Rubbed, Bumped and Cocked (A Post About Books*)

(*Apologies to all connoisseurs of pornography who have visited this site in error, thanks to the post's title)

I have now been self-employed for four months and seem to be settling into a routine that mirrors my old working life. I think I need the discpline of a self-imposed timetable, otherwise I'd just lie in bed looking at YouTube clips of chimpanzees playing the bassoon. Perhaps I'd start to smell too.

Every weekday, without fail, I'm out of the house by 9.00am and drive to my cowshed, listening to Radio Four podcasts. Yesterday I listened to one about the rise of megacities and how many of us secretly wished that most people would disappear, apart from our friends and loved ones. I concurred.

I rarely spend more than five minutes at the farm. The Steerforth Books cowshed is just a bare concrete shell and at this time of year, isn't the most inviting of environments. It is also surprisingly noisy, with a succession of tractors and lorries appearing at regular intervals.

I had planned to turn the farm unit into an office with two workstations, shelving for 6,000 books and a packing area. But at the moment, I just grab a few boxes of unsorted stock and take them back to the warmth and comfort of my home, where I can listen to music and make as many cups of tea as I like.

The first two hours of the day are spent valuing stock, identifying the small percentage of titles that are worth selling. Sometimes it can be quite soul-destroying to realise that books which seemed to have so much promise are utterly worthless, but at least I get to enjoy covers like this:

Shortly before lunchtime I pack the orders and take them to be posted. People often complain about post office staff, but the employees of the Lewes branch deserve a medal for their unceasing courtesy and professionalism, in the face of unremitting tedium. I'm sure their hearts sink when I walk in the door with a bag full of parcels, but they never let on.

After lunch I begin logging the valuable books, adding them to the sales inventory. Each title requires a full description of the book's condition, listing every fault. Phrases like 'cocked binding', 'bumped corners' and 'light rubbing' are part of my small lexicion of bibliographical terms. I avoid acronyms or excessive jargon.

There is a repetitive, machine-like quality to the work and I know that it drives some people mad, but the reward is the ever changing selection of books, many of which are unintentionally amusing:

'Staring at her offensively were several villagers'

'Where did you get this pass from, Missy?'

"Pull, Jill, pull" cried Laura, exerting all her strength

"And if anyone asks what we're doing, tell them you dropped half a crown down your dress and I'm helping you find it"

'Sheelagh bore the new girl off in triumph'
(clearly unperturbed by the fact that she was an identical clone of 'Sheelagh')

"Gosh, after all that fresh air I can't wait until we get to Radclyffe Hall!"

"One of these is a genuine Louis Vuitton, the other's from Primark. Can you tell them apart?"

Obviously I made some of these up (and refrained from publishing the ruder ones), but the original captions often contain unintended double entendres and there's something poignant about their innocence. Today, the small white object in the policeman's hand would be a sachet of cocaine or a cloned credit card.

Finally, a superb dustjacket for a novel by a writer who was, to George Orwell's dismay, one of the most popular authors of her day:

Love in a Cold Climate

Only three months ago, I was reading about the gulags in 'Life and Fate', thinking how awful it would be to do hard labour in sub-zero temperatures. Now, by some cruel twist of fate, I'm doing exactly that. If Solzhenitsyn was still alive, I'd feel that I could look him in the eye.

Admitedly I'm not a political prisoner, there are no armed guards waiting to shoot me if I try to leave and I'm not mining uranium with my bare hands, so the analogy doesn't quite hold up. But it has been very cold.

However, it will have all been worthwhile if I can find some decent books. For the time being, here are some indecent ones that I found today:

"Underneath their uniforms, they were simply girls - warm, soft, yielding creatures who lived fast and loved too recklessly..."

From the 'Five Miles High' club to the '500 Miles High' version:

"She's young, she's lovely - she's an astronaut! And she's been assigned a dangerous mission: to discover the whereabouts of four missing male astronauts who had preceded her to the moon."

