I'm not quite sure how this happened, but an earlier joke about becoming the Lovejoy of bookselling has turned out to be remarkably prescient.
(I read somewhere that Lovejoy has been shown in 127 countries, however if you are from Iran and haven't seen the pirated Farsi-dubbed DVDs, I should explain that he is a fashion icon and widely-respected specialist in antiquties, whose chaste courtship with a woman called Lady Jane would surely appeal to even the most conservative clerics.)I fully intended to stick to books - that's what I know about - but when I saw a set of Edwardian chairs on sale for £40 on eBay, I couldn't resist and made a winning bid, with only seconds to go.
I wish the chairs weren't in Devon - 320 miles seems a long way to travel in one day, but I'm convinced that I can make a decent mark-up if I ensure that the chairs are well-photographed and the auction ends on a weekend evening (when many potential buyers will have had a few drinks).
Even if I don't make any money, the chairs will have served their purpose by making me realise that there's no earthly reason why I have to stick to books. I can sell anything I like, as long as I make a profit.
Indeed, earlier in the week, I contemplated emailing the person who's designing my logo and getting them to scrap the word 'books'.
But just as I was losing any faith in getting some stock, the phone rang. It was a man who'd just seen an advert I'd placed in a local paper: would I be interested in buying some military history books?
I scribbled down the address and agreed to drive over the following morning.
The next day, as I rang the bell of a stranger's house in a town I'd never been to before, I wondered what to expect. An older man opened the door and asked me to remove my shoes and go upstairs. I quickly checked the number to make sure that I had the right house (after an embarrassing incident where I unwittingly turned up to someone else's massage appointment).
It was the right place.
I was led into a bedroom which, to my relief, had several boxes of books. My heart sank when I saw a pile of short story anthologies (they're impossible to sell), but some of the other titles were more promising.
I'd been worrying about how to agree on a price - I hate haggling - and made what I thought was a fair offer. He accepted it immediately, which made me wonder if I could have got away with less. But although I need to make a living, I don't want to rip people off. There has to be an honourable compromise.
I now have 38 books, plus a kind donation from the Poet Laura-eate, bringing the total inventory to 42 titles. That's about 0.5% of the total I need to achieve what my old boss James Heneage always used to refer to as 'critical mass'.
It's going to be a long, hard slog.
