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Stand and Deliver!

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 Jack’s Wednesday guest post –

Tricking, treating or guising?

We had three hundred kids plus their supervising adults through the bookstore last Saturday. They were ‘trick or treating’ as these Americans say. They filed in over three hours, snaking through the place to the kids’ room to choose a free book, getting handed a cafe cookie and having a photo taken of them in costume before leaving for the next port of call.

trick-treat-crowd

A small number of the 300 waiting to enter

I wondered about that American tradition so I did some investigating – it turns out that it means “give me a treat or I will play a trick on you”. So, in other words, what would be described in an English or Scottish court as ‘demanding with menaces’!

There’s been a fair bit of discussion on facebook over the last few days about the different Halloween traditions on the opposing sides of the Atlantic, and even about the various names for the vegetable that gets carved into a lantern for the occasion.  I was forced to take part, if only to promote the correct name for the said vegetable.

In Scotland the festival was, for me, always ‘Guising’ (dressing in disguise) and the lantern was carved from a tumshie (a large turnip) and the kids had to perform a poem, song or joke in return for their gift. It was always a family event too, with games – dookin for aipples or trying to snare a treacly scone dangling from a string by mouth with your hands behind your back.

The name of the vegetable? I’ve heard Turnip, Swede, Neep and Tumshie (rutabaga over here) . It was always a tumshie in my youth. But when I grew up and became a responsible adult I was once asked to join an EU funded international environmental education project led by a Danish organization that had a license to grow hemp (don’t ask!). They suggested various Acronyms for the shared undertaking and one of them was NEEPS! I immediately agreed – of such is inter-cultural understanding achieved, although no-one understood why we’d agreed so quickly and enthusiastically.

Long may these weird things continue to confound us, and I can still remember the smell of a candle burning inside a hollowed out tumshie or neep!

A Steady(ing) Weight of Book Boxes

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Boxes…. book boxes. They’re everywhere, coming in droves, full of hardback fiction, old textbooks, and occasional gems like the latest bestseller or an obscure Carlos Castaneda title. Jack reckons we’ve had 22 boxes of trade-ins come through in the last week alone.

These coincide with what might be the busiest two weeks of our lives. Big Stone Celtic Festival is Sept. 22. My book launches Oct. 2. I’m complaining about NOTHING, mind; The Celtic Festival is fun, and good for the town. My book is fun, and I’m so happy people are liking it, and it’s getting good publicity. (The Book News page has links.)

Through all the hoopla and the final arrangements of where to put the Shetland ponies (on the park lawn) and where to park the British Cars (outside the schoolhouse museum) and when the latest newspaper or radio spot runs for Little Bookstore (I don’t know) those boxes of books trudge like determined soldiers, reminding us that underneath everything else, our bookstore needs to keep running. Or limping, at least.

Between sheepdog trial planning and radio spots, the book boxes stack and empty as Jack and I try to keep the shop floor clear. That anchoring weight of books–solid, steady books–anchors us. Publicity is a wild ride. Running a festival is a wild ride. Books can certainly be wild rides when read, but triaging them for trade-in is a more staid activity. It’s like intellectual solitaire: categorize, value, stack, shelve. Repeat.

That repetitive motion of getting those volumes into places where customers can find them, buy them, read them, enjoy them, is the heartbeat that underpins everything else. We remember this, come happiness or high water, and we are grateful for that steady, weighted pulse, steadying us in the sturm and drang. Because when the festival is over, the hoopla past, and the publicity gone, it will be the two of us, and the book boxes.

What was it Thomas Hardy said? “And at home by the fire, whenever you look up there I shall be—and whenever I look up, there will be you.” The wild ride is fun, but it’s a ride. When it’s finished, more book boxes will arrive, and we will sort them, Jack and I. Then we will sit together amid our bookshop’s tightly-packed shelves with a sigh of contentment and a cat on each knee–ready to do the same again tomorrow.