Things I learnt today in the shop:
A bookworm is an actual worm that eats through books. A woman bought a very old expensive book, opened it up and it had holes all through it. She had to fumigate the book and quarantine it until it was okay to put anywhere near her other books. The woman she bought it from wouldn’t take it back.
If you forget to turn the ‘closed’ sign around, some people will think you are closed, even if the shop is full of people. You will call out to them, and they will return, but it is annoying and better if you turn the sign to open when you open the shop. It is Sunday, though, so anything goes.
It is fine to run down the street and get a coffee and leave the shop sitting there open. A lady and her daughter will appreciate it immensely and say that it’s a gesture to a community to be open and trustworthy like that, which echoes out to the world. You will feel very good and a bit like George Whitman, who would leave the shop for days at a time.
Little babies are sometimes very, very old people.
It will never cease to amaze you how a book touched draws someone to it. A book you thought looked tired you took off display, sliding one copy in with the A-Z. Five minutes later someone walked in and bought that book.
People’s wonder at books is endless.
You should always stock at least one recent book on sculpture. It’s annoying not to have a good recent sculpture book in stock, when someone asks for one.
It would also be good to have at least one on international tropical fish.
Children can never get enough of disgusting. You had been wondering if you had too many books on poops and farts and BUM OR FACE and EWW GROSS: Foul Facts and Putrid Pictures and WHO DID THIS POO. You do not.
Serge’s childhood home was next to your place in the rue de la Chine, according to the map in the pull-out book.
TS Eliot is an anagram of toilets.
You may think the shop will close at 4pm on a Sunday, an hour earlier than the other six days. It never will.
It’s best not to attempt to eat toasted sandwiches while people are in the shop. Or if you do, best they are cooled.
