Must Try Harder

I have been remiss in adding to this blog, Minion One keeps telling me. She's not averse to poking me when she's telling me, either, which simply reinforces the fact that she has very sharp fingernails that can pierce even the thickest T-shirt.  While Sam doesn't know a blog from a wiki, he fully supports One in her endeavours and has asked me twice this week whether I've "scripted anything for the electronic shop diary?" Low, the skeletal Goth who sometimes works in the nether regions of the shop, avoids me claiming my soul is "too dark a mirror" for him to look upon.

Even Malcolm's been staring at me with more disdain than usual.

It's been over a month since my lady friend broke up with me and I think I've just about worn out everyone's sympathy, even One's.  She's been a great friend but even the best of friends get bored of the same old story over and over.

So here's a promise - I shall attend Sam's Midsummer party this Sunday and buck up my ideas, get back on track and, at the very least, be more cheerful than Low.

And who knows?  Maybe I'll meet someone at the party?

Party over here!

Sam doesn’t do holidays, at least not the same ones as everyone else. We regularly open on Christmas day – strangely or sadly we have quite a few customers on the day and Sam serves up Mulled Paint stripper. But Sam does do Mid-summer big style.

Our shop stands on the corner of the square and then there is a gap where a house fell down years ago. Then there is a row of little shops including Bobbitt’s the haberdashery which was last decorated in the 1950s and is just coming back into fashion now. The third side is made up of the high street proper and as such is mainly soulless units of Pound land, Starbucks and shoe shops. Then it is round to us again via some big old Victorian town houses which have seen better years. (I know I live in one of them.)

But inside this square is a patch of land which Sam has annexed into the property of bookshop. It is here that Sam holds the summer party. Sam is as you may have gathered, not a man of great sentient or with a overflow of love towards his fellowman but for one night he is the most benign of hosts, flinging open the gates to the area, performing magic tricks for the children, making people laugh and even playing contagiously catchy tunes on his fiddle.

Lots of people from the local area come, and some really strange strangers show up too.
Although the party is pretty much come as you are there are large numbers of people in costumes. Years ago I spend most of the evening talking to a very charming man who was suited and booted as a well off city gent, except that he had a beard of the most brilliant sky blue. We were getting on really well and he had just invited me back to his pad when Sam wandered over muttered something in his ear and my blue bearded friend turned pale and left in a hurry. Sam then told me to work behind the bar for the rest of the night.

Still I’m looking forward to this year’s party on Sunday if you are in the area it usually kicks off at six and we’d be delighted to see you.

The lurker in the shadows

Low doesn’t do hot weather whilst Two, Malcolm and I collapse into shady corners of the shop and demand ice-cream, Low ignores the sun and just keeps going. He doesn’t sweat or slow down he just keeps moving quietly and slowly round in the shadows.

Low is as previously mentioned the long standing, stand-in for the shop. He worked here before I arrived. Legend has it he worked here in the time of the sainted Ozzy, Sam's much missed partner in crime. (Ozzy is another story, Sam claims he was the wittiest and most intelligent being, excluding himself of course, who ever set foot in the shop. Ozzy is currently apparently traveling.)

But back to Low, Low is a Goth and alarmingly skeletal. Small children seem to find him utterly fascinating whilst he tends to unnerve adult customers who haven’t previously met him.

Sam maintains Lowe is in fact a confused corporeal spirit whose is unaware that he’s actually dead. Sam will say that type of thing, shake his head and add

A great shame! Someone should tell him, and help him cross to the other side! I would myself you know but he works for peanuts and I can’t afford to lose him.

Low is a good bloke. He is quiet but I think he’s just shy. He likes to hum while he works and he’s pretty tuneful. He has also been helping me get the courtyard back into shape so we have a nice shady little garden out there. The man definitely has a touch of genius with roses though.I don’t know what he did with them but the air round here is heavy with the scent of these velvety black red roses and they’re showing no signs of fading.

I find him pretty restful company . Two who is not yet quite his normal cheerful self says he is a poseur who knows nothing of the real pain of life. Much as I love two if he doesn't buck up soon I'm going to have kick his arse.

Hay on Wye

Just a quick one tonight as Minion two and I are off to the Hay on Wye Festival in a few minutes. If you are a second hand book shop fan (and if you aren’t why are you reading this?) you must visit Hay. The town centre is small but contains 30 odd major book shops some of which are specialist and others general. Plus it is beautiful and has a fudge shop. Only don’t try to stay in the town during the festival unless you have had the foresight to book 3 years in advance.

