent in western society. Pooh is a cuckold to the obviously African American Tigger. It’s the blueprint for the great replacement!”

Nobody talks trash about Pooh Bear. That’s when I barred Sodom MacPurity, inadvertently triggering the first boycott in the village since Stout Trout had stopped eating After Eights for ethical reasons.

Now he’s outside, with a handwritten placard which reads; ‘Books can seriously damage your health’. He’s been joined by another young lad with a ponytail, bad acne and a purple turtle neck sweater, who’s harassing passers-by with climate change denial mantras and information about the true nature of the flat earth.

The Legion of Mary, the Anti Austerity Alliance and the Yellow Vests are on the far side of the road, trying to decide whether or not to join the protest. I can hear them growling as they shoulder each other. “Are you joining the protest? If you are, we're not. I’m not protesting with the likes of you.”

“Franz Kafka had carnal relations with a stolen plastic doll,” Sodom is roaring. “James Joyce was a British agent in the second world war. Philip Roth promoted masturbation because he was a member of the elders of Zion.”

Mannie the transgendered feminist arrives in the middle of the protest, dressed in her domantrix costume, leading a frail guy in a black PVC gimp suit on a dog leash. “Don’t worry,” she says when she catches sight of my mouth hanging open. “I’ve come to help you by mounting a counter protest, even though you are a misogynist pig with no understanding of the trials and tribulations faced by discriminated minorities like myself.”

The gimp pulls his mouth zip open. “Hello Bookman,” comes the unmistakable voice of honest Abe.

“Abe, what are ya doing in that gimp suit?”

“It’s not a gimp suit,” Abe sighs. “This a fire retardation suit. I used to wear it when I was fighting forest fires in Australia. The airforce would drop me in front of the flames with nothing but me fire retardation suit, a fire extinguisher and an axe. Many a time I saved thousands of lives with this suit.”

“Quiet slave,” Mannie the transgendered feminist screams, pulling hard on his leash.

“Look it, how exactly are you going to improve this situation?” I ask.

“By mounting a counter protest, you ungrateful prick,” Mannie the transgendered feminist says. “I abhor the censorship of books, except when we’re censoring misogynists and toxic masculinity nuts like Hemingway, Mailer, Bukowski and Kerouac.”

“I like all those writers!”

“My point exactly,” Mannie the transgendered feminist pouts. “But I’ll still save your old fashioned arse because you’re cheaper than Easons.”

Outside Sodom has climbed up onto one of our outdoor bookcases and is roaring at passing cyclists. “Books pervert the human mind! Look at de Sade and DH Lawrence. Look at Nabokov and that witch lover Satanist JK Rowling! Look at Hitler and his final solution.”

“Jaysus, is he blaming the bookshop for the holocaust?” I whisper.

Mannie the transgendered feminist sighs. “Don’t be such an egotist Bookman. He’s not blaming your little shop for the deaths of six million Jews. He’s just blaming it on books in general.”

“I would say being accused of being anti Semitic might damage business Bookman,” Honest Abe grins. “But you’ve already got no customers.” He sniggers harshly until his leash is pulled hard again.

Mannie the transgendered feminist drags Honest Abe outside and, setting up a few feet away from Sodom MacPurity, begins to sing ‘Say it loud – I’m black and I’m proud’. She’s completely out of tune and murdering James Brown’s classic, while Honest Abe flosses behind her, like an elderly gimp version of Baz from the Happy Mondays.

An eerie silence as fallen over Sodom, the Legion of Mary, the AAA and the Yellow Vests as the atrociously mangled words of Brown’s civil liberty track drones out across the village. The only other noises are the grind of Abe’s PVC pants as he gyrates and the unmistakable sound of yellow vests getting sick.

Sodom looks shell-shocked. He quickly approaches Mannie when she finally finishes and attempts to break into an encore with No Doubts ‘Just a girl’ and catches her hand. “Your voice,” he stutters. “It’s like an angels. You’re gorgeous.”

“I know,” Mannie the transgendered feminist says, flicking her hair and tugging hard on Abe’s chain.

“Will we go for a drink?”

“You’re buying though,” she says, letting him lead her down the road to the pub hand in hand, her other hand dragging Abe along behind them.

