My favourite local secondhand bookshop has finally re-opened. Yay!

It was small before but now it is even smaller…the owner has given half of the building over to his daughter’s new business.

I went in today and we greeted each other with big smiles like old friends.

He’s doing the “right” thing. Self-isolating behind a plastic anti-cootie screen, without a mask.

As I’m re-arranging all the books on his shelves in an effort to find a rare Victorian edition of something, three female tourists come in. Their first words….

Is it OK if we enter? We’ve sanitised our hands in the last shop and on the coach. And we have our masks on.

He was polite. They were less than polite when they saw me.

The shop is crowded with three customers. Add me without a mask and I get trapped in the corner, all exits covered and less than six feet between us. Amazing that a bell, book and candle were not produced (?)

I wasn’t that bothered, really. They trapped me in the Shakespeare corner :o)

When they left, I bought a book. Will Contested.

A smile and a twinkly eye can say more than words…he thought it was funny too.