From The Mouth Of Babes

We've been doing a pretty good trade via our on-line shop over the last couple of weeks since Minion1 set it up though Mr H isn't that impressed.  He's something of an old school book seller and feels that people should actually come into the shop and earn the books that they leave with.  Thankfully neither Minion1 - who does most of the on-line selling - nor myself pay that much attention to him.  When it comes to technological matters, even Malcolm knows more than Mr H.

Minion1 came up with the great idea of including compliment slips with the books that she posts out with our blog address on them - if you've found your way here because of that, or if you've just stumbled in through the ether in a random fashion, feel free to post a comment as we're always glad to get feedback.

Talking of feedback, a mother and daughter were in yesterday looking for a particular book and spent ten minutes or so hunting round in the children's section before they found it and eagerly brought it to the counter.

I swapped a few pleasantries with them - the daughter, who was about 8 or so, was quite sweet - as I jotted down the details in the ledger before noticing the mother lean forward and start to say something.

"Umm, I'm not sure if you know,"  she said.

"Your shop smells funny,"  the daughter said with a big grin.  She turned and pointed back to the children's section.  "Over there smells reaaaaaalllllllly funny,"

"Ah, yeah, we're not . . . er . . . we're not quite sure what it is,"  I said honestly.  The smell's been lingering for some time but there's no stain, no damp, no obvious cause.  Indeed the scent itself isn't readily identifiable and it seems to come and go; some days it's there, others it isn't.  The only one who seems to actually like it is Malcolm.

"Well, just thought I'd mention it,"  the mother said.

"Not a problem,"  I said.  "Enjoy your book,"  I said to the girl.

"Your shop smells funny,"  she said again, laughing this time.  "You smell funny, too!"

"Samantha!"  the mother said, half laughing herself.  I called the girl a cheeky monkey, glossing over the minor incident and watched them both leave.  Once they'd gone, I glanced round to make sure neither Minion1, Mr H nor any customers were nearby and subtly tried to sniff at my T-shirt.  I couldn't smell anything, but Malcolm soon wandered over and seemed happy to spend time with me.