If this was the 1970s, I could make a link using the words 'moon' and 'heavenly bodies':

"Laura was the kind of woman that every man wanted to undress - but she never gave them the chance - she did it herself!"

This nonsense all stopped in the early 80s. Was it just AIDS that made promiscuity less appealing or were there other factors too, like the demise of modernism, the growing realisation that sexual liberation had been rather one-sided and the increasing demand for equal opportunities? Also, what part did technology play - first the video recorder, then the internet - in putting an end to 'sauce' and 'titilation'?

Oddly enough, I don't find the images themselves that dated. Look at the video of Pixie Lott's 'What Do You Take Me For?' and it's as if the 1980s never happened. What really dates these books are the hilarious blurbs, with their "warm, soft, yielding creatures..."

It all seems a world away from this:

Doris Lessing reacts to Nobel win

This amused me:

Austerity and Atonement

Several people have kindly emailed me recently, asking how they can find Steerforth Books. The answer is, I'm afraid,with great difficulty. At the moment I operate almost by stealth, selling books in the dark corners of the internet, like a 1940s black marketeer (but all above board, I hasten to add).

As for the actual home of Steerforth Books, it's a small dot in the middle of this photograph:

I'm tempted to do a sort of 'spot-the-ball' competition, but I'm not quite sure where I am. Wherever it is, it's too far from my house, but at least the journey takes me through some beautiful countryside.

Yesterday, on the way home, I turned off down a small lane and ended up here:

The atmospheric mist is actually a bonfire - just out of the picture a man, who looked as if he'd escaped from the 14th century, was burning leaves. I smiled at him. He snarled back.

Driving through Sussex, you can travel through time as well as space. The main roads inhabit a world of wi-fi, retail parks and smoothies, but take a B road and you suddenly find yourself among the ghosts of other Englands: medieval, Georgian, Victorian and early 20th century, where woodsmoke rises from the chimneys of solitary cottages and death watch beetles rattle in ancient beams (I originally wrote 'death watch beatles', which would be a good name for a geriatric tribute act).

Sometimes I dream of being in one of those lonely buildings, with a fruit and vegetable garden, some chickens and a shed for my books. However, I would miss being in a town, particularly Lewes. I love the feeling of being connected, looking out at the roofs of my neighbours' houses at twilight and listening to the footsteps of people coming home from work.

But to return to Steerforth Books, I feel quietly optimistic about the business. The sales are growing steadily every week and, by Easter, I think I'll have reached a level where the profits provide a reasonable income.

In the meantime, Mrs Steerforth and I have adopted austerity measures. Trips to Waitrose are out and I have made a solemn promise not to do any internet shopping under the influence of alcohol (although I don't regret buying the meteorite).

On the subject of alcohol, we have both decided to cut out drinking during the week. Sharing a bottle of wine in the evening had become a habit. It felt like a reward for the challenges we had faced during the day. But, aside from the health risks, when I worked out how much we were spending I realised that it would pay for a holiday.

Mrs Steerforth was particularly keen to cut down on wine after disgracing herself at a party on New Year's Eve, when she became more drunk than I have ever seen her.

Ironically, only hours earlier, she had published an article about the secrets of avoiding a hangover on New Year's Day.

Quite how Mrs Steerforth failed to follow her own advice is a mystery, but she was one of many people who have fallen victim to our neighbours' generosity with alcohol. She has no memory of jumping up and down to 'Born Slippy' or trying to read a bedtime story to our sons at 12.30am before sliding down the stairs.

But the true moment of horror came the following morning, when my wife couldn't find the underwear she'd been wearing the night before. The expression on her face when I suggested it might be next door was priceless (as was the look of relief when I later told her that it was actually in our bathroom).

Since then, Mrs Steerforth has been drinking elderflower juice by the gallon, determined to atone for her transgression.

2012 is going to be a year of sobriety and hard work. The next few months are going to be particularly exhausting for me, but it will hopefully all be worthwhile in the end. On the plus side, I should soon have a new range of book covers and ephemera to share - this blog hasn't been the same without them.