Overheard at Backstory #3
Even more scurrilous dispatches from the shopfloor
WATCH THIS SPACE next week as we’ll be announcing our September events line-up, including some extremely big names. Keep your eyes peeled! For now, check out our great June and July events here.
A REGULAR CUSTOMER recently told one of my colleagues that she is “enjoying Tom’s Saturday morning gossips”. So to please her, even if nobody else, here is the third in my occasional series of overheards, morsels and generally juicy titbits from the shopfloor and book world.
WINDOW SHOPPING: Now it’s (more than) hot enough, we keep the door open all the time, meaning we get constant unsolicited feedback from passers-by, including these two women recently:
Woman 1: “What do you do here – buy a book and read?”
Woman 2: “I think so.”
Woman 1: “Oh wow! That sounds great.”
Woman 2: “Do you like reading?”
Woman 1: “No.”
*They walk on*
IT’S GOOD TO SHARE: “Last night I fed a group of hungry women,” one woman told friends over drinks at our bar. “I thought there’d be leftovers, but it was like a pack of locusts.”
MAKE LEMONADE: “When I was trying to find my voucher, I found my lemon.”
CAP IT ALL: We aim to please but some customers make that a little trickier than others. Witness the otherwise very charming Australian who recently enquired “can I have a cap?” Sadly, our merch only stretches as far as a Backstory tote. After what in retrospect was far too long a pause, it finally dawned on me that this customer needed a cappuccino and was also, evidently, in a hurry. Next time she’s in I’ll ask her, “fic or non-fic?”
BLOSSOMING FANBASE: Denise was recently mobbed at the Chelsea Flower Show by a self-described “Backstory groupie”, who introduced her to all her friends. “Oh I hope you were just sat amongst the flowers reading books, were you?” Over Pimm’s later, she bumped into another Backstory regular, this one a little more retiring. “We gave each other a knowing nod,” Denise reports.
THANK GOD FOR GOOGLE: Publisher to bookseller, both frantically trying to remember an author’s name: “No it’s the other Claire! The other Claire!”
CUSTOMER TIC #1: Nine times out of ten, when you ask a customer what coffee they would like, they pause, they look up at the chalkboard, they might even say “oooh”, before finally settling on exactly what they would normally order: “A flat white please.” Megan tells me this would never happen in Australia.
HOME ECONOMICS: A boy of 9 or 10 reaches to pick out a bookmark while his mum pays for his latest read. “Are you sure?” she asks. “You’ve got one at home and it’s their margin.” I tell him to go ahead. “Oh, it’s all about the margin.”
WAG OF THE WEEK: “Any plans for tonight?” asks a regular. “Penguin’s 90th.” “I didn’t realise they lived that long.”
SPEAKING OF PENGUINS: Tom Weldon, Penguin’s boss, says the publisher’s founder Allen Lane hit upon the penguin because he thought it “dignified but flippant”. It’s a good reminder not to take ourselves too seriously, not that anyone in book world would do that...
BROUGHT TO BOOK: Yet more Balham demand for How Not To Hate Your Husband After Kids. The latest customer brought it straight to the counter before turning back to… her husband and kids.
HERE AGAIN: Sally, perched at the bar to pick her subscription books one recent Saturday, initially didn’t notice the regular drinking his coffee next to her. She apologised, and somehow made it worse: “I didn’t know it was you – I thought it was a customer.”
FEEDBACK IS (ALMOST) ALWAYS WELCOME: A newsletter reader from the Isle of Man made her first visit to the bookshop recently. The first thing she told us is that she came all the way to visit. The second was that she “HATED” one of our recent book recommendations. “And that’s great!” she added. “I love having an opinion on books.”
EASY QUESTION #1: “Excuse me, this book is on sale in Waterstones. Why is it not on sale here?”
EASY QUESTION #2: “Can I use my Waterstones gift card here?”
FISHY CUSTOMERS: Not long ago, a couple of Chinese tourists approached the counter. Their English wasn’t great and unfortunately my spell as a foreign correspondent only left me able to confidently order a taxi to a rooftop bar in any time zone. We soon resorted to passing notes back and forth. Each was a little more indecipherable than the first; as I scribbled back various queries – only to be met with vigorous head-shaking – I began to get excited about the potential sale. Could they, perhaps, be after a whole library of fascinating hardbacks to take home? Or would they want to be pointed to something typically English: an Austen, perhaps, or a Dickens? At length, one of them spoke into Google Translate and a robotic voice relayed their enquiry. “Where,” they wanted to know, “is the nearest fish and chip shop?”
LONG MEETING, WAS IT? This coming September, Penguin, Britain’s biggest publisher, will bring you The Penguin Book of… Penguins.
CUSTOMER TIC #2: Offer a customer a rare signed edition and they’ll happily take it. Offer them a run-of-the-mill paper bag and they’ll pause before exclaiming, “ooh, if you’ve got one!”
IN VINO VERITAS: You can tell the event we’re hosting by the drinks orders alone. Darby reports that Orlando Whitfield’s talk about the fine art world saw a run on the bubbles, while her interview with the founder of ParkRun nearly ran us dry of sugar-free cola and alcohol-free beer. The poetry crowd like their herbal teas, of course. And the standard order at my politics events? A large glass of red.
ZEN ZONE: An ex-colleague who I hadn’t seen for five years came to a recent book launch. Just as I was pouring fizz for 50 people and trying to sell them a few books too, she asked, with a straight face, “How is it being all happy and calm?”
LEAVE YOUR HAT ON: “Before you get all undressed, would you mind popping out for milk?”
NO JOB TOO SMALL: “Have you got building work going on?” a customer asked me down the phone recently, after I’d asked her to hold. “I was picturing you with a hammer.” I had, in fact, been frothing a couple of cappuccinos.
THE GRIM READER: Darby recently spent a very pleasant morning on a “tree walk” through central London, organised by a publicist to promote a new – and very verdant – book. In the same week, a publicist also emailed to invite me to go on… “a death walk”. Do we give off different vibes?
Want more Backstory?
Come to one of our author events in the shop almost every week
Request a book to pick up in the shop (we can usually get a book for the next day)
If you’re further afield, order a book from our website
Happy reading,
Tom
“Any plans for tonight?” asks a regular. “Penguin’s 90th.” “I didn’t realise they lived that long.” 😂😂😂🐧
Great stuff, one of your best! 👏💪😊