A Quick Word... 'Welcome To The Bookshop' (Clarion Writing Piece #2)

This is my second piece going up for the Clarion Write-a-thon.

If you'd like to buy a piece yourself you can do so for $5 (all funds going to charity).

Read about it and donate here.

This one is for Rach.

WELCOME TO THE BOOKSHOP

(Picture courtesy of Flickr: gadl)

Hello! Yes, come on in. Watch your step there, that bit can be a bit… oh and you'll have to twist and pull for that door.

That's it. Right. Yes! Welcome! The economic winds have been turning in the industry, but there are still a few customers left who like to wander and look at real dead-tree

books, and we're still happy to sell them, so we're a little down, sure, but not out yet.

It is a nice place isn't it? That new book smell makes me dizzy. There's a good team here too, so I think you'll fit in just fine.

...

What was that? Did you say relaxingl? Ha!

Sorry. I didn't mean to be so rude there… with the 'Ha!' and everything. It's just -

The problem with working in a bookshop, the really annoying thing that you will have to deal with every day, is that people can't imagine that selling books could be any more difficult than reading books. They will deny that they think this, but if you tell them you're working in one, they will almost certainly picture you behind the counter with your feet propped up on the desk flicking through an old Penguin Classic like Bernard Black.

What they probably won't picture are the day to day necessities of the industry. The trawling through stacks and stacks of new arrivals out the back because you are sure you saw that book somewhere today. The ordering, the pricing, the allocating, the posting. The invoicing and shipping of mountains of books which sends brave individuals to the computer for days on end. Clicking, clicking, clicking.

They won't see the idiots - perhaps because they sometimes are the idiots. The people who want that book with the green cover by the guy whose name sounds like "netherfield" but isn't actually "netherfield". Or a picture book about a girl who finally uses the potty after screaming at her mother, and amazingly, through sheer skill you find three of them before: "Oh, the girl's name has to be Monique. It's for a girl called Monique, so it's gotta be Monique."

They will infuriate you. They will send you searching for hours and hours through your afternoon for a particular book before announcing they bought it round the corner immediately after they left. (More likely: "Oh that's the title? I'll get it on Amazon.) The worst will yell at you that The Lord of the Rings was definitely written by J.K. Rowling, and that you are an idiot for even bothering to look it up under a different name. Often you are left wondering whether these people read anything at all. Yet while the customer is not always right, it is certainly never permissible to punch them in the face. A grave flaw in society's commercial rules.

You will come to envy those that work for chains like Woolworths and K-mart - with their uniforms, and regular schedules, and little stickers on their water-bottles to show that they haven't stolen them off the shelves. These will strike you as the hallmarks of simplicity, the signifiers of retail as a machine. These people talk in 'shifts', and 'rosters' - words that you will never use. For you there is only work. There is turning up in the morning when there are things to be done, and there is leaving when they are finished. There are long days, extended hours, and parents sitting in the car out the front, the heater on full, desperately fussing about how they will ever get tea ready in time.

You will be exhausted. You will live in the bookshop, and you will stress about the day's decisions and possible mistakes when you aren't in the bookshop. You may not of course sleep in the bookshop, but do not despair, the bookshop will find you in your dreams. You will spend many nights in the bookshop of night, which is rarely very different from the bookshop of waking.

And here's the absolute worst thing. The truly soul-destroying part. The thing that people will never understand, but which will make it a hundred times worse.

You will do all this because you love it.

As much as it drives you crazy, selling books is the best thing there is. When you pass someone one of your favourites and they walk away smiling, and later return and practically strangle you while demanding the next in the series with bleary eyes and drooping jaw, you will know that this is the best job in the world.

It's there in the old couple who comes in every week, bright and early, smiling and dressed the way you might dress for your brother's wedding. It's the parent who wants so desperately for their kid to start reading that they're begging for that magical book - and you know what it is. It's the look on a child's face, fifty pages from the end, huddled in a corner, when the entire store could explode in streamers and glitter and fireworks, and they would move only to turn the page. These things make the hard work worth it.

Because stress my friend, stress is nothing in the face of bright, shining worlds. Stress is nothing in the face of new friends and life-changing observations about places real, and more than real.

Stress is nothing in the face of magic.

And we booksellers -

We deal in magic.

A Quick Word... 'For The Ladies' (Clarion Writing Piece #1)

This is my first piece going up for the Clarion Write-a-thon.

If you'd like to buy a piece yourself you can do so for $5 (all funds going to charity).

Read about it and donate here.

This piece is not dedicated to anyone.

FOR THE LADIES

(Picture courtesy of Flickr: dizfunkshinal)

Hello. My name is Johan. I'm a 41-year old male looking for the woman of my dreams.

I used to say on here that I liked going for long romantic walks on the beach, but this is no longer true. Going out with Susie (who was nice enough in terms of personality, but lets face it only about a 6 when it came to looks) she insisted after a few Bacardi Breezers that I fulfil this essentially empty cliche of a promise. And so we walked along the beach at 8pm on a Tuesday night. It was seriously goddamn cold. The wind picked up spray and chill over the waves and I was shivering the whole bloody way. Then I trod on a jellyfish and it stung me. I tried not to, but it really freaking hurt, so I cried on the drive to the emergency room, and she told me afterwards that the evening was "perhaps a sign that maybe we didn't belong together". I've refused to go to the beach since, because it stresses me to go barefoot, and I don't like getting sand in my shoes.