After awhile the others disperse, clearly distraught that there was no protest. The young lad with the pony tail and bad acne comes into the shop and buys a Nelson Mandela biography.

He’s pleasant enough until I ask for the money. “I can get it cheaper in the charity shop,” he curses.

"There’s no entertainment like this in a charity shop.”

He thinks about this and grudgingly hands over the two euro. “Bloody smut peddler,” he hisses under his breath as he leaves the shop.

The picket ends and I’ve made two euro. I go outside and clean up the Yellow vest vomit.

The Bookshop Chronicles Part Zeese: Maeve Binchy, Cursed Books and cigarette smoking goats

“Where's your church?" “You’re standing in it.” "But this is a bookstore and it's a Friday." "Yes, but you might also choose to see it as a cathedral of the human spirit-a storehouse consecrated to the full spectrum of human experience. Just about every idea we've ever had is in here somewhere. A place containing great thinking is a sacred space.” - A Chosen Faith: An Introduction to Unitarian Universalism

It was never my intention to start selling cursed books. I never planned for it becoming an important sideline business for the shop or imagined that it would get us raided by the Drugs Squad. But it did.

It started when a serene and caring customer offered to do a spiritual cleansing on the bookshop. Familiar as I am with all sorts of scammers coming through the door, I was dubious until that lovely customer, Mrs Blavatsky, said that this was a free service offered to friends.

So she burnt sage and whispered a few sacred words while I watched, hands in pockets, useless. And then she stopped and suddenly snatched a book from a shelf.

“This book shouldn’t be here,” Mrs Blavatsky said softly. “Its nothing to worry about but it doesn’t belong here.”

Now I like reading about the occult and the macabre, but I’m still sceptical. “What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s giving off the wrong energy. Sometimes books can entrap the negativity of a previous owner, either by accident or intentionally.” She smiled and handed me the book. It had a picture of a goat smoking a cigarette on the cover. I honestly didn’t remember picking this book up and with a cover like that, I really should have.  “You’ll be better to get rid of it Bookman.”

That’s about when Harpo turned up, smiling and curious as usual. “What’s going on?” he asked, clocking the book and the smell of sage.

“I need to get rid of this book. It’s cursed.”

“Cursed!” Harpo screamed. I immediately regretted opening my mouth, realising that Harpo had a reputation as a news carrier that would rival the Sunday World.

“Look it Harpo, don’t say anything about this, right?”

“Cursed?” he repeated. “Is the book haunted then?”

“No, there’s no such thing as a haunted book.”

“So just cursed?”

“Yeah. No. I don’t know.”

“Cursed by a witch Bookman?”

“It’s just got bad vibes and we need to get rid of it cause it could be dangerous,” I told him.

“Where will we put it?”

“Just dump it in the bins by the supermarket.”

“But what if it curses them?” Harpo asked, deeply serious.

“Don't be crazy Harpo,” I laughed. “How could a supermarket get cursed?”

That little bit of illegal dumping should have been the end of it. And it was. Until the Canadian arrived in the shop looking to buy a cursed book.

“A what?” I asked him, thinking I had mistaken his accent.

“A cursed book,” he answered. “I'd like to buy one of your cursed books please. I would prefer one with pictures if possible.”

“Pictures?”

“Yes, cursed pictures. Please.”

Harpo had told everyone in the supermarket about our new range of damned books when he went to bin the offending item. Then he had gone on to the Post Office, the two pubs and the café, spreading the news about haunted books like a gossiping version of Typhoid Mary.

The Canadian was very disappointed to learn I didn’t sell cursed books. So were the next five customers. By the time the sixth came in, I had learnt my lesson. Give the customer what they want and get their money.

“Do you have any cursed books?” a small man with a pink panther moustache whispered.

“Cursed books? Why, yes I do.”

The man smiled broadly and looked from side to side, checking for other customers. Or ghosts. “I’ll take two please.”

“Of course,” I said, handing the little man two battered paperbacks.

His smile withered away and died. “These are…. books…that are… cursed?”

“Yes. Two cursed books.”

The little man with the pink panther moustache regarded both books sorrowfully. “This is a Maeve Binchy novel,” he murmured. “And this one is just a German dictionary.”

