Saturday 27th December, 2025

(In Which Several Laws of Physics Are Tested by Merchandise)

This morning began with the arrival of a truly enormous bag of bookish merchandise - the sort of bag that suggests it has recently swallowed several smaller bags and is feeling smug about it. Kris and I spent the day unpacking, cataloguing, pricing, and then standing very still in the middle of the shop, attempting to divine where on earth it should all go.

By conservative estimates, we have rearranged the shop approximately twenty-six times. This number may be higher. The shop itself appears unfazed and continues to offer up corners we are certain did not exist yesterday.

We now have new notebooks, calendars, Celtic belts with pouches, earrings, bookmarks, and assorted objects that whisper, You don’t need me… but wouldn’t you like me? every time you walk past.

Both of us were feeling a bit boggish today - the peculiar post-Christmas weariness has crept in, that strange limbo where time loses meaning and every day feels faintly like a Sunday. Fortunately, Stars arrived and began painting the moon and the beginnings of a castle on our mural wall, which immediately improved morale, the atmosphere, and possibly the structural integrity of the building. She has that effect. She is, quite simply, a walking antidote. She also dropped off a couple of new candles to replace the ones we’ve sold out of, and the shop now smells of warm spice and tea, as though the books themselves have put the kettle on.

We also soft-launched our Saturday Disney Morning, which meant we put on a Disney soundtrack and spent the morning dancing around the shop and singing along. This felt entirely appropriate. If you cannot sing Disney songs in a bookshop, then civilisation has failed and we may as well all go home.

It was a quieter day - a few visitors, no stampede of customers wielding credit cards - but then, mid-afternoon, something quietly wonderful happened.

A lovely woman wandered in and, without quite knowing why, found herself in a corner of the shop she hadn’t meant to visit. There, rolled up and forgotten, was a giant canvas wall-hanging: an old-school anatomy chart of a full human skeleton, complete with tiny labelled diagrams. It looks exactly like something you’d expect to find in a long-abandoned science classroom. Somehow, it was exactly what she’d come for.

No one had so much as glanced at it since we opened.

She unrolled it, took one look… and gasped. An actual, audible gasp - the sort usually reserved for unexpected proposals or dragons.

She teaches children with disabilities and is going to hang it in her classroom. I was instantly, overwhelmingly happy. The canvas had been waiting. It knew.

The rest of the day trundled on - people came and went, as they do; browsing, lingering, saying hello. We sold a couple of t-shirts, and while it wasn’t a big sales day, the shop seemed content enough just to be open again. Kris is already chomping at the bit to redo the window display, mostly because we now possess a frankly unreasonable number of excellent things, and the window is beginning to look… expectant.

Metal and wooden signs declaring Beware of Dragons, Fairies Enchant This Area, and We’re All Mad Here - You’ll Fit Right In. Big, chunky gothic cross pendants. Enough jewellery to cause mild indecision in even the most decisive person.

We’ve also been tossing around ideas for the New Year. I am determined to finally launch our e-newsletter - a task which currently exists somewhere between simple administrative job and mystical rite known only to three people on the internet.

Peter came in today - a local character of the larger-than-life variety, with the bushiest ginger beard you’ve ever seen. He occasionally leans on the counter and has a chinwag, and today he regaled us with a detailed story about a Scandinavian Viking who falls in love with a princess. Naturally, he wants me to write it. I was extremely impressed by the sheer scope of his imagination, and only mildly alarmed by the possibility that I now have a new WIP (Work In Progress).

And somehow - miraculously - by the end of the day, all the new stock was processed and accounted for. This should not have been possible, but we are choosing not to question it.

So that was our Saturday. We now have three days off, and we’ll be back in on Wednesday… which is also New Year’s Eve.

The shop will have plenty of opinions by then.