November: What I Read, What I'm Reading

How the hell is it December already?  Not that it feels like it, because despite the Channel 5 movie marathons and Christmas readalongs and Instagrammed decorations, there's still a whole lot of real life left between now and the 25th.  Give it another week, and POSSIBLY I'll be ready to watch or read something borderline seasonal, we'll see.

So, last month's reading.  Despite taking part in two separate readathons (the 24 in 48 readathon and Tika's minithon), I actually didn't read very much at all, especially over the last week or two.  Not that it was a bad thing, I've just been doing other things - like exploring going back into higher education, completing a couple of fairly heavy-duty job applications, helping my mum with a Forth Bridge-esque 5-coat paint job on our panelled hallway, blitzing my overloaded laptop, watching Criminal Minds (my new favourite thing) and stalking Amazon for Black Friday Week Christmas present deals.  Here's what I DID finish:
 

 

~ What I Read ~

 

Beloved

by Toni Morrison
This was my first Toni Morrison, and it managed to be both everything I expected and nothing like I expected...  It's the story of Sethe, a runaway slave living in Ohio, who many years ago killed her small daughter to prevent her being taken away by a posse of men from her former plantation.  It's about how her actions have reverberated down the years, and about how slavery penetrated every part of society.  There is a pervasive feeling of fear and oppression that seeps under the skin of the reader and refuses to leave.  This is also, however, a ghost story, a feat of magical realism slightly akin to Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child - and that I WASN'T expecting.  I'm still not entirely sure what was going on with Beloved and Sethe, and I'm not entirely sure I liked it as a plot device (especially the stream-of-consciousness weirdness near the end)...  but there we go.  As a whole the book was beautifully written, brutal and evocative, and I think that even when the content, the storyline itself, has left my memory, the FEELING of reading it will linger.  An interesting reading experience - 3.5 stars.


The Dead-Tossed Waves (TFoHaT 2)
by Carrie Ryan
Another novel that wasn't quite what I expected!  (That seems to be becoming a running theme of late...)  I really didn't like the first book (The Forest of Hands and Teeth) when I read it back in August, but I took a gamble on this one because my main problem was with the unbearably selfish protagonist and I knew the viewpoint for this novel shifted to a new character.  From her name - Gabry - I thought it would be a kind of prequel from the perspective of the girl-turned-Breaker in the first book, but it's actually not.  Instead we've jumped forward a generation - and Gabry's story is SO MUCH more enjoyable to read than Mary's.  There's another love triangle (bleurgh), and the pervading bleakness remains, but the overall plot is more interesting and I actually found I preferred the way Ryan concentrates on looking forward instead of returning to answer questions from the first book.  After all, the characters can't get answers from the past because the past is literally dead - so why should we dwell on it too much as readers?  I think I'll see this series through now, find out what happens to these characters and their battle against the Mudo in the end!  3 stars.


Relish: My Life in the Kitchen
by Lucy Knisley
A super-fun graphic memoir that seems to be doing the rounds at the moment.  I'd heard of Lucy Knisley, but had never visited her website or anything like that.  I will probably drop by more often now, because this book was so cute.  It's pretty much a series of comics about different elements of growing up as a food-loving individual in a household devoted to it (her mother is/was a caterer and her father a keen appreciator of good cuisine).  There are vignettes on craving garlic mushrooms and discovering the world' most amazing croissants in Venice.  She talks about following in her mother's footsteps as a student, and about the comforting power of cookies.  It's all done in a simple, charming and amusing style, interspersed with recipes that sound amazing.  Loved it - I'll definitely be reading more of her books!  4 stars.


The Unknown Unknown
by Mark Forsyth
This tiny pamphlet is this year's Independent Booksellers Week essay.  I missed last year's by Ann Patchett, and had to go looking for this one on AbeBooks because there was nowhere else for me to get it locally, but it's so good!  It's all about the idea that bookshops can lead you to books you never even knew you wanted to read, and that such serendipitous discoveries are actually quite important - not to mention FUN.  I've never read Mark Forsyth before, but his style is clever and amusing, with plenty of pop culture references and some interesting thoughts on book buying culture.  It's under 25 pages, £1.99 in-store and only takes a few minutes to read - so if you see one still sitting around on a bookshop counter, do pick it up!  4.5 stars, it's such a lovely little thing for a reader to be able to return to every so often.


~ What I'm Reading ~

  

At this moment I'm ACTIVELY reading three different books: The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, Harry, A History by Melissa Anelli (a history of the Harry Potter fandom) and Project X by Jim Shepard (a novella about a pair of would-be school shooters).  I've also got two collections that I'm still dipping in and out of: poetry in the form of Charles Bukowski's The Pleasures of Damned, and columns in the form of Charlie Brooker's Dawn of the Dumb.

 

Aaaaand that was my November!

 

REVIEW: Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs - The Left Bank World of Shakespeare and Co, by Jeremy Mercer (5*)

Alternative title - Time was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare and Co.
by Jeremy Mercer (Phoenix, 2006)

"Two months before I'd had a high-profile job with an enviable salary, a sleek black German sedan on lease, an apartment in a fashionable downtown neighbourhood, and a collection of not-so-inexpensive shirts and jackets hanging in the closet.  Now, there were a few hundred dollars in my pocket, no job or prospect thereof, some clothes jammed into an old handbag, and a bed in a tattered bookstore to call home.  All things considered, I couldn't have been happier."