“No, not just a German dictionary, but the most horribly hexed German dictionary this side of the Rhine.” This seemed to cheer him up slightly.

“And that Maeve Binchy novel. Well that book is possessed by the ghost of a bride who threw herself off a cliff after finding her new husband having an affair with her sister at their wedding reception. She is doomed to inhabit the text of her favourite romantic book for all eternity.”

“Good God,” the little man cried, handing me a crumpled tenner. “I’ll take them both. I suppose you’ll try to warn me now.”

“No, err I mean, yes, with these books comes great responsibility. You shall be the mortal guardian of Maeve Binchy’s haunted masterpiece and the most cursed German dictionary this side of the Rhine.”

He was happy. So were the others. And I was making money.

I started putting Harpo on the bus and sending him off to random villages to spread his viral gossip contagion about my cursed books. Business was booming and never before were so many haunted Maeve Binchy books in circulation.

“This will end badly,” Stout Trout told me, after he had met two English tourists raving about their new haunted edition of Goodnight Mr Tom. “You’re playing with dark forces.”

“It’s only a bit of exaggerated selling Trout. Kinda like when Amazon pretend they actually care about their customers. None of the books are really cursed. Mrs Blavatsky got rid of the only really suspect book in here.”

“Mrs Blavatsky?” Trout asked, his eyebrow rising into his forehead. “Does she have a boyfriend, do ya know? Fine looking woman.”

When I ran out of Maeve Binchy books, a hard job for any Irish second hand bookshop, I started selling cursed Dannielle Steele and Michael Connelly books, and severely haunted Roddy Doyle Novels and demented fifty shades of grey trilogies (three times the spirits for the price of one.)

Then the Ghostbuster turned up and ruined the whole fecking thing.

Honest Abe was severely drunk and carrying an oversized universal remote control for a TV when he staggered into the shop that day, raving about ectoplasm and wraiths. “I hear you have a ghost problem,” he slurred, falling violently up against a bookcase. “I’m afraid of no ghost.”

“What’s that yoke?” I asked him, pointing at the remote control he was waving about the place.

“This? This is a genuine spectre reading metre, 100% guaranteed to show up any ghosts or phantoms hiding in your shop.”

“It looks like a universal remote that you buy in Dealz.”

“It’s a bloody spectre reading metre, ya gobshite,” Honest Abe spat. “It’s the same model used by ghost hunters in the UK. I bought it for €7.99 on eBay.”

“So it must work then sure.”

“Jaysus, you have a high build up of otherworldly activity in the shop Bookman,” Abe bellowed. “I’d say I might need to call in me friend Mad Joe to help us out. Myself and Mad Joe used to hunt pirate ghosts in Dublin Port in the 1980s.”

“There’s no ghosts here, ya mad hoor,” I told him, worried a sane customer might walk through the door. “We're just getting rid of unmoveable stock with this cursed book gimmick.”

“I think I know when a place is haunted Bookman. I have a BA in ghostbusting from the Open University.”

“You have a BA in telling lies.”

“We're going to have to get the parish priest, a three litre bottle of holy water and the menstrual blood of a young hedgehog to smoke out these ghouls,” Abe roared.

That’s when the two Drug Squad officers arrived. They had ran into Harpo in the middle of Taghmon telling locals about haunted books and cigarette smoking goats. The only logical explanation was an acid house so they had come to check over the bookshop Harpo had been raving about.

“You’re just in time,” Abe cried. “Do yas have any proton guns?”

The two officers glanced at one another, at me and then back at Honest Abe. “Proton guns?” “We're going to need at least four proton guns to capture these spooks. The bloody place is infected with them. Just don’t let our streams cross because, if you’ve ever seen the 1984 movie Ghostbusters, you’ll know how bad that can be.”

“What the hells going on in here?” one of the guards gasped. “What do ya think, ya eejit? When there’s something strange in your local Bookshop, who are ya going call? Ghostbusters!”

And that’s how my cursed book business ended as quickly as it had began, and myself, Harpo and Abe ended up in Wexford Circuit Court on suspicion of the manufacturing of cheap LSD out of mouldy bread in the bookshop.

