In which I get a cold, refuse to buy books, and worship Charlie Brooker some more

Today's books

My day

11:15am
Oh yeah, now the cold's finally broken.  I thought it might, after all the scratchy-throat poor-sleep business over the last few days - and lo and behold, after another restless night, this morning my face feels like I've slept on it for hours, my head hurts and my nose is all blocked.  Fab.  At least the weekend's over and I've got two days off ahead to catch up on a little sleep, sip tea and generally get a little R&R.  I've still got to do a load of cleaning ready for our house viewing on Wednesday, but I'm hoping that not being at work and being able to chill out a bit will help knock the cold on its head a tad quicker!  I can see some deeply luxurious "sitting under the duvet reading Warm Bodies and drinking hot chocolate" moments coming up over the next two days...  :)

So far this morning I've read a few pages of Harry Potter over breakfast; Hermione is about ten minutes away from getting Petrified, I think.  I've had a loooong chat with a lovely couple who visit regularly to sell us books (but never to buy, I've noticed), about libraries and how awesome Chesterfield Library is - I wrote a bit about it in my first ever Booking Through Thursday post, entitled My Life in Libraries - and coincidentally, have just been reading this wonderful article by Matt Haig about how a library is such a vital place to read and think and be.  Couldn't have said it better meself...  Now, on with the day!

 

1:00pm
Grrrr, Mondays!  Monday is market day, and market day is the day when aaaaaaall the non-readers come sniffing around wanting to sell their books to us, and it drives us BONKERS.  I've had two or three random people ask whether we buy books, and another woman arrived with a load of 'em and had to be turned away because we're full to the rafters in the office right now.  These people have usually never been in here before - the fact that they don't know about our long-standing "contact us first!" policy, and the arsiness that ensues when we have to say no, are always a dead giveaway.  And then there are conversations like these...

Customer:  I know you're not buying books, but... *pause*...  I've got these two Disney books.  They're quite old.
Me:  *heart sinks instantaneously*  Riiiiiight?
Customer:  I haven't got a computer, but me auntie's looked online and one's worth £14 and the other's worth £19.  I wouldn't want that much for them though.
Me:  *notes that the auntie in question must be about 90*  And, er, where did your auntie get these figures?
Customer:  eBay!
Me:  I see.  Unfortunately we can't take any more books at the moment -
Customer:  There's nothing wrong with them!
Me:  Right.  Well, my best suggestion would be for you to take our card and call us next time you're coming into town, and we can perhaps take a look and at least give you some advice.
Customer:  I don't need to call.  I'm coming down on the 26th for a dentist appointment.  Write it down.
Me:  Even so, you'll need to call ahead of time.  There're only two of us here, and if one of us is out, or we've had a lot of books come in, or the shop's full of customers, then obviously it might not be a good time to be looking at your books.
Customer:  I'll need to bring them down then? 
Me:  Erm, yes.  And of course, you wouldn't get the market price for them anyway.  We're a middle man, we've got to pay our bills.
Customer:  *clearly not listening*  Well, I can bring them down on spec, I only live a while away!  *pushes card away again*
Me:  *seeing this isn't going anywhere*  Ooookay.  Take the card.  Call us before you come down.  I'll put your name on the calendar and we'll sort it out at the end of the month.  *waits for him to leave, wanders into office and stares at calendar miserably*  Ah shit.  The 26th's a Tuesday.  We're closed on Tuesdays.
Mum:  Why didn't you just tell him we weren't buying and to go somewhere else?
Me:  BECAUSE I DON'T THINK HE WAS QUITE RIGHT AND HE WAS LIKE A DOG WITH A FRICKIN' BONE!  PLEAAAAAASE DON'T MAKE ME RING HIM!

These are the moments when I really feel like we deserve to earn more than £3 an hour, or whatever crappy figure we're currently taking home, y'know?


9:00pm
Sooo, the rest of my day has basically been like this:  lalalala... ALL THE JELLY BEANS... lalala CHARLIE BROOKER WORSHIP... lalala ALL THE CLEANING... lalala YAY YUMMY SANDWICH... lalala OH NOES HERMIONE'S BEEN GOT... lalala SHIT I HAVEN'T FINISHED MY TOP TEN TUESDAY... lalala BEDTIME.  Today I found out that Charlie Brooker doesn't drive either - or at least, he didn't a couple of years ago.  Also, that reading his columns is like looking inside my own head, only funnier because I'm not having to deal with it.  I'm starting to wonder if in fact Charlie Brooker IS me, from an alternate universe, only a little older and with man-bits.

I think perhaps it's time to quickly finish tomorrow's Top Ten Tuesday (I'm really looking forward to reading everyone's posts this week!), go make a drink, take an Actifed and zonk out, possibly in front of an episode of Gilmore Girls.  Sounds like as good a way as any to start our 'weekend'!  Tomorrow I'll be trying to finish HP and start Warm Bodies, so maybe I'll have less cleaning-related anecdotes and more book stuff to share by the end of the day!  :)