The Bedside Crow

A man approaches the counter.

Hello mate, you still here? he says.

I laugh in a hollow fashion.

Not, he says, that I wish you anywhere underground.

I decide that this is his 'manner' and decline to take it personally.

Another man, wearing his hat backwards, approaches the counter. He pulls a blue box from a Sainsbury's carrier bag. Would you like, he asks, to buy some Swarovski diamonds?

No, I say, I'm sorry, but no, I wouldn't.

No? he says, are you sure?

I am, I say.

Really? he says.

Really, I say.

Honestly? he says.

Honestly, I say.

Why don't you, he says, at least have a look at them.

The telephone rings.

Go ahead, the man with the diamonds says, answer the phone.

I answer the phone.

Is that Books Etc? a voice asks.

No I say, no it's not. I laugh.

Why are you laughing? the voice asks.

Because Books Etc went bust a while back. I say.

They did? he says. So you don't trade as Books Etc any more?

We have never been Books Etc, I tell him.

But Yellow Pages says you are.

Well we're not, I say. I start to weep.

The man with the diamonds rattles his box.

I am getting my haircut by a lady using a pair of unenthusiastic scissors.

We have not started well.

Not working today? she asks me as I sit in the chair.

Not at the minute, I had tell her. Maybe later, I say.

So what do you do then, she asked me.

Oh, this and that, I say - I have given up telling strangers that I own a bookshop as I am fed up of having that conversation, over and over and over again.

I apologise for having damp hair. I have just been swimming, I explain.

Swimming, she says, you're not one of them are you?

One of what? I asked her.

One of them nutters who go swimming.

Most mornings I do, yes, I tell her.

I think you're mad, when I get up all I can think about is putting the kettle on and having a fag. She coughs as if to confirm this. Stabs at my hair.

My mind drifts to a story that Karen has told me earlier. Working at the shop on Easter Monday a shifty looking man comes in through the door. Straight away she is suspicious of him and describes him as having ' watery eyes.'

Her gaze follows him around the shop until he eventually makes it to the counter.

You wouldn't, he asks her, know where I could sell a kind*e quickly, would you? 

He looks desperate.

My coughing barber taps me on the shoulder, There you go, she says, all done, and I am reminded then of another story a friend told me once a long time ago. It concerns a very famous American screenwriter, an Australian prostitute and the phrase she always repeated at the denouement of their meetings.

I need to have a word with my mind.

A man holding two bananas enters the shop.

Good morning, he says.

It is 3.27 in the afternoon.

It's a bookshop, he says.

Another man is standing staring into space. Where, he asks, is your innovation and research section?

Stan the window cleaner pops his head around the door. I started that book, he says, and I wish I bleedin' hadn't.

Do you have any books on mineral wealth? the man with the bananas asks. You know, he says, like the gold mines of South Africa?

Some time passes and I ponder fifteen years standing beside this till.

Towards evening another man enters the shop. He is a little bit agitated. I need, he says, a bell. You don't sell doorbells do you?