00:00We've had bookshops in the past in Morecambe. I'm the longest lasting and at the moment the
00:06only bookshop in Morecambe which is a bit sad. The usual comment and I've had it twice today is
00:12oh what an Aladdin's cave or eee what a lot of books. The best one is my god what a minefield.
00:19Most of the books in here are 50 years plus. There was nothing planned it's just progressed
00:29on its own. Sometimes I feel as if it's a living being and I'm just feeding it and
00:34looking after that it's developed its own personality almost. You can get lost go down
00:42one of these aisles and the sound disappears as well from outside like snow on a winter's day
00:48it's just nice and quiet. Growing up as a child and as a young adult the one thing I wanted to have
00:55was a bookshop that was my lifetime's ambition and dream. I never thought I'd get the chance to
01:01realize it but I have. Well it was a cafe to begin with it was the family cafe and fish and chip shop.
01:08About 1990 I decided to put some shelves in because I had far too many books at home and by the end of
01:16the first week the two shelves had gone the table had gone they'd put a bookcase in place by the end
01:21of the month. There were four more bookcases by the end of the year my mum just gave me the keys and
01:27said there you go do what you want so I turned the cafe in the fish and chip shop into a bookshop.
01:33I came from an almost illiterate household I went to school didn't even know what a book was and a
01:40wonderful teacher called Mrs Milner this is back in the early 60s saw me at the back of the class
01:46strolled down to the class picked me up and said you're coming with me and I was scared stiff and
01:52she sat me on her knee and she said this is a book and I'm going to tell you a story and it began there.
01:59Our busiest sections are the science fiction and fantasy section and the crime section murder mystery
02:05detective thrillers. Nothing is labelled the sections expand and contract sometimes on a daily basis
02:15so book sections will grow and shrink depends what books come in and what I sell.
02:23Bug bears. I have a list I have a little list people that misplace things they don't do it
02:30aggressively it's nothing it's just absent-mindedness they'll find a book then they'll find another one
02:35take that out change mind and put that in the other book's place. We do have odd people that come in
02:41as well nothing nasty just unusual people my favourite was last year a lady that stood outside
02:49the front doors of the shop which were wide open at the time the shop was full of customers
02:54and she started doing an incantation to cast out evil spirits before she walked into the shop she was
03:00lovely. An old dog that I had once used to stand in the corner just down the side from where we are now and
03:08stared up at a bookcase which hides a window and she'd sit there for the ages and occasionally just wag a tail
03:14staring at the bookcase.
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