The Bookshop Chronicles Part Veeve: The Bookumati & dodgy Hiace vans

“Printed books usually outlive bookstores and the publishers who brought them out. They sit around, demanding nothing, for decades. That's one of their nicest qualities - their brute persistence.” - Nicholson Baker

It started on a grim Monday morning. A letter arrived, stamped with an ink seal portraying a golden book. Long had I heard the legend of the shadowy bookseller underground, the bookafia conspiracy. The bookumati. The New Book Order. Now they were exposing themselves to me. Like a brazen Peeping Tom.

“What do they want?” Harpo asked me, nibbling on his fingernail and sweating profusely. Harpo too had heard the stories of the bookumati, most of which were exaggerations and down right lies fed to him by myself.

“They’ve summoned me to a secret meeting,” I said.

“In the library.”

“The library? But we don’t go to the library Bookman.”

“Hmmmm, the dastardly bastards.”

A normal man might have ignored the invitation, or replied to it with an expletive or, at the very least, went alone. But I’m not normal, and suffer in equal measure from curiosity and cowardice, so I ended up travelling to that sacred meeting in Stout Trout’s Hiace van, with Harpo sticking his head in from the back frequently to tell us about some unfounded rumour he had read on Facebook.

“BJ from Barney and friends has aids,” he said. “There’s a gofundme account to send him to Nigeria for treatment.”

Stout Trout’s ample stomach was pushed up against the steering wheel as he squinted to see out the dirty windscreen. “I think you’re making a big mistake meeting these book people,” he moaned. “In my professional opinion, these people are delusional and quite possibly violent. They may assault you, physically and sexually.”

“They’re book dealers Trout, not the bloody khmer rouge.”

“You don’t know what they are,” he cried. “Anyone who sends out letters sealed with candle wax is mentally ill.”

Harpo sticks his head back in. “Brexit means the price of Fredo bars will go down. There’s a sliver lining on every cloud.”

The library was closed but a class of elderly computer students were still working away. I mistook them for the bookumati at first. “Are you the fabled secret order of the book sellers?” I asked one old man.

“No, I’m Tom.”

“Right.”

A stern looking library worker, with big eavesdropping ears, pointed me in the direction of a previously unseen staircase, leading down into a basement. I had specifically told Trout and Harpo to wait in the van, but already I could see the trout peeking in the mass windows and waving inappropriately at a group of old ladies.

The staircase was in near darkness, lit only by a single candle at the bottom. As I got closer I realised a bony armed man was holding the candle stick and watching me.

“Welcome to the sacred order of the book sellers,” he said coldly. “You are not permitted to bring any electronic equipment or fried food inside the temple of noble book trade.”

He led me into a cavernous room, where a group of older men sat around an ornate round table. They all wore black ceremonial robes and watched me intently, but said nothing until a fat ginger man stood.

“So you’re the one selling trashy novels for a euro each?”

“I keep the really trashy ones behind the counter,” I grinned. “Especially the ones with pictures. Lots of well read perverts around.”

“You see what I mean Elder,” a tiny bespectacled gentleman sneered. “He has no reverence for the ancient art of book selling. He has dragged our traditions into the gutter.”

“Are you boys some sort of Union? Because I’m really not interested in joining a Union. I prefer the type of socialism where you don’t have to pay an annual subscription.”

“We are not a Union Mr Bookman,” the fat ginger man snapped. “We are the ancient and sacred order of the book sellers. We have existed since the dawn of time, when the first crude tablets of marked stone were passed around to ensure the ethical and professional trade of written information.”

“The bookumati?”

“We have many names. Once we were all powerful, able to topple governments and start wars at the turn of a page, but now we have been driven to near extinction by the twin plagues of chain bookstores and…. Amazon.”

The mention of Amazon sent the other initiated into spasms of pain and screeches. One guy was even rocking from side to side with his eyes closed. A possible victim of a violent kindle assault.

“And now to top it all off,” the fat ginger man continued. “We have you. A gobshite selling books below their worth out of a shed in the middle of nowhere, both devaluing the books and the reputation of the noble book dealer.”

“I see,” I said. I didn’t see but I was starting to think that Stout Trout had been right about the mental state of these people and wasn’t prepared to argue with them. “So what do you want?”

“We want you to join us,” the elder said sternly. “Keep your friends close and your competition even closer,” a haggard looking man said, before collapsing into a fit of senile laughter.