Two and I are just going to watch Dylan Moran, whose character in the TV series Black Books is the very pinnacle of second hand book shop keepers and of course have a look at some books.

We are busy again at the moment and our favourite stand in book seller Low is working with us I’ll write later this week and introduce Low to you properly

Milton he just gets funnier and funnier!

Miss S cornered Sam at the junction between Popular and Unpopular science today. She wanted to talk poetry; she’d spotted Sam at the desk reading Milton which Sam likes to declaim to us if the shop is quiet. He reads it out aloud in a very serious manner, lines like,

Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threat'ning to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n

Then he laughs like a hyena until he cries.

We left him there for 20 minutes before we rescued him. He would have done the same for us.

I've Been Busy

Our esteemed employer, Sam, has a variety of methods for letting you know he's displeased with you. There's the obvious shouting and waving of arms - admittedly it's mostly Malcolm who suffers this sort of abuse; there's the low growl in his chest that permeates the shop, echoing off the shelves, which is often heard after a customer asks if we stock any Dan Brown novels; there's the quiet, inventive swearing that follows those rare occasions when a seller persuades Sam to part with more money than he wants to - I once had to look up in a medical dictionary a word that Sam had used to describe someone and actually blushed upon reading the definition.

And then there's the cold, hard glare accompanied by glacial silence.

That's what I've been getting for the last couple of days.

One has been very kind to me - she's been making me tea and listening to me babble on and on about my woes - but Sam, I've discovered, has little sympathy for the broken hearted. As One has previously mentioned, these last few weeks I've been - I admit - head over heels with a lady friend whom I met through the shop. She had come in and asked about a certain author, I had offered my opinion and simply chatted with her. A few days later, to my surprise, we were out on our first date.

She started spending time at the shop, got on with both One and Malcolm (who are both excellent judges of character) and everything was going fine until . . .

Until it wasn't. She broke up with me a few days ago and hasn't been in the shop since. While One has been a good and reassuring friend, Sam has been giving me the cold stare and silent treatment. One actually approached him earlier today and asked why he was annoyed with me.

"Love at his age is a fleeting thing. It arrives quickly and then leaves but will always be replaced by a new one given time," he said, stacking some books. "Customers, however, once lost will never return."

The moral of Sam's story: never date a customer.

this week we have mostly been...

It had been a quiet week here at Sam Haine’s business has been ticking over nicely. Two and I have been working on a spring clean of the children, astrology and occult sections. They meet at a rather unruly junction mid shop, and as Sam supports a Venn diagram effect to book placement one shelf sports a solitary book entitled “Dr Dee’s first book of planets and their placements”.

The high point of the week was spotting Strange Brian talking to a young and attractive woman. No so unusual you would think for a grown man to talk to a grown woman, but rather a breakthrough for Strange Brian whose previous attempts to communicate have often looked dangerously like stalking.

We were rather thrown by an unexpected arrival this morning. Sam had disappeared about business and we weren’t expecting him back until mid afternoon. So we were thrown when this guy, quite young, blond, far too sharply dressed wandered in asking to see him. I assumed he had something to sell and explained that although the owner was away I could look at his stock. To which he smirked and said

“I bet you could, darling “
Ick.
Seeing my unimpressed face, he stopped smirking and said
“Just tell Uncle Sam, Harry is here to see him.”
“Harry Haines?”
Said Two who had by now wandered over.
“No” he said like he was talking to simpletons “Scratch. Harry Scratch “.
When we final convinced him Sam was really out, he scowled, told us to be sure and tell his Uncle Sam that Harry had called and would call back and stomped off.

Sam has a nephew, wow. He always said he had no family and was heartily glad of it.
Mind you if my nephew was a charmless as Harry I’d disclaim him too.

The story so far.

It has been a while since my last blog for which I apologize. I have been away and Minion 2 was going to look after you but he is currently in love and so is no use to man or beast.
I went to visit my folks in Wales and spent some time in an old watering hole of Dylan Thomas, nearly every wall had a blue sign saying Dylan Thomas stayed here, or ate here or throw up and had to have a little sit down here. Still the bay was beautiful, the woods fecund and wild, the walking bracing and I saw seals.
But to business, what is happening in the shop? The S&M sisters have been in again. We had to find them a large print Karma Sutra, as a reference book so that they can check what exactly the books meant. Apparently they have started a reading group in the home and have a devoted circle of admirers who turn up to hear them read snippets from the books. The sisters were vaudeville performers once upon a time and so are ’more than capable of giving a spirited reading, which still carries to the back of the room‘ I am told. The mind boggles.

