This afternoon in the bookshop there were four flies, various spiders, a green shield bug, a crane fly and two bees who flew around in circles for at least an hour and wouldn’t let me catch them (I eventually did after I turned off the lights when the shop shut). There was more insects in the shop than there were customers and probably more insects in the shop than in the local park. 

Customers often come in and ask for a specific book but being a charity shop, it’s pretty random if we have it or not. Sometimes we do, often we don’t. It’s very satisfying when we do. Most annoying, which actually happens quite a bit, is someone asks for a book and we can’t find it – until ten minutes later when it turns up, and the customer has long gone. Occasionally, I just have to talk with a volunteer about a book on the shelf and as if by magic (or coincidence – though it happens too often to be chance), it sells that day.

But you can’t please everyone all the time: A man comes in asking for a survival guide book. There’s none in the shop, so I look high and low in the store room, eventually feeling pleased with myself for finding The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook for him. He looks at it for a few minutes, then decides no, it’s not what he’s looking for.

It can be all about timing. I’ll sometimes put a book or CD on the shelf and it sells instantly. Today it was a book of Ezra Pound poems, Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate and Reputation by Taylor Swift. It had literally been thirty seconds since I put the CD on the shelf and a teenage girl gasps – putting down and forgetting the copy of Jane Eyre she’d been holding – as she sees it, exclaiming “I never see Taylor Swift in charity shops!” She was so excited she immediately phoned her cousin, also a fan of Swift. The girl, aged 14, had liked Taylor Swift since she was seven but didn’t have Reputation and said it was hard to find now, and couldn’t be bought new. Folklore was her favourite album, and it’s the only one of hers I’d heard, playing it a few times in lockdown (though it didn’t exactly sound like indie folk to me, more like Lana Del Rey). We talked a bit about Swift’s decision to re-record her old albums and the ‘masters controversy’. The teenage was looking forward to Red being re-released next month as she thinks Swift’s voice has matured.

Suddenly, looking through the CDs again, she finds another Taylor Swift album, 1989, and almost faints. Two in one shop! She actually has the album, but her cousin hasn’t. She phones her cousin again, and says she’s on her way. Within five minutes, out of breath, the cousin comes into the shop, and buys the album. They are both very happy. It was very sweet, and one of the pleasures of running a shop.

Previously on Barnflakes
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