As most of my regular readers will know (because I've mentioned it so many times!), this book and I have been good friends for many years now.  I bought it from the bookshop on my university campus and this month has marked my third reading.  The first time I read it, I fell in love.  The second time, I looked for inspiration.  The third time, I found both.  This is, I suppose, the story of our friendship!

My first reading...

I was still at university (I think) and fell utterly in love with Mercer's world of bohemians and books.  My review on LibraryThing went like this:

"On the run from an unfortunate mistake in his Canadian life as a crime journalist, Jeremy Mercer heads to Paris to escape for a while.  Caught in a rainstorm near Notre-Dame one afternoon, he spots a welcoming light across the river and thus stumbles inadvertently on the Shakespeare and Company bookshop.  Invited upstairs for tea by the beautiful woman behind the desk, wandering the labyrinth of books and beds, he soon realises that this is no ordinary bookshop and, as a poor writer, is invited to join the ranks of lost souls inhabiting the book-lined rooms.

So begins his whimsical and quintessentially bohemian stay, under the watchful eye of eccentric owner George Whitman (surely the star of the book, with his fascinating life and Communist ideals), who renamed his unique store after the original literary oasis, run by his good friend Sylvia Beach, which was forced to close down during the Second World War.  Here all are welcome to browse and lose themselves in their reading; tea is offered on a Sunday; eclectic readings take place in the library; literary and political opinions are argued out – and those in need of a bed will find one amongst the books in return for a few hours helping around the shop and in the kitchen.

Mercer deliciously evokes days trawling the scattered tomes, nights spent storytelling by the Seine, tourists attracted by the store’s reputation, wanderers attracted by Whitman’s generosity, showering in the public washhouses, scrounging leftover food to get by: in short, a poor life, without good facilities or scope for wastage of any kind, but a happy, lively life nonetheless.  The characters moving through Whitman’s utopia are many and varied, yet he remains, a kind of rock in the tides of time and tourism, as the chaos of youthful dreams and books and wine whirls around him. 

Of course, eventually reality bites for Mercer and it’s time to move on – but his journey is magical and the lessons of the bookstore honest.  Now I have Sylvia Beach’s own book 'Shakespeare and Company’ to read, and I recommend the documentary ‘Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man’, made towards the end of Mercer’s time in Paris and readily available online.  Still not sure whether to read it?  Try searching online for photos of the store in all its glory – if that doesn’t persuade you, nothing will!"


My second reading...

The second time I read the book, two years later, I was on the cusp of opening my bookshop.  Since then I'd seen the documentary I mentioned at least twice - it became one of my go-to methods for getting out of a reading slump or inspiring me to read more each day - and seen lots of pictures and amateur YouTube footage of the shop, and I felt like I was going into the book with a more rounded feel for the world George Whitman had created for himself, his writers and the daily flood of visitors.

This time around, I wasn't just looking for a bookish good read - I was also looking for bookshop inspiration.  Thanks to George and to Mercer's book, I understood that books are, ironically, only a small part of running a bookshop.  While we wouldn't have the space and the right kind of customers to create anything like George's vision, I tried to adapt some of the elements of the atmosphere I'd fallen in love with through Mercer's account into workable parts of our own shop.  We tried to pour ourselves into our surroundings and make our shop a friendly and idiosyncratic place to be.

We didn't have a mirror covered in letters and cards - but we had a humble pinboard with pictures, interesting things we found tucked in books, recommendations and bestseller lists.  We didn't have a shop cat - but we did have a tiny mouse that liked to sit in our bird feeder, much to the bemusement of the tourists.  We didn't have beds amongst the bookshelves - but we had comfortable chairs where regulars would sit chatting about books and their lives (or sleeping, in one case).  Because it was OUR shop, and we had the flexibility of mostly selling second-hand books, I wasn't afraid to sometimes make personal decisions instead of business ones, waiving a few pennies for a kid whose pocket money wouldn't quite stretch to a book they wanted, slipping in a freebie for a teenager who was eagerly collecting Star Trek novels, or helping out a practically-homeless woman who would 'buy' a book for a fraction of the marked price on the understanding that she'd bring it back when she was finished with it.  In the back of my mind, there was always the question, "What would George do?"  I still hadn't visited Shakespeare and Company, thanks in part to the agoraphobia that crippled me right at the time when a Paris trip would have been ideal - after uni, before work - but it was always in my mind, thanks to Jeremy Mercer and his magical book.


My third reading...

And so we come to 2014.  After four and a half years of trading as a mother-daughter business, in a bookshop that had become our second home, we sold up and moved on around the New Year.  Neither of us have been back to see what it looks like now - it would be like going back to your old house to see what the new owners have done with it - and it already feels like a distant memory, thanks in part to the crippling depression that's driven such a huge wedge between me and the rest of the world of late.

As far as rereading this book goes, it means I've finally read it as a whole, in a lot of ways.  The first time, I was reading it as a magical vision of bookish possibility; the second time, I was reading it and feeling inspired in my own business; the third time, I've been able to just read it for itself, feeling greater familiarity with the world Mercer was immersed in and a greater appreciation for the negative aspects of life at the bookshop - the thieves, the poverty - as well as the amazing ones.  I can also now place the timeline of the book compared to the documentary, which was made after Mercer left the shop but while he was still in Paris, the summer that George's teenage daughter Sylvia returned from England to live with him for a few months; some of Mercer's friends at the bookstore appear in the film, and so does he, briefly!  I can now appreciate how close George and Jeremy became over the years, and the role he played in bringing Sylvia back to Paris.  At the time he stayed in the store, George could only dream that one day Sylvia might come home and carry on the family business in his place, so it warmed my heart to know that his dream came true.  Without her permanent return to the shop, where she quickly took over as manageress, the bookshop might have been lost when George died just before Christmas 2011.  I only wish that I'd made it to Paris while he was alive... 

