When Bimbos and Books collide

Today, the shop was invaded by a classic bimbo. So bimbo, in fact, I had a Bournemouth flashback. Fashion princess, obnoxious perfume, and just that kind of bimbo intonation that I can't describe but which drives me insane every time.
"How much are the books?", she asked.
"Which ones?", I replied. "They are all different prices, you know..." (This isn't the bloody pound shop!!, I grumbled mentally.) "You'll find the price usually on the back by the ISBN number."

She looked at me in terror. What? Numbers? Letters? Her head exploded.
Well, I lied. But it was close. I'm pretty sure, in fact, her pea brain lost some info somewhere to make room for this one, and she's gonna jump every time she sees that weird old guy in her house she used to call dad. "Yeah, there was all numbers, and I got confused...!"
'I bet you did', I thought.

I know, I'm being mean, but seriously, airheads are just a pet peeve of mine, and some of the ignorance of the most basic knowledge I see on a daily basis should just be pubishable. Girls like that make Mary Wollstonecraft turn in her grave (the irony being that that type of girl tends to congregate in Bournemouth, which is where MW is buried. But then, maybe her school of thought was buried with her...)

But because I'm a corporate whore, I was all nice and customer service. "Which book are you after?"
And lo and behold, she walked straight up to that Katie Price book. Not the (ghostwritten) novel, but, to add to it all, the fashion guide. There, on the back, it said in fairly large letters, £20. "Half price of that, that is £10."

Just to give her something to think about.

not much to say, so let another tune speak

It was fucking stupid of me not to double check that I had some left, but I ran out of Prozac the other day. It's happened before that I missed a dose or two, but the combination of work stress, losing friends and a variety of other worries have really made this withdrawal hell. Is it withdrawal? Or is it just grief? I've begun to question everything, not trust anything that I feel, wondering if any of it is justified, if I am allowed to feel it, or if I'll just be accused again of emotional blackmail.

I've been so on edge these days it's scared me. I dunno what it is - is it just the lack of pills, is it that my resources are drained to the last drop, my capacities stretched to bursting point - either way I feel as if I am precariously balancing on some precipice overhanging an abyss of complete madness, full of those unnameable swirling colours from outer space that Lovecraft used to write about. I've had awful dreams, I have aggression fantasies so violent they freak me out every time someone pisses me off. This old miserable git that rammed his shopping trolley into Kate without a word of apology: I had a mental film tearing through me where I kicked and smashed the shit out of him for being such a cunt. I am mentally screaming at people who block my way, who seem to whinge at nothing, I want to tear my hair out and hysterically curse the idiocy around me, and at the same time I feel that I am as much part of it and contribution to it as everyone else, and it makes me hate myself.
Am I that much a product of my neurotransmitters (or lack thereof) or is it an inherent character flaw? I have no more patience, joy, interest, enthusiasm.
I have repeated suicide fantasies that invade me, and I dunno if they are an alien force or truly part of me, but they are coming more often now, more forceful, prompted by smaller and smaller things.

Lack of Prozac turns me into a bad person. I can't function on my own resources. I will always be this nutcase, and I will always scare people away, and I will always have this need to get emotionally attached just to keep me wanting to live, to fill me up with something good and approaching something like joy, even if it is entirely delusional. But it will always be unrequited, and it will always push those away I care most about, the more I love them, the more they will hate me. Indifference is what saves my relationships, and what empties me so much that I see no point in continuing.
I can't blame them. I don't want to be around myself either.

I want to scream, but I feel totally alone, isolated and suffocated.

Life comes around

And every time you vent your spleen,
I seem to lose the power of speech,
Your slipping slowly from my reach.
You grow me like an evergreen,
You never see the lonely me at all
...
Without you I'm nothing

Black Books's got nothing on him

Just around the corner from where I used to live is this old little bookshop. Just as it should be, in a side street, nothing flashy and high-streety, full of obscure old titles mixed in with your grubby second hand book.
It's been there as long as I've lived here... but what I didn't know until a little while back is that it's actually quite famous. Famous for all the wrong (which, in my book, makes them right!) reasons.
It's because the owner, Rodney, was absolutely bonkers. Some found it endearing, some entertaining, some terrifying. I personally adore a shop run on abuse, it's the ultimate novelty and gives a nice break from the annoying suck-up customer service we've all been violated by at one point or another.

