As a child I had a rich fantasy life – too rich, I was often told. But my fantasies were important to me, especially the ones about what I would do or be if and when I grew up, which I was in a great hurry to do. In retrospect I can’t remember ever wanting to be a train driver or an astronaut or Superman. The fantasy I remember best is the dream of having a little shop. It sounds unlikely now, but it wasn’t then.
My dream of becoming a small shopkeeper must have been inspired by weekly shopping trips with my mother to our local high street, which had about twenty establishments. Each one had a proprietor behind the counter, very much interested in pleasing the customers. We knew their names, and they knew ours. They kept humane and sensible opening hours, closing for two half days each week and all day on Sundays. There were big shiny stores in the city with famous names, like Selfridge’s and Harrods, but I had no interest in owning one of them. What I wanted was a little shop. The word “Little” was important.
Being a shopkeeper seemed to me like an ideal life. You worked indoors out of the rain, you were your own boss in your own place, and you could choose what to sell. Even better, people would walk in and give you money. I was never interested in becoming a butcher or a baker or a shoe salesman. My shop would be something irresistible like a toyshop, or a bicycle shop. But most often, I dreamed about a plain old junk shop, dark and cluttered and smelling of ancient dust and decay. I have an affinity for junk shops. There was a fine one in our high street and my mother always tried to keep me out of it. It was jammed to the ceiling with a thousand treasures, broken pieces of machinery, useless tools, dead radios, unstrung guitars, stuffed animals, umbrellas and walking sticks. In those post-war years a lot of military surplus material found its way there too, so I could browse heaps of old two-way radios, electrical testing meters, and cathode ray tubes. It was – the cliché is unavoidable – an Aladdin’s Cave of projects and challenges for an inquisitive boy, and I rarely came out without some small treasure.
Twenty years after those walks along the high street with my mother, I had a little shop of my own – a one-room bookstore. I loved it, but, not as much as I had expected. Those short hours don’t seem so short if you have to be there and stand on your feet the whole time. I learned about stock control, unreliable suppliers, accounting, theft and difficult customers. There are plenty of those in a bookshop. People go to the butcher for a nice lamb chop or some ground beef, but they go to a bookshop in search of something they heard about, something magical, ineffable, life changing. But of course they have forgotten both the author and the title. A bookseller needs a lot of patience.
I should have stayed with my original dream: a nice junk shop full of stuff that nobody wanted, where no demanding customers would ever come to disturb my tranquility. It could have been the career of a lifetime.
Copyright: David Bouchier