If you'd like to watch the documentary that I've been going on about with such reverence, it's not available as a whole on Google video any more, but it keeps cropping up around the internet, sometimes in sections, sometimes in its entirety.  It's just under an hour long in total, and gives you such a flavour of life at Shakespeare and Company in the early Noughties, its history, its eccentric late owner, and the 'tumbleweeds', the ever-changing collection of young writers who continue to live and work there to this day.  I love it, and (when it's available!) I watch it every so often when I'm in a reading slump or feel generally uninspired.  I hope you enjoy it too!

Notable Quotables:

• "I woke up straight.  The instant my eyes opened, everything felt sharp and clear, as if I'd finished a wind sprint or stepped from a frothing sea.  I'd always been one to play with snooze buttons, lolling in bed and rationalising being ten, twenty, thirty minutes late for work or school.  But that first morning at the bookstore, there were no slow degrees of consciousness or seductive fingers of sleep.  I was alive."
• "In a place like Paris, the air is so thick with dreams they clog the streets and take all the good tables at the cafés.  Poets and writers, models and designers, painters and sculptors, actors and directors, lovers and escapists, they flock to the City of Lights.  That night at Polly's, the table spilled over with the rapture of pilgrims who have found their temple.  That night, among new friends and safe at Shakespeare and Company, I felt it too.  Hope is a beautiful drug."
• "He washed his clothes by hand, ate the most basic of meals, and shunned the cinemas or restaurants.  With this regime, not only was he able to survive on the bookstore's paltry receipts but he also managed to provide communal meals and tuck away enough money to keep expanding the bookstore... George had discovered money to be the greatest slave master, and by reducing your dependence on it, he believed, you could loosen the grip of a suffocating world."
• "I had been at the bookstore more than a month, but it felt like time had barely passed.  Without the normal barometer of a workday or a fixed schedule, life had become fluid.  It was hard to keep track of the hours and days in the bookstore, everything came and went in pleasurable waves of evenings and mornings and afternoons.  In the criminal world there is a term, hard time, which refers to difficult prison sentences in maximum-security facilities... Time at Shakespeare and Company was as soft as anything I'd ever felt."
• ""You know, that's what I've always wanted this place to be," he said.  "I look across at Notre Dame and I sometimes think the bookstore is an annexe of the church.  A place for the people who don't quite fit in over there."  I understood.  We sipped our beer until the sun set and then sat awhile longer."
• "Living with George at Shakespeare and Company has changed me, made me wonder about the life I left and the life I want to live.  For now, I sit, I type, I try to be a better man.  Life is a work in progress."

Source: I bought this book from the little branch of Blackwell's, above Market Square, at the University of York.

I am Bookshop Girl no more!

Okay, so we haven't ACTUALLY sold the shop yet - we've got a second viewing this week though, and quite a bit of interest apparently - but I already knew that when we did I wanted to change my blog name to mark the new phase of my life...  Technically, I suppose, I could have remained Bookshop Girl (let's face it, I'm in them often enough even outside work!) but it didn't really feel right any more.

Sooooo, as you've probably noticed by now, the blog has been revamped!  I saw Library Mosaic's beautiful new look on Monday, hopped over to look at Avery's Designs for myself, and immediately fell in love with one of her newest designs.  I contacted her and chose her $35 package - a premade design, with an avatar and button (plus she made a favicon and custom backgrounds for me), plus installation and general tweaking.  She got back to me almost immediately and started work that very same night!  (Which, if you've looked around at new designs before, you'll know is practically unheard of!)  Over the last 48 hours she's installed everything for me, we've both tweaked things a bit, then last night she sent me everything she'd created and installed for me... and that was that! 

One of the most important changes has been my name; as of yesterday morning, I am now Book Addicted Blonde.  I felt a little sad to be leaving Musings of a Bookshop Girl behind, but the time was right.  That was actually the hardest part of the whole thing - as those who were part of my extremely indecisive Twitter polling conversation will know - but I'm really happy with my new name!

I haven't changed my URL - that just looks too complicated - so I (and you!) won't need to worry about refollowing or anything like that for the time being.  Maybe later...  I'll change my social media names at some point too, and I also have this beautiful new button should any of you care to stick me in a sidebar somewhere...  I've never had a button before, I'm excited!

<div align="center">
<a href="http://musingsofabookshopgirl.blogspot.ca/" title="Book Addicted Blonde"><img src="http://i1203.photobucket.com/albums/bb396/AverysBookNook/bookaddictedblondebutton_zpsb5a290ae.png" alt="Book Addicted Blonde" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

I hope you like the new look!  I absolutely love it - and Avery has been so quick off the mark, so helpful and quick to respond to my questions and anything I wanted changing, I can't recommend her highly enough.  I'm off to carry on reading Attachments and maybe work on some new blog posts now that my double review of The Shining is finally done and dusted...   :)

 

What customers say vs. what they really mean

They say:  "I'm just here to browse!"
They mean:  "I'm not going to buy anything."

They say:  "Oooh, a 10p box!"
They mean:  "If I can buy something and get change from 50p, it doesn't matter if the book is unreadable."