The JR Hartley addict has been in after some negotiation and I don’t know, probably bizarre blood rites in which he pledged his soul to the shop , or at least his wallet to Sam, been allowed entry to the holy of holies , Sam’s specialist collection. He left after several hours practically glowing from within like the Galahad having seen the Grail.

Malcolm fell from the top shelf where he had apparently been sleeping and alarmed a nun.

Horrible smell has now moved to the horror section, where it seems to be enjoying James Herbert. Minion 2 is trying to get it interested in other writers and keeps leaving Tim Lebbon books open for it.

Most curiously Strange Brian bereft of bobble, is slowly emerging from his habitual outfits in to some thing newer and smarter all together. Feeling unable to wear his hat sans bobble (“I mean it’s just a mockery isn’t it? “He said) the large duffel coat just had to go too. So he appeared in a leather duster which along with the furious beard made him look like the sort of person neighbours later describe as a quiet loner.
I found him in the sci-fi /steam punk section clutching his head and having a mild panic attack Sam correctly identified his malady and grabbed his spare hat from the hook by the door. It was his rather natty Blue Straw trilby with pink band; he firmly stuck it on SB head and yelled
“Keep it “as he rushed back to whatever.
When we next saw him he was wearing a shabby navy suit and the trilby. The week after the suit was upgraded to a smart sharply ironed number with crisp white t shirt. As SB was leaving I complimented him on the new look and put a white Gerbera in his button hole for him. He confessed he was thinking of trimming his beard a little. Wow, we might know what SB looks like any day now!

From Kettering with love

It is with great sadness that Sam Haines book shop must report the lost of a dear friend. For sometime the situation had be precarious, and the news we had all been dreading came though just after lunch.

Strange Brian came in; the bits of him that are visible to the human eye seemed distressed. After several false starts and the emergency administration of a cup of tea, Brian was able to break the news to us that the bobble had finally parted from his hat and could now be

“Anywhere from here to Kettering “.

Careful questioning revealed that it is extremely unlikely that the bobble is now in Kettering as the hat and Brian have never visited that doubtless fair city but who as Minion 2 asked who can really know the way of rogue bobbles?

People of Britain your help in this matter would be appreciated the bobble is of indeterminate colour and if found maybe returned to Sam Haine’s book shop at the usual address.

The Further Adventures of the Terrible Smell

Strange Brian, has forwarded a theory to explain the odd and
intermittent smell in the shop.
It has been particularly vibrant recently becoming so peculiar, so
specific unto its self that we have come to regard it as an entity in
its own right.
This is, in fact, what Brian maintains it is.
Brian walked in on friendlily banter between myself and Two about the
subject, which has be proven, despite his earlier blog on this subject
not in fact to be in any way caused by Two or activities of Two. Despite
it's affinity with Malcolm we have no reason to believe that they are
related either, and myself and Sam were discounted from the scope of
inquiry sometime ago.

(Sam incidentally always smells of heat, the smell of stones baked in a
summer sun, a curious smell but if you are the type of person to notice
these kinds of things you'd recognise it instantly. Two smells of
Chocolate and washing powder and Malcolm smells, often unfortunately, of
what ever he has been napping on, or near.
It is weird but I'm female and we notice this kind of stuff.)

SB when appealed to for his opinion first looked at us as if we were
deranged and then told us in tones clearly indicating that we should
know this, that the smell was in fact a pan dimensional being, only able
to manifest himself in our world as a non-corporal being. Apparently
this sort of thing is well documented in the kind of magazines Brian
reads. Brian further advanced the theory that he, the pan-dimensional
being, seems particularly fond of Arthur Ransome adventures.

When Two mentioned this theory to Sam, Sam looked grumpy and said
" I don't care what dimension he is from, this is not a library, go and
tell him to buy before he reads our books. I will expect this matter to
be resolved by the end of the week"

Now Two and I are left with an even more troublesome question, how do
you stop a pan-dimensional being shop lifting?