No day is ever the same.

Two boys sat outside on the wet pavement and removed their football boots before coming into the shop. They walk about in football socks, whispering hilariously.

Margaret rushed in needing some reading glasses; she said she couldn’t go up the street to get any as the committee had only given her one minute. She told me that someone has left football boots outside the door.

Dion rang. He is still very ill, too ill to read. He said sadly that his eyes hurt too much. He said he keeps his chin up otherwise he would go around the bend. He took his mother with him to the specialist, and if she hadn’t been there he would have had a certain few things to say to that doctor,  but he could not speak that way in front of his mum.

A young boy told me that he only likes short stories. He likes short stories because with them, you never know what you are getting, like Paul Jennings. And also, you get more.

Another young boy asked me for anything on cars please, not trains or bikes, ‘as I hate them. I just want cars.’

Toward the afternoon I complain about the cold, but a visitor, a stonemason, says that where he lived in England they had to light a fire on the building site to thaw out the builder’s sand. He said: this here is summer!

I am reading English Fairy Tales and Legends.

I am reading The Arabian Nights

I am reading Gould’s Book of Fish which is gruesome.

I am advised to read Go Set a Watchman.

I am told I am lucky.

I am asked why I read so much.

I don’t know why I read so much.

Daryl waves his arms hilariously to demonstrate the charm of George Borrow travelling through Spain and conversing with the gypsies, and as he gestures he knocks over a Wodehouse biography. He said that he never thought much of Wodehouse anyway, but the Spanish, well, they were a different thing altogether. He has chosen Into the Looking Glass Wood by Alberto Manguel.

The thing I know about Alberto Manguel is that he loved reading, and I tell Daryl about The Library at Night, one of Manguel’s other books. Daryl asks why I tell him about books that I don’t have here, and I am apologetic. I consider lending him my own copy but decide selfishly not to.

No day is ever the same.

A girl comes in asking for the 72 Tree House Stories but I tell her these are only newly published. She says that’s ok. She made her dad stop the car anyway.

Sandy asks for the Boy Versus Beast books and Dawn cannot find her copy of Heidi. She says she know exactly who took it.

Before I close up for the day, John tells me a long story about electricity.