They say:  "I do like a book with a good story."
They mean:  "I only read Maeve Binchy and Mills and Boon novels."

They say:  "Where are your true stories?"
They mean:  "I only read misery memoirs."

They say:  "Do you not have any non-fiction here?"
They mean:  "I'm surrounded by non-fiction but I have no idea how a bookshop works."

They say:  "Is this the price inside the cover?"
They mean:  "I don't like the price inside the cover."

They say:  "I've never read a book in me life!  Waste of time..."
They mean:  "I prefer to spend my time perusing The Daily Mail, and I watch Jeremy Kyle religiously."

They say:  "Can you knock me anything off the price?"
They mean:  "I'm so rich that I'll be paying with a £20 peeled off a huge roll of notes - but I'm also a tight bastard."

They say:  "Have you got one of those Daphne du Maurier books?  The Laurence Olivier one?"
They mean:  "The movie was showing on Yesterday last night."

They say:  "I was just wondering, do you buy books?"
They mean:  "I've never been in here before, and I never will again, but I've had boxes of books in the garage since 1976 and I'm too lazy to have a car boot sale."

They say:  "Do you give a 10% discount for paying cash?"
They mean:  "I last went shopping in 1943."

They say:  "They're too good to just give to a charity shop."
They mean:  "I have inflated ideas about my books and I'm going to be loudly and righteously horrified by the amount you offer me."

They say:  "They're in pristine condition!"
They mean:  "I have no idea what 'pristine' means but I heard it on Antiques Roadshow and I thought it might get me more money."

They say:  "Look but don't touch, darling!"
They mean:  "I'm just going to be round here ignoring my child while she picks up every single thing in the shop and tries to get into your stock cupboards."

Did I miss anything?

 

Carnival Day: The Live Blog

It's Carnival Day here in TouristTown.  One of our busiest and most bizarre days of the year, and one that this year I've been dreading because Vaguely Manic Ellie + An Entire Town in Noisy Chaos is not a happy mixture.  Soooo, in an attempt to keep my sanity more or less intact, I've decided that it would be a stellar idea to live blog the day.  If it gets too boring I'll just delete it!  Enjoy... 

9:45am - At work.  Coffee made.  Feverishly listening to Gary Numan and Amanda Palmer in an attempt to calm my nerves a tiny bit before we open.

10:15am - The first glowering old man has stood in the doorway, glared around the shop and huffed away again.  I do so love it when people do that.

10:40am - Ahhh, it's not only me that gets the James Bond theme tunes stuck in my head every time I go near one of our JB cover Penguin mugs.  A lad's just scared his mum to death by twirling round the corner and singing "LIVE AND LET DIIIIIIE!" at full volume, with a kind of air-guitar riff to finish it off.  Nice.

11am - My coffee tastes very faintly like mint.  Weird.

11:05am - The first parade float has done an early tour of the town.  Mary Poppins flying above what looks like the top half of a garden shed (nope, no clue), complete with rock music hastily switched to the annoying 'Um diddle-i' section of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.  It's good to have advance warning of which irritating songs are going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the weekend.  Plus, it's also a good indicator of which float... personnel?... are going to be struggling to walk in a straight line by show time.

11:30am - I can hear ethereal music coming from somewhere.  Reminds me of last year, when a little old couple wandered into the shop looking puzzled.  "Is something going on in town today, love?" asked the woman, "only... there's a space shuttle parked outside the pub down there.  So we just wondered."  I know southerners often THINK we're from another planet, but really?   

11:45am - Wiggling around the bathroom upstairs, singing Cars to myself.  Much more fun than being downstairs in the shop.  I love 'bathroom breaks' on busy weekends.

12:10pm - Three Oompa Loompas have just wandered past pushing their float, with 'Kitkat' painted up the side of it and The Candy Man Can blaring out.  I approve.  "Who can take a sunrise?  Sprinkle it with dew?  Cover it in chocolate and a miracle or two?"  All together now!  "THE CANDY MAN CAAAAAN!"

12:30pm - The Oompa Loompas have teamed up with the Mary Poppins chimney sweeps to get pissed outside the pub over the road.  At the moment we're alternating between Step in Time, hip hop and dance music, Pure Imagination and pop cheese, all played at eye-watering volume.  It's keeping some of the grumpy biddies away (YOUTH MUSIC!  NOOOOOO!) and me and Mum are dancing and singing along in the privacy of the shop.  Brilliant.  I think I may have pulled something trying to do 'Kick your knees up, step in time!' WHILE keeping my ballet pumps from flying up onto the top of a bookcase.  The kid in blue's dancing like a boss, occasionally while wielding a chimney sweep's brush.  OH MY GOD MICHAEL BOLTON.  My day is made.

12:50pm - The chimney sweeps have moved off, presumably to go join the rest waiting near the park.  A big white truck barrelled past a few minutes ago with three 'princesses' sat up high on the back.  I'm fairly sure they were blokes, but they went past too quick!  The Oompa Loompas have marshalled the troops and are heading out with their float, entitled "Willy Wonka and the Giant Kitkat."  THIS IS WHERE I WORK EVERY DAY AND THEY WONDER WHY I'M MAD.

2:30pm - All quiet on the carnival front...  A couple of bizarrely decorated cars have gone past, but everyone will be gathering across town to get organised for the parade now.  More customers around though, especially folks on their way back to their cars to get out before the roads close.  People will be starting to line the pavements soon - scoping out a good spot then wasting a little time in the nearest shops until around the time the parade starts at 3 o'clock.  Could be busy! 

