Victory

Portsmouth. It should be such a lovely place - a historic naval dockyard, Charles Dickens' birthplace and a wealth of literary associations, from  Nicholas Nickleby to Mansfield Park. But sadly an unholy alliance of the Luftwaffe and postwar town planners have brought this city to its knees. It was probably always a bit rough, with all of those jolly tars wandering the streets, but was it ever this ugly?

 

In fairness, the local authorities have tried to spruce up the place recently and the Spinnaker Tower is a striking landmark:

But the only real solution to Portsmouth's woes would be to bulldoze most of the postwar buildings and replace them with a mixture of pre-1940 replicas (à la Warsaw) and some well-designed modern alternatives. Naturally, you'd need a contemporary art gallery as well, to attract some middle class people from Stoke Newington.

The ship above is the HMS Warrior - the world's first iron-hulled warship. It boasts an array of impressive statistics about armaments, horse power and speed, but I'm more interested in the interior design. I like to be comfortable:


This all looks terribly civilised, as does this:



Perfectly fine for a Second Lieutenant and probably no more spartan than their room at Harrow, but blow stairs it was a different story. The HMS Warrior had ten boilers that were heated by four large stoves each. The combined heat of 40 stoves created a working temperature of 120f and the men who worked there were paid an extra 25%, to compensate for the appalling conditions.

I'd decided to take my younger son here for a visit to the HMS Victory, but ended up buying a ticket for the entire dockyard. It was an odd place with a rather rum selection of visitors, including an eight-year-old boy who was dressed like a 1920s country squire, with a Herringbone Tweed jacket and matching cap. He was accompanied by an old man with ancient hearing aids that were so large, they looked as if they could pick up echoes from the Big Bang, or the movements of enemy submarines.

As we approached the Victory, I saw two of the Royal Navy's new top secret stealth warships:



I couldn't help wondering why these 'top secret' vessels had been docked right next to a major tourist attraction. Shouldn't they be in a remote part of Scotland? The Hood from Thunderbirds wouldn't need his secret camera here:



Can you see them behind the Victory, or has their stealth technology defeated my digital camera?

We'd booked a guided tour around the HMS Victory and I was looking forward to gory tales of Nelson's death, maggot-infested biscuits and hasty amputations. Unfortunately the tour was ruined by the behaviour of several children, who kept banging and rattling every artefact they came across. One particularly dippy woman allowed her 18-month-old to stagger freely around the decks until it inevitably had a collision with a sharp object.

However, in between the interuptions, I managed to learn that Nelson was pickled in brandy so that his body could be preserved for a state funeral, Captain Hardy was 6'4" and amputations were performed without the benefit of alcohol.

After the tour I congratulated my son for behaving impeccably and decided to reward him with a visit to an antique amusement arcade that included familiar machines like the menacing Jolly Sailor and the Fortune Telling Lady. However, there was one that I'd never seen before:


Pop 20p in the slot and the doors will open, to reveal a reconstruction of the public hanging of James Aitken, alias 'John the Painter' - a man who supported the colonial rebels in America and expressed his solidarity by setting fire to the rope and pitchyard store in the dockyard at Portsmouth. The animated execution was a little grim for small children and I regretted finding the extra 20 pence piece.

As we reached the end of the visit, I wondered what my son had got out of it. I'd become so jaded by a succession of disastrous visits to museums and buildings with his older brother, I'd almost given up the day trips. Perhaps all children hated them.

I looked at my son. He was happy, skipping along the dockyard path with a shy smile on his face. On the way back, we talked about future days out and my son suddenly announced his plans for going to university. He seemed to have an appetite for life. Why was his brother so different?

As we left Portsmouth, I saw a sign that pointed the way to Charles Dickens' birthplace. I'd missed it for the third time. I told my son, who paused for a moment, then turned to me and said: "Wouldn't it be funny if they'd had computer games in the Stone Age."

New Year, New Bookmarks

I've had a slightly frustrating day back at work, during which I discovered that some of our stock has been damaged by the recent rains. I'm not quite sure how to dry out an 8,000 square foot warehouse without spending a fortune on industrial equipment, but perhaps I should take the advice of my seven-year-old son, who told me to hire something for a couple of months until the weather changes.

It's a bittersweet moment when your child has a better grasp of business than you do and I felt a mixture of pride and shame (just like I did a few weeks ago, when my mother's poem was published in the Daily Mail).

I'm now working in partnership with someone who owns a company selling modern books. My stock is essentially a waste product of his business, so the arrangement suits both of us. It's too early to say how successful we will be, but it beats working for other people.

I miss the camaraderie of working with others, but when a friend told me that she recently had to attend a 'team building treasure hunt' and a course entitled 'From bolt-on to centre of gravity', the mud and cows suddenly seemed a lot more attractive.

I've been working through a large consigment of stock recently and every few boxes, I have found a photo that has been used as a bookmark. Here's a selection from the last couple of weeks:

 

(Strip Poker must have taken hours during the Victorian age, with all those layers of clothing)

The random photographs were a bit thin on the ground last year, but I shall be redoubling my efforts to rescue more gems from the skip of oblivion.