“Is there a subscription?”

“My dear Mr Bookman, we are the ancient and sacred order of the book dealers. A noble tradition passed down from father to son for eons. How dare you compare us to some fly by night scam.”

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

“Apology accepted. Of course, there will be a monthly direct debit donation and an annual tariff, but that is little when you consider the benefits of being indoctrinated into the bookumati.”

“Which are?”

“We have our own bookmarks and a 5% discount at O’ Briens Sandwich Bar.” I decided to leave but found my progress blocked by the ginger elder.

“You can’t just walk away from the Bookumati, you know. We can destroy you.”

Somewhere in the distance, far above us, I heard the unmistakable sound of Stout Trout telling someone that they were very attractive. He was shouting, so obviously pursuing some poor unfortunate. So much for my back up.

“I’ll give you a ring sure,” I told him, side stepping and heading briskly for the stairs.

 “You’ll be back,” the fat ginger elder cried. “You can’t sell books without us. We are the book trade!”

“I’ve got ya on whatsapp,” I shout back. “Under nutters.”

I’d like to say that I made a quick getaway in Stout Trout’s van, and that we could see the bookumati waving their fists at us in the side mirrors, like disgruntled natives in an Indiana Jones film. But we didn’t. Because Trout lost the keys of his Hiace while he was attempting to romance an old age pensioner with extreme varicose veins. (A slow moving target.)

Instead we were on all fours in the library lobby, searching for keys underneath their plush sofa, when the bookumati came up out of the basement. We exchanged pleasantries and one of them even gave the Trout their number.

“They seem nice,” Harpo smiled after they had left and we had finally found Trout’s keys. In his breast pocket. “For a secret society I mean.”

Trout’s van broke down outside the hospital. He blamed the bookumati and claimed they had tampered with his engine. Then he remembered his fuel gauge was broken and we had ran out of diesel. So we walked back to the shop. Very, very slowly.

The Bookshop Chronicles Part Vour: Karmic Sex, Roddy Doyle & the most negative man in the village

“I think bookstore browsing will become more cherished as time goes on because it can't be replicated virtually.” – Chuck Hogan

Harpo has accidentally set up a karmic sex cult. He didn’t set out to establish the villages first karmic sex cult. It just sort of happened.

“Why did you put a ad in the paper looking for people to join a sex cult Harpo?” I ask him.

He slaps the palm of his hand into his shaking head. “Bookman! I didn’t put an ad in to set up a sex cult,” he screams.

I read the advert in the crumbled freepaper again. “WANTED: People who want to get hard. Enjoy yourself with likeminded adults. Plenty of sweat and tears. Keep it up longer.”

“Exactly,” Harpo cries.

“Jaysus, it sounds like an advertisement for a karmic sex cult Harpo.”

He slaps his head again and shrieks so highly that I can’t understand him.

“What?”

“I… was… trying to… set up… a gym club,” he shouts. “Not a sex cult. For heaven’s sake, I am not a pervert Bookman. I just wanted to get fit and then Declan did that thing.”

Seven people turned up at Harpo’s gym club. Two were there for exercise, including himself. The other five were regulars on the South Wexford dogging scene. Harpo tried to start everyone off easy with a bit of light stretching. Then Declan took his trouser off.

“It was terrible Bookman,” Harpo lamented. “He stood there waving it at me man!”

 Jane Smiley once said; “Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.” We have a few customers who come to our store to be temporarily encased in books rather than find new reading material. I think it’s like a body treatment for these people. Where others might go to a spa or take a hike, some people like to spend an hour in the closest thing you’ll get to a cave made entirely of books.

Veruca Dempsey is one of those customers. Sometimes I think we should charge her for the time she spends in the shop, criticising myself and the other customers and carefully avoiding buying anything. I used to think she was a charming lady, until she told me the only thing that could possibly make the bookshop better was if I wasn’t in it.

“I love the smell of old books,” she says theatrically, breathing in the place as if she had just returned to the surface for air. “It’s like you can smell the very culture.”

I nod quietly and try to avoid eye contact, silently thankful that at least Stout Trout isn’t around. Stout has mistakenly come to believe that Veruca Dempsey is in love with him. I think the correct emotion she feels for him lays between disgust and hatred.