2:35pm - Oh goody, my favourite kind of customer.  A gentleman who can't find anything for himself and needs me to literally walk him to each section and point at it expansively.  NOT ONLY THAT, but we don't have the particular book he wants on cars, we don't have anything on or by D.H. Lawrence, nor do we have anything on fairgrounds or circus skills.  All of the above are grave personal faults of mine.  Obviously.  Dickwad.

3:05pm - The parade should be on the move!  One question: why do people come to town on Carnival day if they're going to stay stubbornly in the shops during the focal point of the whole Carnival week?  It pisses us all off something chronic when we all want to shut up shop for a bit and go out with everyone else!  Oh, and here's another one.  Please, do, come in...  It's not like there's sunshine and music and fun out there or anything... I'LL JUST SIT HERE IN THE SHOP SHALL I?  No point going out now, I'm too short, I won't be able to see.  And I can't see from in HERE because some charming individuals have arranged their children along every windowsill so all I can see is a row of small arses wiping against the windows we cleaned this morning.  DICKWADS.

3:20pm - BREAKING NEWS!  The town brass band have FINALLY switched up their repertoire!  For the first time since we opened, they're not playing Mucho Mambo Sway on our corner!  I think their rendition of Is This The Way to Amarillo is very jaunty, and I'd rather have the latter stuck in my head than the former, I think.  Good call.

3:25pm - Oh, and hey, the blue-coated Musketeers from the next town are sounding awesome too!  I do love me a good old-fashioned band.

3:35pm - Well, I can HEAR the Mary Poppins float, even if I can't see it!  Lots of whooping and cheering going on from the roadside.  There are grumpy-looking people wandering in and out of the shop (presumably people who didn't know about the carnival and are allergic to fun of any kind.  And smiling).  And a fully grown man is now STANDING on our windowsill taking photographs.  If he comes through the window I think I'd be justified in finally flipping my lid, right?

3:40pm - This is the first year I've not been on the edge of the pavement with pockets full of change and my camera.  I feel weird.  Like the whole town's having fun and I'm the kid stuck inside doing her homework or something.  This is the view from our doorway right now, but I can't even stand there now because a delightful couple have let their children go in here and I have to keep an eye on our stuff.  I want to kill them a little bit.  Okay a lot.

3:45pm - It's a Long Way to Tipperary, played on something that sounds like a xylophone.  Or maybe a really clever triangle.  Hmmmm.

3:50pm - Jailhouse Rock, that's more like it!  I'm going to sing along a little bit EVEN THOUGH THERE IS A WOMAN IN THE SHOP.  Fuck 'em.

4:00pm - My favourite Highland band have been and gone.  A giant wheel has rolled past, no idea how or why.  And these STUPID OLD WOMEN keep coming in and complaining that the town's too busy.  In fact this one woman has just said to me, "Oh, is there a parade?"  FOR GOD'S SAKE WHAT DO YOU THINK IS HAPPENING OUT THERE?!  Here's an idea folks - don't come to town on Carnival day if you don't want it to be hot, noisy and busy.  Hey, hey, did you see where my 'let's dance to all the things' happy mania switched to 'let's kill all the tourists' angry mania?  Isn't this fun?

4:05pm - An entire float filled with people riding inflatable ponies, to the tune of Crazy Horses, blasted out at decibel levels roughly akin to a fighter jet flying over.  Now there's something you don't see very often...

4:07pm - Aaaand a giant John Deere tractor attempting to manoeuvre an articulated lorry-style float around the tight corner.  Always a highlight of the parade, watching it squeak round about an inch from the toes of the children on the front row of spectators.

4:10pm - OMG DON'T YOU DARE LET YOUR KIDS PISS IN OUR DOORWAY!  Bastard!

4:20pm - God, we're so British.  The parade is over, therefore a third of the crowd have instantly started a stampede for the car park.  Another third are charging into the nearest pubs to refresh their plastic beer glasses.  And the final third, it seems, have poured into our shop.  There's a kid moaning, "Can we gooooooo?" over and over.  Everyone who's got too hot outside has come in here to take it out on us.  This is where every last vestige of my happy mood drains away and becomes jittery, unpleasant, "Oh my god please go away now and take your children with you" panic.

4:40pm - Why yes, this DID used to be a charity shop, thank you SO much for mentioning it!  I had no idea!  We've only been here four years this weekend!

5:00pm - The gate is officially SHUT.  Now I just need this last couple to twig that we've closed, finish time-wasting and go home, and we can cash up and do the same.  It's oooooooooveeeeeer!



6:00pm - Home.  Safe.  Showered.  Show's over everyone... off you go... DON'T CAUSE A STAMPEDE TO THE BLOGGER CAR PARK PLEASE, YOU'LL ONLY GET STUCK IN TRAFFIC ON YOUR WAY OUT!  :)

I survived.  One more weekend day to go, and then it's my appointment, and THEN I can concentrate on the readathon and my day off and packing and everything else.  READATHON!

The Depression Diaries: Aaaand CRASH

12:45pm: No.  Just... No.

Today's going to be a bad one.  Is already a bad one.  I've completely crashed after yesterday.  I didn't sleep that well.  I snapped at Mum in the car on the way to work, then she bought me beautiful flowers while she was at the Co-Op this morning and I felt terrible.  I snap at her, she buys me a bouquet with gerberas in it.  Nice going, Ellie.

