Friday, September 6 This morning, the very first sound to reach me as someone padded past the shop’s door was so obscene I cannot reproduce it here, though it began with the line “and then she called my mum a —,” and clearly that expletive was only one element of a longer string of misdeeds in a single sentence. So, really, who is the —?
First lady through the door asks about books by Ray Mears. I haven’t heard that name for a while, I remark, as if speaking in a smoky noir bar.
“But he’s still relevant!” the client insists. We scan the catalogue to see what titles are in stock and discover he published a new book earlier this year about Britain’s woods, the sort of thing that tends to fly off the shelves. I’ve got one incoming in the next order, but not for the customer, who says she’ll return home to study his other volumes and promises to come back to buy them with me. In truth, she’s a lot like Mears herself: preoccupied with survival.
A new shopper meanders through the shop, lingering over every shelf and ending up with a gorgeous stack at the till. I’m elated by the mix: flawless middle-grade fiction, hardcover picture-book perfection, and one of my all-time favorite childhood reads, Joan Aiken’s A Necklace of Raindrops. It’s been a while since we last stocked it, so I immediately reorder it so that someone else can chance upon it someday.
I live in the constant shadow of all the books I said I was excited to read and didn’t get round to actually reading for another three years.
A dog on a lead tries to push its way in. The owner reels it back. The companion quips, “Does he want a book?” and laughs, but one wonders what if he did?
“Look, Theresa May has written a book. The Abuse of Power—I should put that one in my staff room!’
A chain gang of toddlers, tethered with neon straps, heads to the beach from a nearby nursery, passing the bookshop with their supervising adults. “Are you a big book reader?” one asks a tiny boy. “Yep!” he replies. Good lad.
A customer who claims not to have grandchildren of the right age still wants to browse the children’s books. No explanation necessary, I say, as someone who has bought children’s books at every stage of life. The shopper buys a picture book and two finger puppets, and I’m delighted for her.
Business Mum arrives with The Goods. The Goods being three miniature cakes (we share them) and two miniature coffees.
Moments after BM leaves, a customer arrives who would clearly have preferred her company. He enjoys a chat with her, but today he’s stuck with me. I sell him his books, and he receives his loyalty discount. We manage a quick chat about his purchases. He’s buying Rumer Godden’s The Greengage Summer, which I also intend to read someday. He hasn’t yet heard anything about it—he prefers to order editions he likes (either Penguin Little Clothbound or Macmillan Collector’s Library) without reading any synopses or reviews, to broaden his reading. I say he’s brave and he replies, “You win some, you lose some,” which is also true when you read synopses and reviews.
“I just really do love bookshops.” (Gliding past. Not even tempted to come in. A classic.)
A lady comes to ask me about slow-cooker recipe books. We don’t have one on the shelf today, because all anyone talks about is air-frying. But we are clearly moving toward Slow-Cooker Season, aren’t we? Yes, with the ghosts of autumn, so the stews will return. The customer cannot decide which book sounds best and hopes her daughter might have an opinion, since it was she who urged her mother to get a slow cooker in the first place. She says she’s grateful for showing her what’s available, and before she rings her daughter she leans across the desk and squeezes my arm, so I know she truly means it.
A man in khaki enters the shop (think Ray Mears). He wears khaki walking trousers with multiple pockets, a khaki shirt, a khaki zip-up vest full of pockets, and a wide-brimmed hat (khaki). He buys Raynor Winn’s The Salt Path, which feels like a perfectly Khaki choice to me.
“It’s just…storytellers in there. That’s no use to me.”
One person enters, followed by a family, followed by a couple, followed by a pair of teenagers. The shop suddenly fills with people all at once, even though they aren’t together. A small girl is offered “one or the other” and she shoots back, “We should just take both.” She’s right, of course. We end up selling three books.
I guess some days your destiny is just to meet your wiggler in the right place at the right time.
A shopper with a child asks me to place the purchase of two books in two separate bags so the child can carry her own book. The child never requested this, and the book is a large picture book, so it must go in a standard carrier. The bags cost us money, but I do not charge for either because I gave the first one away for free—I was so glad of the sale. Asking for payment for the second would have felt petty, but the math on book-markups isn’t astronomical, after all.
A boy who used to attend my JUNIOR book club stops by; he’s back from university and now sports a BEARD. I am slowly aging into the furniture.
A middle-aged couple step inside and I decide they’re on a date. They speak in whispers as if in a library. She laughs; perhaps they’ve just had lunch with wine. Or perhaps I’m merely short-sighted and this is a thriving union. They share private smiles. Then he asks her, “Have you ever read John Grisham?” and I know this is his way of flirting. They’re not married. Not yet.
Friday, September 13 Earlier this week I unpacked the Richard Osman poster. The Richard Osman window cling. The Richard Osman standee. The Richard Osman bunting. Not a euphemism. It appears he has a new book out. To be precise, the standee is the fox logo from The Thursday Murder Club series, not a life-size cardboard Osman himself.
The first customer wants the Complete Works of Balzac, not the latest Osman. I ask if she plans to start reading it today. She says yes. I’ll ask this of every customer buying that book today because it makes me incredibly happy to imagine someone heading home to begin a book they’ve waited for. This rarely happens to me, as I live under the constant shadow of the books I promised I’d read and didn’t get to for another three years. Why I preorder hardbacks for myself remains a mystery. Nevertheless, she persisted…
Next customer is one of my favorites because he brings his order with his contact details written out, so no one (me) risks mis-copying them. Today he’s ordering some art books, and we scroll through the Taschen catalogue to see which ones catch his eye. This means I am tested on pronouncing the names of famous artists, and I think I manage okay.
A customer wants to look at the hand puppets. I show her the large assortment and the cluster of smaller hand puppets, then let her browse to decide whether any will fit and do voices in private. Before long she returns with a puppet I truly hadn’t seen in months. “I was looking for something that isn’t a real animal,” she explains.
“Well, this is… a wiggle-er!”” Somehow, she has found the only one hidden at the bottom of the basket. Some days fate ensures you meet your wiggler at precisely the right moment.
A woman enters and leaves her husband and dog outside. I call, “Bring him in!” and she doesn’t even crack a joke about her husband shedding all over the books or sniffing other customers’ legs. Anyway, the husband does come in with the dog and then says, “You’re allowed in, Charlie! She clearly doesn’t know you…” Charlie is a good boy, and when he attempts to leap onto the desk the woman remarks, “He thinks any shop he’s allowed in must have treats at the till,” which is actually constructive feedback.
I surprise some Osman pre-order customers with signed editions because… I forgot to tell them I’d ordered signed copies!
One customer glances at the signature page and asks, “He didn’t take too long to do that, did he?” The signatures aren’t elegant, but few are; he’ll have signed thousands of these things, and at least his squiggle still hints at an R.
I recount the time we ordered signed Oliver Jeffers books, only to learn Jeffers had injured his arm and had simply drawn an X inside the signature.
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From Receipts from the Bookshop: A Bookseller’s Year in an English Seaside Town by Katie Clapham. Copyright © 2026. Available from William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