Annus Discendi

According to Microsoft, it's my "special day, so enjoy it. And don't forget to share what you're doing today with the friends in your life". At some point in the past, I must have lied to them about my date of birth - I was born in March. But like birthdays, today is a time of reflection and looking forward.

I can't say that I have particularly enjoyed 2012. Some years leave you with a store of fond memories - a montage of days out, meetings with friends and personal achievements - but  this one was largely defined by illness and uncertainty. The most positive thing I could say about 2012 is that it has been a year of learning.

However, the year wasn't without its positive moments. On the plus side, I worked here during the summer:

I also enjoyed a magical evening in Seville:

Wandering around an almost-deserted Alcázar Palace in the early evening, more than made up for the terrifying drive through the back streets of the city centre.

But apart from a few very enjoyable drinks with old friends, I did very little this year. I intend to make up for lost time in 2013.

One plan for next year that has been shelved is our decision to get a dog. The border terrier that stayed with us during the summer has come for Christmas, but after an emotional reunion, my oldest son has shown little interest in taking it out for walks - having a dog in winter is clearly less appealing. When, on Christmas Day, he solemnly annouced that he'd changed his mind about getting a dog, I felt a huge sense of relief - 2013 already looks good.

I'll finish this very brief post by saying a sincere thank you to anyone who has taken the time to read this blog. Whoever you are, wherever you are, I wish you health and happiness in 2013.

"Do you have that cookery book with the red cover?"

 
After six months on Twitter, I have realised that it probably isn't for me, or I'm not for it. But I love reading other people's tweets (especially when they're not telling you about their cat or the great review their latest novel has just had).

I particularly enjoyed this tweet from a few days ago, by bookseller @lucyfishwife:

A customer asked me where we kept kids' books for 20-yr-olds. I pointed at the Fiction section.

How I miss dealing with the general public.

It's now over five years since I last dealt with a customer face to face. Although I still sell books, I don't dare to call myself a bookseller any more because I think that unless you're prepared to meet your public, you're merely a supplier. Internet bookselling is like cybersex, stripped of the agonies and ecstacies of real human contact. I love it.

Real bookselling was a little like Russian Roulette - you never knew whether the person approaching your desk was going to ask a normal question like "Do you have a copy of X by Z?" or a completely daft one like "I live in Surrey but have a holiday home in Staffordshire. Do you have a book of walks that just covers Surrey and Staffordshire?" (a genuine question, by the way).

Reading @lucyfishewife's anecdote reminded me of some of the gems I've been asked over the years:

"Could you recommend a book for someone who only has three weeks to live?" (I suggested short stories)

"It says Biography and Memoirs. Why don't you have an autobiography section?"

"I want that new gardening book. The title? No, I can't remember. Author? Oh, it's a lady and it's green. Do you have it?"

"Where's your non-fiction section?" Asked by a middle-aged man with a fruity voice and dyed hair. I replied that it was the whole shop, apart for the fiction and children's sections, and that it was divided up into separate subjects. Minutes later, he came downstairs shouting "Your non-fiction section is impenetrable!"

"I want a novel with a moral dilemma." (Which is like saying "I'd like a motor car with an engine")

"Do you read?" I often replied, very politely, "Yes, I do. *Long pause* Do you?"

"Why have you moved your fiction section downstairs? Last year it was upstairs." When I replied that it had always been downstairs since we'd opened, two months ago, suggesting that they were confusing us with another shop, the customer shook their head, "No, it was definitely here and it was upstairs."

"Will I like this?" Asked by a heavily made-up woman in her late 60s, waving a copy of Foucault's Pendulum. I wanted to say "How the **** should I know?", but smiled sweetly and said "You'll love it", which turned out to be the right answer.

"Where's your section of coffee table books about Paraguay?" Try Paraguay.


"Do you have any books about sex with animals?" The same man asked this question on a weekly basis.


"Have you got that book about cholera?" I asked if he meant Marquez. He nodded, but then leaned forward and said, rather patronisingly, "Actually, it's pronounced Marqeth." His smug, punchable face was a picture when I patiently explained the difference between Castillian and Latin American Spanish.

"That book you recommended to me last week? It was crap." No, you were just too dim to appreciate it.

"If I ordered the book now, could you get it in time for Christmas Day?" Asked at 3.15pm on Christmas Eve.

As time went on, my answers became more confident. When the customer who wanted coffee table books on Paraguay huffed and puffed about our glaring omission, I could confidently point out that this was the first time in ten years that anyone had asked me for a book about Paraguay. I also knew how cheeky I could be without provoking a complaint, perfecting a subtle insoucience that Jeeves would have been proud of.

But in the end, you get battle fatigue. A man I worked with who was 17 years older than me had become an embittered Basil Fawlty figure, picking unnecessary fights with perfectly harmless customers because he was at the end of his tether. When I saw how he treated a poor woman who'd innocently asked for a self-help book by Betty Shine, I made a mental note to get out of bookselling before I became like him.

We lost touch, but two years ago I bumped into my ex-colleague at a historic building, where he was a voluntary guide. He seemed happier than he'd ever been in the bookshop. I knew how he felt.