Not only that, but the customers thus far today have been a special breed of hellish too.  In fact, one group with two revolting children literally had me tearing my hair out.  I had my hands clutching my head, my hair, elbows rooted firmly on the desk, trying desperately not to go down there and kill the little bastards.  I may have actually hissed the words, 'For fuck's sake!' at one point, possibly within earshot of one of the party, but I don't care.  The brats were twanging the coil doorstop over and over again, running round with the chairs, hitting each other with books, screaming, crying and generally being awful, while the adults cooed over them like they were the cleverest beings ever and said things like, "Awww, bless his little cotton socks!"  NO, LADY.

The kitten on the left's called Philip.  I'll try to think of him every time I feel burning rage towards people who might spend money if I don't kill their children.

So, in summary: Today Is Not Good.  I am angry and sad and antsy and tired and I have a colossal case of DO NOT WANT and I want to eat myself into a coma except I DON'T want to do that and I've just about done some admin stuff but I genuinely wonder if the next badly behaved child (or adult) will be the one to tip me over into 'Nope. Not happening today.'  *think of Philip, think of Philip, think of Philip, think of Philip...*


3:00pm: Customer Relations Fail

I've reached zero capacity for customer service this afternoon.  No, I lie... I can JUST ABOUT manage to semi-smile through a fast transaction with no questions or small talk.  But thirty seconds is your lot.  Our resident bore came in and Mum had to go out to the post office and LEFT ME WITH HIM and I just... couldn't.  It was painfully obvious that I had nothing to say, no vaguely positive facial expressions, no way of filling in the yawning gaps in conversation like I normally have to, and it still took him ten minutes to finally get up and leave.  Book-free, as usual.

I'm munching my way slowly through a Graze punnet - the one with whole hazelnuts, raspberry-infused cranberries (they really do taste of raspberries!) and white chocolate buttons - and keep getting gratefully distracted by how beautiful hazelnuts are.  The little squat round shape and the wood-grain pattern, they're cute.  Maybe I was a squirrel in a previous life.

Ohhhhh dear.  "There's a step here!  It doesn't tell you there's a step anywhere!  That's dangerous!"  THERE ARE TWO FUCKING MIND THE STEP SIGNS ON THE DOOR.  "Oh, I've got my wrong glasses on."  Well, that's a good reason to be an asshole about it then. 


Excuse me while I go smash my extremities against a hard surface.  *think of Philip, think of Philip, think of Philip...*


3:50pm: My Jack Sparrow Moment

Okay, so I just came out of the office and there were two kids messing about with all the pricier gift stock on the table halfway down the shop.  I walked towards them, to go back to the desk, and I was walking quite slowly because my new boots are still rubbing a bit, and the heels were cracking against the hard floor, and I was taller than they were, and I'm wearing long black boots and black jeggings and a jumper that's shaped a BIT like an old-fashioned men's shirt, and I probably look a bit dishevelled at this point, and I swear... those kids looked up and this look of vague fear crossed their faces and they backed right off and stopped messing about with everything.  I felt like a frickin' pirate.  That was fun.


9:00pm: Depression Is Confirmed

Mum told me on the way home that she wasn't going to bother speaking to me if I was just going to snap or grunt a reply, or NOT reply, because it "wasn't worth it".  I tried to point out that non-responsiveness and irritability are par for the course and that it doesn't mean she's offended me or that I'm being deliberately hostile or mean.  In fact, mentally I might have responded quite well, but it just never translates properly onto the outside.  Alienation of well-meaning individuals due to poor social interaction, you say, Allie Brosh?  CHECK.

In other news, I'm DEFINITELY depressed.  Sometimes inside my tired head I worry that I'm just being stupid, that I'm just lazy or selfish or silly or petulant or WHATEVER.  But people, there is one sure-fire way to diagnose yourself as officially depressed, and that's the When Something Goes Wrong Test.

This something can't be a major event that actually warrants an extreme reaction.  This something might be... dropping a glass and breaking it.  Spilling your coffee.  Forgetting some little errand that doesn't matter.  For me, it was not getting my prescription after work.  I'm running really low on a routine IBS medication I take before meals to keep my stomach calmer.  The surgery has had my prescription for over a week.  But when I got there today, intending to pick it up and fill it over the road at the local chemist, there WAS no prescription, just a note saying I needed a GP appointment before I could get my medication again.  No one rang me to tell me this earlier, and there were still two 'issues' left on each item on the prescription according to my last slip.

Where a regular person might have asked some stern questions about certain elements of this disappointment, sighed, made an appointment and moved on, my mind went dead in a vague mixture of panic, anger and despair.  I asked a couple of vaguely aggressive questions, got embarrassed, huffed a bit, sighed "shit..." into my own arm, stuttered that buying medication to tide me over for a few days would cost a fortune, and generally narrowly avoided sitting down in the middle of the foyer and sobbing.  I sat stricken in the car, growled "I could have done without a 9am appointment on my one FUCKING day off," nearly cried again (but didn't - still no crying happening in Crazy Town), then suddenly got very tired and sloped wearily inside to put my flowers in a vase.  I got all sad again because I couldn't seem to get the gerberas to sit quite right, plonked them in any old how and gave up.  Then I had a slow, miserable, exhausted shower.

And that, folks, is depression.  Little issue, HUGE reaction, followed by a crushing need to just go to bed.  Final note:  I gave up on the healthy dinner I had planned and I've had a choc chip muffin instead.  The same as I had for breakfast, only without the caffeine in my coffee.  Fuck it.  