“Oh, Roddy Doyle,” she says suddenly, and with the same air you might use to say you had just stepped in cow shit. “I didn’t expect to find him here among the Irish classics but I suppose that’s the fault of the proprietor and not Irish fiction.”

“Roddy Doyle won the Booker prize,” I say.

“Hmmm, so did DBC Pierre, an Australian drug addict descended from pirates and prostitutes,” she sneers. “The Booker Prize always was the poor man’s literary award.”

“I like Roddy Doyle.”

“That’s not saying much Bookman. You told me you liked science fiction, a degenerate genre.”

“Roddy Doyle introduced a lot of Irish adults to the novel,” I protest.

“Yes of course, it’s amazing what fuck and shit can do for a literary career in Ireland.”

Arguing with Veruca Dempsey is pointless. It’s best to sit out her visit in silence. Luckily this trip is cut short when the Trout arrives outside. Veruca hears him shouting at a passing car and quickly makes her exit.

“Oh hello my dear,” Trout begins as Veruca Dempsey rushes past him. “What’s up with her?”

I shrug, pleased to have gotten rid of Veruca in such a pleasant fashion.

“You know, I think that lady has a thing for me,” Trout smiles. “I’m very good at recognising the subtle hints. I used to work in the psychology field and, if it taught me anything, it taught me how to recognise a woman who was clearly in love with me.”

“Congratulations Trout.”

Trout smiles and rocks back to forth on his heels, a fair feat for a man of his girth. “I’ll invite you to the wedding. By the way, do you have hot water bottles for sale? Mine burst you see.”

“No Trout, as I keep telling you, this is a bookshop.”

“Some bookshops sell hot water bottles I’m sure,” he says. “You’d be a lot better off financially if you did sell hot water bottles. I would have been one sale there today. I think your missing out on a very important business opportunity to be honest.”

The Most Negative Man in the Village arrives five minutes before I’m due to close. Stout Trout has dozed off in an old wicker chair half full of mills&boons. The Most Negative Man in the Village watches him intently for a few seconds and then mutters something I can’t catch under his breath.

“How’s things?” I ask, hoping he’ll be less negative than usual.

“Terrible,” he moans. “The country is shagged. I had to replace the two front tyres this morning. €120. The little one has measles. Maybe she’ll die knowing the HSE. I haven’t been paid in two weeks because the boss thinks I stole the petty cash box.”

“Did ya?”

“I did but I had no choice with the cost of living in this poxy country. I say you’re selling nothing are you?”

“I’m getting by,” I say, trying to remain cheerful.

“I say you’re suffering. You’ll be bankrupt by the end of the year.  I hear books will be extinct in a few years. If I was you, I’d jump in the canal.”

“Ah now…”

“I know, I know. There’s not a bloody enough water in it to kill yourself because of those fecking farmers dumping shite into the river and blocking it up.”

Harpo has turned up in the middle of this rant and, unable to control his inquisitiveness, has to enter the conversation. “Are you in trouble with money Bookman?”

“Of course he bloody is,” the Most Negative Man in the Village cries. “The man is barely hanging on. Anyway, I hear you’re a pervert now setting up tantric sex cults.”

“I am not a pervert,” Harpo screams, striking his forehead so hard with the palm of his hand that he falls back over onto the sleeping Trout.
“Oh Veruca,” he mutters, still sleeping and drooling all over my mills&boons.

The Most Negative Man in the Village looks at me sadly. “The whole place is shagged Bookman!”

Of Human Bondage

“Given a good pitch and the right amount of capital, any educated person ought to be able to make a small secure living out of a bookshop. Unless one goes in for ‘rare’ books it is not a difficult trade to learn, and you start at a great advantage if you know anything about the insides of books. (Most booksellers don't.) Also it is a humane trade which is not capable of being vulgarised beyond a certain point.” – George Orwell

 Someone has set up a fake facebook page claiming that I’m a Muslim Communist because I advertised a copy of the Koran and the Communist Manifesto for sale on adverts.ie. I’ve also advertised copies of the Karma Sutra but the trolls have made no comment on that. Maybe I could be a sexy Communist Muslim? Or an Islamic sex guru with an interest in socialism?

