People often have a view that the life of an independent bookseller is an idyllic one, filled with days of flicking through large ancient tomes in the eye of a blazing open fire which casts shadows of merriment across lines of neatly shelved books. They don’t see the reality of hovering around a failing gas heater, trying to avoid dangerous tumbling stacks of paperbacks while posting picture upon picture on social media in a vain attempt to engage new customers.
People may think of being immersed in an ambient sea of Voltaire, Dickens and Tolstoy, a never-ending vista of ideas, emotions and high culture. Not an E-coli-septic swimming pool filled with mouldy jocks, floating turds and weathered copies of 50 shades and the Twilight saga.
A well spoken gent in a cardigan lays a copy of Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward on the counter.
“How much?” he wheezes.
“€2 please.”
“How much?” he shrieks. I guess it was rhetorical question because he carries on before I can cut in. “€2! I can get it for half that price in the charity shop in town.”
“I don’t think €2 is too much to ask for the classic work of a Nobel Prize winner.”
“It says thirty five pence on the sticker!” He’s pointing at an ancient yellow sticker on the cover, probably placed there in the 1970s.
“That's not our price tag.”
“How would I have known that?” he moans.
"Because we use the Euro, not the pound,” I say. “Because it’s obviously been stuck on there for years. Because it wouldn’t even pay to make a thirty five cent sticker in this day and age.”
“I’ll give you a euro for it,” the man says.
Most customers wouldn’t dream of arguing with our low prices. A few even try to give us extra, but you always get one. One complete cu…
Honest Abe arrives around noon with a long gawky looking lad in thick rimmed spectacles. The guy looks like he’s just come out of a famine and been dressed by really vicious Red Cross workers.
“This is my cousin Whittaker,” Abe says, in his most formal tones. “He’s down from Dublin on a day trip.”
Whittaker looks like he’s on a day trip away from a care home. Or Auschwitz. His worm-like head bobs out of his ill-fitting shirt like a damaged snail. He’s squinting at me and I realise, even with his 2 inch thick glasses, he can’t see feck all.
“Whittaker is an enforcer for the Dublin criminal underworld,” Honest Abe whispers. “He’s an unstoppable animal.”
Whittaker is leaning over trying to decipher the wording on my open sign. I can’t help but notice a fresh urine stain on his dangling jeans. It’s spreading out like the plague.
“Whittaker and myself used to play darts with the Viper Foley and the General back in the day, didn’t we Whittaker?”
“How much is this book?” Whittaker asks, grasping for my open sign but seemingly unable to connect with it.
“That’s an open sign, not a book,” I sigh.
“The guards nicknamed Whittaker the Scarlett Pimpernel,” Abe lies.
Whittaker gets down on all fours and starts sniffing the ground. Abe pretends not to notice. They seek him here, they seek him there, they seek him everywhere.
“I tell you one thing, if anyone ever threatens me around here, Whittaker will do them!” Abe says, flashing a sinister grin at me. “He’s killed before.”
Whittaker starts grunting like an emaciated piglet. Is he in heaven, is he hell? That elusive Scarlett Pimpernel.
The Stout Trout arrives shortly afterwards, carrying a picnic basket full of sandwiches, biscuits and a flask of coffee. “Do you know that there’s a man down the road grunting like a pig?” he asks.
“Ah don’t worry, that’s just the Scarlett Pimpernel,” I tell him.
“Ohhh,” he goes, accepting my reply as an obvious explanation. “Do you have any mayonnaise?”
“Ah, no. You know this is a bookshop Trout, right?”
Stout Trout snorts. “How could I forget? Personally, I think you’re wasting your time. Do you know there’s this thing called a kinder now that you can read books off the internet on.”
“A kindle.”
“No, I think it’s a kinder. It’ll put you out of business. I’m worried about you to be honest. I’m worried about your mental health.”
“So am I,” I profess, watching the Stout Trout accidentally knock over yet another shelf of books that I had just restacked.
Mannie the transgendered feminist arrives in the afternoon looking as cross as ever. Mandy believes in three fundamentals: Wearing make up, dressing nicely and showering are forced constructs of the Patriarchy; men are misogynists even when they’re being nice; and other people should always be treated with the utmost disrespect.
“I suppose you have no books by the noted Bulgarian French feminist philosopher Julia Kristeva?” Mannie snaps.
“No, I’m afraid not.” “Of course you don’t,” she chastised.
“Not likely to find any feminist philosophers in a bookshop run by a MAN!”
“Actually I think I have something by Rosa Luxemburg over here,” I tell her.
“I don’t want your communist propaganda, you pretend cuck,” she shouts. “You think I don’t know who Rosa Luxemburg was? You think I need you to mansplain it to me?”
Stout Trout, having become aware of a female voice in the store, comes bursting around the corner like a bull in a China shop, knocking books from every shelf.
“Good day madam,” he purrs, grabbing Mannies hand and squeezing it. “Did I hear you say you were looking for a travel guide to Luxembourg?”
Mannie is, for once, speechless. Her mouth opens but nothing comes out.
“I was in Luxembourg once madam,” Trout continues. “I travelled around Western Europe in a camper van until I got deported from Belgium after an unfortunate break down in language and an incident involving a misplaced waffle.”
“She was looking for books on feminism Trout,” I say.
He lets go of her hand, repulsed, like a vampire in a garlic garden. “Feminism,” he cries. “But they’re all mad.”
“What? How dare you, you chauvinist pig,” Mannie roars. “I’m surrounded by male bloody privilege.”
“Ah come off it Mannie, you’re fifty years old and you’ve only been a transgendered person for the last three,” I say. “You’re on about male privilege to me when you’ve been a man longer than I have!”
Trout carefully watches mannie storm out, whistling sadly. “That lady has issues,” he tells me, pulling a ham sandwich out of his picnic basket and munching on it. A postmodern Yogi Bear. “But she’s got a great figure. Is she married?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I might ask her out the next time I see her, not that she’s likely to come in here again after the cheek you gave her. Another customer gone! Dear oh dear, you don’t have many left now.”
Don’t say it, I silently tell myself. For Godsake, don’t say it.
“To be honest, I think books are finished anyway,” Trout says. “Sure I don’t read at all!”
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