Penny feels my junky needs. And hey, at least I put mine on a plate first.

The Depression Diaries: Bank Holiday Monday

1:00pm, aka Maybe The Lunchtime Lull

Yeah, hi.  So, it's Bank Holiday Monday here in Tourist Town, which is a fantastic time to be... 'off colour', shall we say?  From the moment we arrived this morning, all we could see in every direction were hoardes of determined bargain seekers heading for the car boot sale, hoardes of blue-rinses shuffling towards the market, children everywhere and bad drivers veering all over the place.  Good times.

Happily I spent the first hour of the working day in the office, getting a stack of books ready to overhaul the YA shelves, sifting through boxes and pricing up a couple of board games we were given to sell on if we could.  This meant that I only had to listen to the small Tasmanian devils in the children's section through the door, rather than first hand.  During this hour Mum read as much of my Nora Ephron book (I Feel Bad About My Neck) as I've managed to read in about a week, and when I came back out into the shop we were full and I wanted to hide under the desk.  Oh well.

Weirdly, I'm actually hungry right now - very unusual at the moment - so I'm having an early-lunchtime Graze box.  It's the first time in days I've really fancied one, but it's yummy.  The 'Bounty Hunter' - coconut slivers, dried cranberries and chocolate drops.  And my favourite customer came a-visiting and I just about stayed friendly and chatty.  Well done me.  He doesn't like Bank Holidays here either, wise man.

Next phase:  Operation Find Projects To Distract Me.  Things like editing my Twitter feed, combing my LT library for books to go, maybe editing a Pinterest board or two?  Filing but on the netbook, essentially.  Anything to avoid sitting here with my heart pounding, wishing everyone would sod off.  :)

On a sidenote:  Being depressed makes it MUCH EASIER to respond firmly to people attempting to get discounts on books.  I think it's the 'I don't care' factor.  I'm not bothered if they get shirty about it, because I don't care.  Makes me less likely to get all British and embarrassed.  Just a straight-up, slightly weary "No, sorry, not on a book this age with such a good dustjacket."  Simple, clean, to the point.

2:30pm - Afternoon Madness Begins

Half past two.  One hour until my unofficial 'depressed state' tolerance cut-off point.  I can just about scrape through until 5pm on a good day, but it winds back to 3:30pm when I'm in a bad way  There's a child throwing (heavy) books around in the children's section.  Oooh, and a game too, goody.  And picking everything up.  And one's run outside.  The mother's yelling like a banshee.  Will I even make it that far today?! 

There's an old lady glaring at me from the doorway, that's always fun.  Two hours left, two hours left, two hours left... *repeats like mantra while rocking slowly, gritting teeth and clenching fists firmly*  The child is now running and throwing books outside.  And opening and shutting the cupboard doors.  If you don't hear from me, I'm at the police station being charged with braticide.

4pm:  Almost There

Iiiiiinteresting.  So, as it turns out, the 'comfortably numb' stage of depression is actually WAY better for Bank Holidays than the 'EVERYBODY SHUT UP AND GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME' stage.  Less rage, less angst, less upset.  Just me sitting blank-eyed behind my netbook quietly thinking, "You know what, do what you want.  Look at every Paperblanks journal then don't buy one.  Mess up the books.  I'll just wait until you've gone then drift round and tidy up really slowly.  Whatever."

I'm still eating that Graze box.  I've also eaten seven cherry tomatoes and drunk multiple cups of decaff coffee and chai tea.  That's it.  The appetite thing's clearly still a bit slow despite its early buzz today.  My sister's made four different kinds of cookie while we've been at work, though (two of them involving Nutella and ALL involving chocolate) so I'm sure I'll manage to sample one of those with a cup of something hot and another episode of 2 Broke Girls at SOME point this evening.  It's the little things...

6pm: Home and Dry

Made it.  Naturally the whole world poured into the shop at quarter past four, but in a VERY unusual stroke of amazing timing, they all left again dead on half past and I scurried out and closed the door.  One of the very last customers was a fellow bookseller.  He came to the desk with three HUGE books and said, "I'm in the book trade, I don't know if that gets me anything off..."  As soon as he said it I knew he'd bought books from us before and said, "Ohhh, I thought I recognised you!"  "Was it the sullen expression on my face?" he said with a grimace.  I actually laughed and said, "Aaaah, now I KNOW you're a fellow bookseller."  He got his 10% off and it was still a £30 sale.  He had a glass of water before he left and while he was sitting drinking it a woman piped up, "Excuse me, love, but are these books alphabetical by title or author?"  "Author," I said, rather shortly.  "So, if I'm looking for Lesley Pearse, would that be under L or P?" she called.  THE GUY LOOKED HEAVENWARD AND ROLLED HIS EYES.  And I smiled again.  Good man.

And now I'm home, my laundry's in, I'm in my PJs and dressing gown, and Mum and I have already shared one of my sister's Nutella-filled cookies.  GOOD SHIT.  I'm not entirely sure how to fill my evening now.  I'm flat out on the bed and I've got music on but I'm skipping half the songs that come up, in that way you do when you don't really want to listen to music at all.  Should I watch a film?  A load of back-to-back sitcoms online?  Try to read a bit?

Miscellaneous good news: my library books have, by some miracle, renewed hassle-free for another three weeks so I can keep plodding on without rushing or being annoyed that I'm halfway through two and don't want to take them back until I'm done.  Because it might take a while.  PRESSURE OFF.