By now I have met quite a few people who had either been served by him (doesn't this give 'serving' a whole new meaning) or worked in the same business. The professionals usually say that Rodney has pissed off quite a few people. He has certainly creeped out a few.

My friend Iain told me about how he was browsing for poetry books one day, and, as he was leafing through a Shelley book, found Rodney peering over his shoulder.
"Shelley, huh!" grumbled Rodney. "Dead, i'n't he? His 'eart's buried in Bournemouth!"

Rodney had a go at me once (which extracted internal squeals of delight from me) for using the word "dissertation": "It's a thesis, goddamnit!"
He also regularly abused his bookshop minion, his "Igor", if you will, that freaky little man who once pretended that the clock integrated into a giant hideous painting (weird paintings was another thing they seemed to sell in there) was his wristwatch.

All in all, Rodney is the antithesis of all that the Waterstone's Get Selling campaign stands for.

However, the younger generation, with a few exceptions, loved and adored him. The man has his own facebook fangroup, for crying out loud!
It even went as far as a team of TV production students filmed a documentary about him.
In case you don't believe me about how equally nuts and endearing Rodney is, watch it.

From the (admittedly sometimes foul) mouth of babes

It's been 2 1/2 months since I transfered to this tranquil little town in the Shire, after my bookshop in the Mouth of Bourne has been put to eternal rest. (It had been wasting away quietly for years, but then the end came swiftly and painlessly.) It's a high street shop, which is totally different from the campus clientele, but still adventurous, and I have been lucky to find a team which is good fun and a healthy bit bonkers, as all working in the book trade should be.

Our customer base is completely different from what I was used to. Now I get disgruntled old people, perverts flicking through the erotica section (which I had always managed to avoid in the uni shop by totally eliminating said department), the odd Lord and Lady, surprisingly few chavs, and then, of course, the children. Oh, the children.

I had to reconcile myself to the fact that there would be a kids' section, it was a job in a job with a children's department, or no job. You, dear reader, probably gather from this that the kids' section is not popular with us, simply for the fact that it's impossible to keep cleaned up, absolutely hopeless to find a book if you need it, infamous for mysteriously making books disappear, and utterly inconceivable to organise. It doesn't help that parents nowadays happily watch their children nuke said department, tearing and stomping on books or just throwing them off the shelf and leaving them all over the place, without putting anything back or asking them to behave themselves. Wouldn't have happened in my day.
On top of that, half the toddler books come in formats that you can't shelve or stack properly. And the noise. Oh the noise. Fire engines, creepy tinny recorded children clapping and cheering because a kid in a book managed to take a dump, dinosaurs roaring (does anyone actually know what a dinosaur sounded like??), Old MacDonald's never ending quack quack quack, all in the name and for the purpose of giving us the equivalent of a lobotomy (or otherwise wishing for one), you name it.

But I have to admit, sometimes things happen that almost - I said, almost! - make the kids' section worth its while.

Like that time that little boy argued with his mother, who refused to understand why he wanted that Michael Morpurgo book so much. "Why would you want to read about that?", she said.
And what he replied, with an angry whine, loud enough for the entire shop to hear, nearly made me drop my load (of books, fool!):
"But I LIKE nazis!"
Never have I seen a parent leave a shop so quickly.

Or this 9-year-old boy who watched me putting an A-level history book on the shelf, nudging his 6-year-old sister, pointing excitedly at a picture on the cover and exclaiming with joyfully glowing cheeks: "Look, Katie - HITLER!"

Oh, and sometimes they can even be cute! A mother and her 5-year-old, cute, blond little boy came up to the counter with two children's annuals, one a Power Ranger one, the other a Disney princesses one. I was in a good mood and made conversation, asking the little boy whether the Power Ranger one was for him, then.
He looked at me with wide, confused and slightly frightened eyes and shyly shook his head. His mother said: "No, actually, it's the Disney princesses one."
Shit. There I had made myself guilty of what I've always found a bit shocking and over the top in this country. "Sorry", I said to the mother. "I guess that was a classic case of gender-stereotyping!"
And then I turned to the boy and said: "Can you say "gender-stereotyping?"
He looked up at me from impossibly blue eyes and said, surprisingly clearly: "Gennersterotyping!" It was fucking adorable.