I suspect Sodom MacPurity is behind the page. Sodom is one of my customers and a self proclaimed revolutionary republican, woken thinker, urban guerrilla, anti-establishment, anti-leftist, anti-migrant, anti-politics activist with delusions of grandeur and a lifelong hidden disability that makes work or any voluntary labour impossible. He regularly visits my shop to barter over old Ayn Rand paperbacks which he rarely actually buys, and to tell me of some perceived slight that the government has committed against him.

“I hear you’re a Muslim now,” Harpo tells me when I arrive to open the shop. “It was on Facebook.”

“Must be true then.”

Harpo’s hands are blue and I realise he’s been waiting for sometime for me to arrive. “Why did you try selling that book on terrorism anyway?”

“The Koran is not a book on terrorism Harpo,” I say. “And I’ll sell any book I get my hands on. I don’t believe in censorship. You’ve seen me sell Mein Kamp before.”

“Oh is that the old Sci-Fi one you showed me last week?”

“You’re not far off.  It is an outlandish unbelievable story."

“Who do you think would win in a fight, Osama Bin Laden or Batman?” Harpo is a comic book fanatic who has taken much of his solid ethics from the pages of Marvel and DC.

 “Well Bin Laden is dead so…. But Batman is a fictional character. It’s a tough one.”

This seems to delight Harpo. “Yeah, it is, but Batman always wins because he’s the good guy.”

Sodom MacPurity turns up unexpectedly in the afternoon, wearing his trademark baseball cap decorated with badges of dead IRA men, radical slogans, Chelsea football club pins and a Make America Great button that he ordered off eBay. “I just wanted to warn you that some vicious individual has posted your picture on a Facebook page called Communist Islamic Collaborators,” he says, like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. “Thought you should know.”

 “That’s nice of you Sodom.” He nods. “Although, to be honest, I don’t like mixing with traitors.”

“Oh right, well maybe you shouldn’t have come in here then. Your lovely badges might get smudged in this cesspit.”

“Maybe, but I know you’re just one of the uneducated sheeple,” he says softly. “Any Rand books in?”

“No,” I lie.

“Makes sense I suppose,” he says, moving towards the door. “Since you’re an Islamic Communist.”

“There’s no such thing as an Islamic Communist,” I shout after him. “It’s an oxymoron. Like disability for the able bodied.”

When George Orwell wrote his famous bookshop memories, an essay on his time working in a second hand bookshop, he couldn’t possibly have perceived the threats that would face our section of the book industry in the early twenty first century. Amazon, e-books and giant chain stores like Easons, where accountants decide what goes out on the shelves, have radically changed the nature of book selling forever.

Orwell was also wrong about the humane totality of bookshops. Book selling has become cut throat and removed from the chivalrous ideals of past ages. The trade is being completely vulgarised, although I can’t decide if this is been carried out by the online monsters and the chain store giants, or by the likes of me!

Harpo turns up wearing a Zorro mask and a cape in the afternoon. Offering no explanation, he casually browses the fantasy section and freaks out two elderly customers.

“Harpo, what are you wearing?”

“Uuuhh? This?” he asks, pointing at the mask. “Its just an idea I have. I think this village needs a superhero.”

“Ok I suppose. Is this about that dog that keeps shitting outside your front door?”

Harpo slaps his head with the palm of his hand. “Noooo Bookman, it’s not the dog. The dog is just mean but you don’t need a superhero to deal with him. It’s about that page they set up about you.”

I’m touched, as always, by the genuine kindness in Harpos little heart. Until he accidentally knocks over a shelf of vampire romances.

“Trolls are sad little incels sitting in their underpants fantasising about other people’s lives,” I say.

Harpo starts laughing uncontrollably. “You think the trolls are jealous of you?” he sniggers and throws his eyes around the shop. “Selling second hand books in a converted cowshed?”

“Feck off Harpo.”

I’m closing the shop up when Stout Trout steps off the bus across the road. He approaches me with haste, like a man in need of urgent attention. “Do you have a battery for a car?”

“No,” I say. “I’ve told you before Trout, this is a bookshop.”

“Well I think you’d be better off selling car batteries to be totally honest,” he sulks, before heading off into the night.

Humane trade? Humane killer required more like.