I also try not to go on dates to restaurants anymore, because the food takes too long to arrive, and you don't know what they put in it. It's much better to make things at home. If mum's not home I can't really cook much, but when I do beans on toast I kind of cut the bread into big thick slices, so it fills you up more, and it sort of looks like something from a restaurant anyway, you know?

I don't watch television or movies. I think they make you stupid. I don't like shopping because of the crowds, but It's okay because I write a list for my mum every Thursday and she picks up all the food and provisions that I need. It's an ideal system because I think she enjoys taking instructions and having something to apply herself to.

I hate bitchy women, I hate nice-in-a-fake-way women, I hate women who are just totally dumb, and I hate women who are arrogantly smarter than me.

Also, I am a hopeless romantic.

Message me,

Johan x

P.S - My name is really John.

A Quick Word... A Fairytale

It is a common misconception that all the witches of the world cast elaborate spells of grand design and complex undertaking, so that a child of their own dislking might fall into a deep sleep at the sound of their true name, or if they ever see their reflection without a ruby necklace on.

The old crone Finnigas for one, was certainly not one of these witches. She had the evil intent of course, but none of the stamina and study required for all those high-falutin' show-off spells. Instead she believed in the simple. The tried and true. She believed - quite simply - in pure evil.

Finnigas spent her days weaving thick patchwork quilts, which in sunlight shone with bright and delightful colours, but by night released powerful images into the purchasers head, ghostly apparitions and delusions that would wake them with a quaking fear. Finnigas got no personal reward from these dreams, except the one that she enjoyed most of all - the misery of others. That was until one day Miss Elizabeth Crutchill came storming into the marketplace, demanding that after buying a quilt last week she had slept fitfully for three nights in a row, the unborn baby in her belly kicking like a mule in chains, and that the nightmares had not ended until the quilt had been thrown on the fire. She called Finnigas a fraud and a sadist, and urged the others of the market to avoid her cursed bedspreads as if they were diseased to the touch. The townsfolk began to rally around, echoing complaints about their nights of sleep with the quilts, until the mayor himself demanded that they all be burnt in the town square (especially the one he had on his own bed), and that Finnigas be exiled.

Finnigas seemed not to respond to any of these accusations, and to merely grunt for most of the speech, but in actual fact she was muttering, her eyes closed and all her concentration focussed on Mrs. Crutchill as they chained the old hag up and dragged her to the woods. The further away she got the louder her voice became, until she finally cackled with wild laughter, and the woman's pregant belly began to glow with a violent red.

A nearby expert in lore advised Mrs. Crutchill that the curse that had been placed upon her was centuries old, and very simple. It was a sadness curse, not in that it made the bearer sad, but made it impossible for them to be happy. If her unborn child ever became gleeful, the wizened passer-by told her, he would most certainly die.

So as soon as he came kicking and screaming into this world, Mrs. Crutchill's son Jack was tapped and flicked and smacked and told-off constantly. He was put through rigorous chores and taxing tests. All holidays were forgotten or ignored, so that by the time we see him on his fourteenth birthday, he would be no wiser if you had told him he had just turned ten.

Jack Crutchill had lived fourteen years of misery thanks to the old witches curse, and any time a glimmer of hope had presented itself to him, it had soon been squashed by his overcontrolling mother. They ate only the most basic foods, so that he was alive but never fully satisfied. Friends were simply out of the question, and playing even more so. There were however, always chores to be done, and so for now Jack occupied his time with those.

Then on this day - his fourteenth birthday you will recall - he heard sobbing from his mother's study. She spent most of her time in there these days - though the room was out of bounds to Jack and he had no idea what on - but he had never heard her cry so miserably, and it made his heart ache with a shared sadness to hear her so upset. Passing the door he noticed that the reason he had heard her for the first time, was that she had neglected to lock it today, and so he pushed it softly open.

He found her poring over books. The volume she read now was entitled Miserabilis Vomicus and it was over this that she had been weeping. She had not noticed him enter and so he crept up behind her and read the book over her shoulder:

The curse is not easily broken, the book said, and without the co-operation of the original curser, the only real option is to help the individual lead a life of subtle but comfortable misery.

The boy read the words and something in his mind clicked. His head span and he took a step backwards, taking in the room around him. Wall to wall it was covered in presents and letters, cards and toys. Some read 'Happy 5th Birthday' or 'Congratulations To a Man of 12.' Others read 'Merry Christmas' or 'Happy Easter'. Everything his mother had denied him had been locked safely in this room, as if she could not bear to not buy gifts for her son, and yet then could not bear to give them. He looked around and soaked it all in, and then realised: she loves me.

There was the soft thump of a body falling to the floor, and the grieving mother turned from her tears and spun around to face the sound. The boy lay on the hard stone, dead. His eyes were open but unresponsive, his heart warm but not beating. And on his face, was a first - perfect - smile.