That’s All Folks

It’s been quick but very very real

Set Frasers to Stun
Sep 1, 2018 · 3 min read

The only thing sadder than the closing of a book is the closing of a bookshop.

Well, I’ve closed two of them in the past week. It got easier as it went on.

This whole festival has been an experience. I’ve seen dreams come out of deliveries and put onto shelves. I’ve seen the resultant smiles while walking through the site. It’s been nice seeing kids walking around with the blue and yellow book festival bags.

But there have been difficulties, too. As an English teacher, I’d never needed to use my muscles that much. A bag of books. A whiteboard marker. Occasionally I’d lift a sofa. Totally different story doing Logistics.

Some of the boxes were properly heavy. It’s something I never would’ve thought about if I hadn’t worked this job, but the heaviest books are neither lengthy tomes on economics nor Norwegian crime fiction. The heaviest books are the children’s books. Tightly packed together picture books, dense and tight. 100 copies locked together, almost vacuum sealed. And the variations. There are paperbacks, hardback, board books, party books, and then merch. The weight was crushing at the start.

By the end, I was strong enough to bear the weight.

An empty children’s bookshop

So though closing a bookshop is saddening, it’s also a valuable opportunity to look back at what’s been accomplished. At the beginning of August there was no bookshop. By the middle of August it had been open for a week and was selling well. And by the end, it’d sold a massive quantity of books to the thousands of visitors.

More than this, I’ve left the festival with muscles atop muscles and a whole raft of new friends. So closing a bookshop doesn’t have to be a sad event or the end of a chapter. Rather, it’s just the completion of a mission.

The writer of this piece had great fun at the book festival and in addition had a mad story to tell about his shoes. In the first week of the festival, a little bit of loose flooring caught my shoe as I was carrying a box. I managed to right myself and wasn’t hurt, but my shoe got torn up. Not very professional to go around with foot rags but I had an idea: I’d ask the office staff if there’s anything they could do about my shoes. It took me a while to get up the courage, I didn’t want to cause any problems, and a day or two to find the time. Eventually I went and asked for the HR manager. And in stepped someone even more senior.

I was a bit taken aback because it’s a little like the Steve Jobs coming in to talk to you about your iPhone battery being a bit low. Or the Pope hearing your confession. Basically it’s some high level escalation. And something’s going to happen about it once I get a receipt.

Did I say stun? I meant eviscerate

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