As it is Independent Booksellers week this week, I have a brilliant post to share with you from J.B Morrison, author of the FANTASTIC The Extraordinary Life of Frank Derrick, Age 81. Enjoy!
The Little Shop of Horrors
I have a fear of shops and in particular the
smaller ones where it’s harder to
hide. If I go in to a shop and am met by a smile and a ‘can I help you sir?’ I usually return the smile, say ‘no thank you’, pretend to browse for ten seconds
and then leave with nothing other than an increased fear of shops and one more
shop that I don’t feel
confident enough to go in to.
My fear of shops probably started when I was a
musician. Music shops seemed like
particularly terrifying places. The staff
ignoring me were always better musicians than I was and I invariably only
wanted to buy a single guitar string or a battery, which only annoyed the staff
more and made them ignore me for longer. I was afraid of clothes shops too and
in the nineteen nineties my kooky clothing style may have looked very clever
and Vivienne Westwood but it was really just a by-product of my fear of the
young people behind the counter in Topman. I felt more comfortable being served
by the old ladies in Marks and Spencer. Hence the trousers. Record shops were a
no go area as well. I always thought my music taste might be judged at the
tills. When I left I imagined the ‘current album playing’ stopping and everyone in the shop
laughing at me. When I became a bit well known as someone who was making the
music on sale it only made it worse. My girlfriend would have to buy my CDs as
well as my underpants.
So the introduction of online shopping was good
for me. I bought everything online. Guitars and trousers, music, pants, and a
lot of books. Independent bookshops were as intimidating for me as Topman and
the Charing Cross Road guitar shops were. I was worried that I’d choose the wrong book and the
shopkeeper would go a bit Bernard Black (Books) on me and throw me and my chosen
book violently out of the shop.
But now, typically just as there are fewer
independent books shops on the high street I’ve started to appreciate what wonderful places they are. And once
you get to know Bernard, or better still, he gets to know you, he’ll be able to recommend books to
your relatives to buy you for your birthday, and they’ll be books that you actually want to read and books that you don’t own already. Bernard is a living,
breathing recommendation search engine, unsullied (unintentional ‘Game of Thrones’ reference) by
those books on quilt making and cupcakes that you bought for your mum that
colour your Amazon customer profile. My girlfriend will be hoping that my confidence
to enter high street bookshops will extend to clothes and music. I’ve got enough guitars.
No comments:
Post a Comment