The Joy of Eavesdropping as a Bookseller in an English Seaside Town

Friday, September 6
Honestly, the first thing I heard this morning as someone walked past the bookshop door I cannot even type because it includes the worst of all the swears, but I will tell you that it was in the sentence “and then she called my mum  a —” and it sounded like that was just one thing in a long list of things that she did. So, really, who is the —?

First lady through the door asks about books by Ray Mears. I haven’t heard that name for a while, I say, like someone in a smoky bar in a black-and-white film.

“But he’s still relevant!” the customer says. We look at the catalogue to see what books are available and it turns out he published one earlier this year about British woodland, which, honestly, we should have had in because that’s the sort of thing that just sells. I’ve got one coming in the next order, but not for the customer, who said she was going home to research the other Ray Mears books, and assured me that she wouldn’t buy them online; she will come back and order them with me. Really, she is a lot like Ray Mears herself: concerned with survival.

A new customer takes some time browsing every inch of the bookshop, making a beautiful pile of purchases at the till. I’m thrilled with the selection, which includes some impeccable middle-grade fiction, hardback picture-book perfection and one of my favorite childhood books, Joan Aiken’s A Necklace of Raindrops. It’s probably been a few years since we last sold this book, but I’m immediately reordering it because it should always be available to happen to someone else.

I live in the constant shadow of all the books I said I was excited to read and didn’t get round to actually reading for another three years.

Dog on lead tries to enter the shop. Owner pulls it back. Owner’s companion says, “Does he want a book?” and laughs, but, like, what if he does?

“Look, Theresa May has written a book. The Abuse of  Power—I should put that one in my staff room!”

A chain gang of toddlers, hitched together with neon straps, en route to the beach from a nearby nursery, go past the bookshop with their responsible adults. “Are you a big book reader?” I hear one of them ask an impossibly small boy. “Yep!” he says. Good lad.

A customer who tells me they don’t have any grandchildren of appropriate ages still wants to look around the children’s books. No explanation necessary, I say, as a person who has bought children’s books for herself at every age. The customer buys a picture book and two finger puppets, and I am delighted for her.

Business Mum arrives with The Goods. The Goods being three miniature cakes (we share them) and two miniature coffees.

Minutes after BM leaves, a customer arrives who would definitely prefer that she was here. He loves a chat with her, but today he’s got me. I sell him his books, and he gets his loyalty discount. We manage a quick chat about his purchases. He’s buying Rumer Godden’s The Greengage Summer, which I also intend to read one day. He hasn’t yet heard anything about it—he prefers to order things from the editions he likes (either Penguin Little Clothbound, or Macmillan Collector’s Library) without reading any synopses or reviews, to broaden his reading. I say he’s brave and he says, “You win some, you lose some,” which is also true when you read synopses and reviews.

“I just really do love bookshops.” (Gliding past. Not even tempted to come in. A classic.)

A lady comes to ask me about slow-cooker recipe books. We don’t have one on the shelf today, because all anyone talks about is frying things in air. But we’re definitely moving into Slow-Cooker Season, aren’t we? Yes, with the ghosts of autumn, so come the stews. The customer can’t decide which book sounds good and hopes her daughter might have an opinion, since it was she who insisted her mother get a slow cooker in the first place. She says she’s really grateful to me for showing her what is available, and before she goes off to ring her daughter she reaches over the desk and squeezes my arm, so I know she really means it.

A man all in khaki enters the shop (imagine Ray Mears). He’s got khaki walking trousers with lots of pockets, a khaki shirt, a khaki zip-up gilet with lots of pockets and a wide-brimmed hat (khaki). He buys The Salt Path by Raynor Winn, which seems like a very khaki choice to me.

“It’s just…storytellers in there. That’s no use to me.”

One person enters the shop, followed by a family, followed by a couple, followed by a pair of teens. Suddenly we’re overrun with people, who all descend on the shop at the same time, despite not being together. A little girl is offered “one or the other” and replies, “We should just take both.” She’s right, of course. We sell three books.

I guess some days your destiny is just to meet your wiggler in the right place at the right time.

A shopper with a child asks me to put the purchase of two books in two separate bags so the child can carry her book herself. The child has not asked to carry her own book in a separate bag, and the book is a large picture book, so it has to go in a separate normal-sized carrier bag. Both bags cost us money, but I do not charge for either of them because I gave the first one for free—I was so glad of the sale. Asking for payment for the second would have sounded really petty, but there’s literally no way this small child will be carrying this bag for more than ten seconds at most and the mark-up on books is really not that much, people!

A boy who used to come to my JUNIOR book club comes into the shop because he’s back from university and now he has a BEARD. I am creaking towards the grave.

A middle-aged couple come into the bookshop and I’ve decided they’re on a date. The way they whisper like this is a library. She giggles. Perhaps they’ve just been for lunch. Lunch with wine. But perhaps I’m being short-sighted and this is a happy marriage? Laughing together in the bookshop, little glances. Then he asks her, “Have you ever read John Grisham?” and I know this is him flirting. They’re not married. Not yet.

Friday, September 13
Earlier this week I unpacked the Richard Osman poster. The Richard Osman window cling. The Richard Osman standee. The Richard Osman bunting. Not a euphemism. Apparently, he’s got a new book out. To be clear, the standee is of the fox logo from The Thursday Murder Club series, not a life-size cardboard cut-out of  Osman himself.

The first customer wants the Complete Works of Balzac not new Richard Osman. I ask if she’s going to start reading it today. She says yes. I’ll ask this of all the customers buying this book today, only because it makes me extraordinarily happy to think of someone going home to immediately start reading a book they’ve been waiting for. This doesn’t happen to me, because I live in the constant shadow of all the books I said I was excited to read and didn’t get round to actually reading for another three years. Why I ever pre-order hardbacks for myself is completely beyond me. Nevertheless, she persisted…

Next customer is one of my favorites because he brings his order complete with his contact details written out, which means no one (me) is in danger of writing them down wrong. Today he’s ordering some art books, and we go through the Taschen catalogue to see which ones he’s interested in. This means I am tested on my pronunciation of lots of famous artists and I think I do OK.

A customer wants to look at the hand puppets. I show her the big selection and the basket of smaller hand puppets, then leave her to browse in case she wants to try any of them on and do funny voices in private. Before long she approaches the till with a puppet that I genuinely haven’t seen for months. “I was looking for something that is not a real animal,” she says.

“Well,” I say, “this is…a wiggler!” Somehow, she’s found the only one in the whole shop. It must have been lurking at the bottom of the basket. I guess some days your destiny is just to meet your wiggler in the right place at the right time.

A lady comes into the shop and leaves her husband and dog outside. I say, “You can bring him in!” and she doesn’t even make a funny joke about her husband molting all over the books or sniffing the other customers’ legs. Anyway, the husband does enter with the dog and then says, “You’re allowed in, Charlie! She obviously doesn’t know you…” Charlie is a very good boy and when he tries to mount the desk the lady says, “He thinks any shop he’s allowed in must have treats for him at the till,” which is actually very constructive feedback.

I am surprising some of my Osman pre-order customers with signed editions because…I forgot to tell them I’d ordered signed copies!

One customer glances at the signature page and says, “He didn’t take too much time to do that, did he?” It’s not a great signature, but so few are. He will have had to sign thousands of these things; at least his squiggle has the gist of an R.

I tell the disappointed man about the time we ordered signed Oliver Jeffers books, only to learn that Jeffers had broken his arm around the time of signing and had simply drawn an X inside instead.

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From Receipts from the Bookshop: A Bookseller’s Year in an English Seaside Town by Katie Clapham. Copyright © 2026. Available from William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.