~ Journal extract ~

(from a week or two ago)

"Yesterday was terrible.  It was such a beautiful day, and it felt quite productive really.  I got up a little late, had breakfast, and cheerfully did some of my cleaning.  Then I went and sat outside in the sun, nursing a headache, sipping coffee and reading and watching the cats pretending to be flowers so they could watch the blackbird.  So far, so good, right?

But for the whole day there was pain throbbing just under my skin.  It's barrelling upwards towards fever pitch.  There's so much wrong, and I think having to keep it bottled up is taking its toll.  Living in close quarters with my family, there's no space to FEEL without being checked over and asked questions and seeing worried glances following me wherever I go.  So I don't really feel.  I keep everything pushed down, so that instead of crying and watching sad movies and dancing and generally getting it out of my system, I'm letting it eat its way through my chest until my heart flutters and the pain spreads like ink in my blood until my hands are shaking and my breath catches in my throat.

A while back I watched Russell Brand's documentary on addiction, and something he said cut to my core.  He said that addiction, and addictive behaviour generally, happens because there's something sad and empty inside us and we're just trying to fill it.  For me, it's a sad and empty place where life should be.  Life, and people.  Is it any wonder I rattle from one obsession to another, one means of control after another, one means of escape after another?  Anything to try to forget the howling void left behind by having nowhere to go, no autonomy, no one to call, no one to love, no one to make me feel loved and special and worth knowing, quirks and demons and all..."

I really think it's important to be honest about this stuff sometimes.  Otherwise, how will anyone else ever know they're not alone, that other people feel it too?

The best customer in the world

This morning when I arrived at work there was a message flashing on our shop answering machine:

"Hello to my friends at the bookshop.  It's David ----- here.  I wanted to say thank you for the card you've sent to me.  And I want to say an extra thank you for going to the trouble of finding one with a lovely Land Rover and farm animals.  It's very touching...  *sneeze*... *pause while he tries to work out how to hang up his mobile*...*end of message*"

Today is our favourite customer's birthday.  His name is David, and he's got fluffy hair and a curly beard and the twinkliest, cheekiest little face you've ever seen outside an Enid Blyton story.  Back when we were first refurbishing the shop we used to leave the door open so locals could pop in and say hello; David was our first visitor, and ordered a book from us before we'd even opened!

Since then he's been a firm fixture in the shop.  He has so many health problems and struggles to get around sometimes, but he comes down whenever he can and sits in one of our red tub chairs, catching us up on his sons' exploits and talking about his life and waxing lyrical about his favourite things: animals, rallying, chickens, Land Rovers and biscuits.  He's a joy to listen to, so funny and down-to-earth and enthusiastic about life.  Sometimes we bring him a cup of tea and a biscuit or two so he can take his tablets, and secretly we love it because it means he'll stay and chat a bit longer.

The card he sent when the bookshop turned three this year.  He's separated from Joan but still sees her all the time because she helps him with things when he can't manage...

He lives nearby, in a little flat in a warden-monitored building, and he's every bit as eccentric as we are, which helps!  But he's also incredibly generous and has the warmest heart of anyone I've ever met.  I rang him this morning when I got that message, and he went into raptures over the card, and was very excited because another had just arrived in the post.  He's been invited to tea with Joan and the family tonight and he's hoping there might be blueberry cheesecake.  Then he got a bit quiet and said again how touched he was by the card - and when I said, "We love you David, you know that!" there was a sudden silence and he got all choked.  After I put the phone down I found myself welling up, and Mum did too.

It's people like David that make the fairly thankless job of running a shop worthwhile.  Sure, it's great being surrounded by books all day, but all the books in the world can't save you when your head's aching and kids are throwing tantrums and people are moaning in stage whispers and you're exhausted.  But when David appears at the door, I can feel a smile spreading across my face, and it's like the world falls back to rights for a few minutes.  I remember that there's someone out there who really appreciates what we do, and makes a special effort to come here for books and chatter, and who remembers our shop birthday, and who brings us shortbread at Christmas, and who knows when we're ringing him because no one else does, and who told us he'd make room for us at his tiny flat if we ever got caught out in the snow, and who brings photos for us to look at, and who cuts out magazine articles he thinks we'll like, and who shares his life with us as generously and openly as we try to share ours with him.  

THIS, ladies and gentlemen, is what it's all about.

Chekhov for Infants

Yesterday a tiny girl, perhaps five or six, came into the shop with her mum and dad.  When they first arrived I was in the office making a cuppa, but Mum said the man turned to the little girl and said, "Right, now, you're not allowed to talk in this shop, or they'll pick you off with an air rifle."  "We're not that bad!" Mum replied.  "Well, I told her it was electric shocks in the last shop!" he laughed, before escorting the poor kid off down to the children's corner.

Back out on the counter, I was ready and waiting when they returned with two children's books.  The dad sighed and shook his head."I don't know why I bother," he said sadly as his wife handed over a note.  "Last week I bought her the complete works of Anton Chekhov and what did she do?  Scribbled all over The Cherry Orchard, made crayon marks right through A Marriage Proposal...  Evidently she's destined to grow up illiterate and never go to a good school."

"That's a bit harsh," I said.  "Perhaps she just doesn't like the Russians - have you tried her on Dickens?"

As they left the shop, I heard a dull thwack as he swiped her over the head with his tourist map, and his voice drifting back from outside, "I'm going to beat literature into you!  Just see if I don't!"