The Loneliness of the Long Distance Book Runner Read Online Free PDF Page B

jolted upon hearing the words ‘ boite du livres ’. I thrust my hand skywards and soon discover that nobody else wants to bid. Sixty francs is all I’ve offered and I feel slightly exhilarated to have participated and triumphed at my first attempt.
    Successful bidders are expected to assemble fairly promptly at a desk near the hall’s entrance where payment is made. In handing over the money, I am then puzzled when the auction ‘ushers’ walk straight past the box of books. They go instead to a massive mahogany headboard, which they need two men to carry. My mistake dawns on me.
    ‘ Bois du lit ’. Idiot. Attempting to appear unfazed, I lead the assistants outside to my van into which they heave the bed. I feign contentment with my purchase until I drive out of their sight whereupon I unleash a volley of expletives.
     
    (Distance travelled: 3 miles. Profit: None. Fact learned: A little knowledge in French can lead easily to humiliation.)
Southport, July 2009
    Drawn to this smart town with a reputation for good bookshops, I am not disappointed. The owners at Kernaghan Books, situated in Wayfarers Arcade, are friendly and much of their stock is reasonably priced (by my definition) in that it can be bought and sold on. I willingly part with £10 to own the works of Voltaire and the diary of Jules Renard in the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade.
    My next port of call is Broadhursts, established in 1926. The shop covers four floors and is a delight for any bookworm or bibliophile. Some of the rooms have a museum feel about them and they get me thinking. Broadhursts boasts an impressive array of Biggles and Just Williams . Many other books – including modern firsts – are struggling to fetch prices achieved in previous decades. W. E. Johns and Richmal Crompton have resisted this trend but for how long? The rule of supply and demand dictates but demand has no inherent hold on stability at the best of times. Collectors covet certain books because other collectors have previously done so and are continuing to do so. Someone is buying a book whose ‘value’ isbased upon other people’s assessment of its monetary worth. A philosopher acquaintance and former customer points out that these books as an investment are dependent on a third party’s investment decision. He has me scratching my head and wading through Keynesian theories of economics in the tertiary sector.
Opening Bangor Bookshop, April 2007
    The city is roofed in local slate – Penrhyn purple – which imbibes somehow the grey skies, something of a meteorological default setting in North Wales. To compensate, there is the timeless melancholic beauty of the mountains.
    Bangor is really a small town although its compact cathedral confers upon it official city status. It has an old university (by today’s standards) and a proud, friendly working class community. There is an absence of snobbishness but Bangor is still, in other respects, a microcosm of Britain, and somewhat schizoid in nature; PhD meeting KFC: professors intoxicated by the abstruse, lads on lager overload, seaweed from Japan for sale in Upper Bangor’s health food shop while, below, the city’s High Street is awash with the country’s regulation fare. Seagulls gorge on the leftovers. A plethora of chippies but no fishmonger. Packed pubs at weekends. Drunk students, skunked students, but studious ones too, that, I hope, will buy second-hand books. Some locals resent their presence and the mess of their rubbish spilling out of discarded bin liners. But they are the lifeblood of the city, and in the High Street, at the cheapest end, I open a bookshop prosaically called ‘Bangor Bookshop’.
    I make a stab at targeting the university market but the margin on academic texts is, after a student discount, fifteen per cent at best. It makes more sense to concentrate on used books. Rents and rates mean that I have to conjure, from book sales, some £800 a month before I’ve made a penny. I’m struggling