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Bookshop stuff
Sep. 22nd, 2005 08:59 pmIt’s been a still sort of day, without much wind and not many people. The village was deserted when I got in, and even the shop was sunlit and much too quiet. It got busier as time went on; it seemed everyone in the village was coming in to commiserate with Tony. Yesterday afternoon he and Deb were busy with the computer at the front, and didn’t notice someone go through the shop, slip into the bag, rummage through the pockets in the jackets hanging up, find Tony’s car keys, go out and drive off with his car. This actually appeared in today’s Formby Times – it’s a weekly paper! – and consequently all the other small-shop-owners have been visiting.
Tony is being remarkably good-humoured about it – I think the car was insured for more than its actual worth – and when I got in, he set me to putting out a stack of books. Yesterday featured not the usual three deliveries, but seventeen boxes. The mind, she boggles. Anyway, the first book I picked up had “sexual awakening” in the blurb. I blinked, and started to read. Tony grabbed it from me and went striding off to the section marked “Erotica (female)” muttering that I was much too young for that. In the process of crossing the shop, he started to read. Out loud.
Thankfully Alison and I made enough noise to drown him out before he got to the end of page forty-three. “Is that anatomically possible?”
I didn’t know. The next box was full of Terry Pratchett. Lots of Going Postal paperbacks, and more excitingly, hardbacks of Thud and Where is My Cow?, which is a picture flat tie-in. We are not allowed to sell Thud until Monday – it’s embargoed – but Tony said to me, “You work here. You shelve books. It’s hardly as if I can stop you from looking at them, or reading them in the back where no-one can see...”
With a pause to reflect on the fact I may have the nicest employer in the world, I retreated into the back and read the first thirty pages of Thud. I had to stop before I started to get really into it. When I got back into the shop, it was filled with people and sadly I will never know about the vampire in the Watch. Also at this point, someone came in from next door with the Formby Times. Not only is Tony there as a “victim of crime”, he’s pictured at Deyes High doing the Sefton Super-Reads, and there’s a picture of me on the opposite page. Either we’re all very popular or the local journalists have absolutely nothing to write about. I suspect the latter.
I only work two days more, and am honestly depressed about it. I’ve been so lucky to have a job I’ve really loved, even for minimum wage and random hours. It’s been such fun.
And now, packing. Sigh.
Tony is being remarkably good-humoured about it – I think the car was insured for more than its actual worth – and when I got in, he set me to putting out a stack of books. Yesterday featured not the usual three deliveries, but seventeen boxes. The mind, she boggles. Anyway, the first book I picked up had “sexual awakening” in the blurb. I blinked, and started to read. Tony grabbed it from me and went striding off to the section marked “Erotica (female)” muttering that I was much too young for that. In the process of crossing the shop, he started to read. Out loud.
Thankfully Alison and I made enough noise to drown him out before he got to the end of page forty-three. “Is that anatomically possible?”
I didn’t know. The next box was full of Terry Pratchett. Lots of Going Postal paperbacks, and more excitingly, hardbacks of Thud and Where is My Cow?, which is a picture flat tie-in. We are not allowed to sell Thud until Monday – it’s embargoed – but Tony said to me, “You work here. You shelve books. It’s hardly as if I can stop you from looking at them, or reading them in the back where no-one can see...”
With a pause to reflect on the fact I may have the nicest employer in the world, I retreated into the back and read the first thirty pages of Thud. I had to stop before I started to get really into it. When I got back into the shop, it was filled with people and sadly I will never know about the vampire in the Watch. Also at this point, someone came in from next door with the Formby Times. Not only is Tony there as a “victim of crime”, he’s pictured at Deyes High doing the Sefton Super-Reads, and there’s a picture of me on the opposite page. Either we’re all very popular or the local journalists have absolutely nothing to write about. I suspect the latter.
I only work two days more, and am honestly depressed about it. I’ve been so lucky to have a job I’ve really loved, even for minimum wage and random hours. It’s been such fun.
And now, packing. Sigh.
