Smelly customers

There is a chap who comes in from time to time who used to look reasonably kempt but now downright smells. It's sad - and objectionable. In the early days of the shop he talked and talked about the grand jobs he'd had before he'd retired when he worked for international companies. He began his ramble by telling me (every time) how much he loved books and bookshops - so much so that I'd never get him out of the shop, he'd be staying to tea and dinner, and that he had hundreds of his own, a library in fact, he just needed someone to catalogue it for him... with a maningful look at me. In your dreams mate. He never ever bought a book - well, he was on a pension and had to watch the pennies... I think he bought a couple of plates from Dickens once; illustrations by 'Kyd' just to kid me along no doubt. I didn't see him for a long time and now he is back in thre High Street, unshaven, and unwashed and still talking round the same spiral. I have become less and less responsive; yesterday I vowed that if he comes back I shall ask him to leave. He is an educated bloke and obviously has had money so this going to seed is not something that had to happen.

Thre is a little old lady who smells too, of urine and rubber welliboots, but I like her and she buys a surprising number of books, spending £20 or more a time. She also is well spoken and educated. This whole thing about body odour in the old is very unnerving. Ihave all my clothes that aren't in the wash airing by an open window because who knows perhaps I smell too and just don't notice it!! People who live in caravans (and there are quite a few round here) smell musty, as do the ones who live in small cramped damp housing. Years ago I noticed one family of children who played with my three smelled very sour and decided it was the peat fire. Wood smoke is lovely but peat is not.

Maybe I'm hypersensitive to smells. I hate going to the Universal Hall (at the Findhorn Foundation) to a performance because the Foundation people so often don't use deodorant, especially the men who seem to regard a nice strong male odour as necessary to their self expression, like untrammelled farting. Of course the veggie food with lots of beans increases the risk of that. I don't think they cook the beans properly. Soya needs long soaking and after that the first two boil-ups of water thrown away. Dangerous not to really because soya beans are poisonous. If the people living there work in the communal kitchen they reek of the food they have been cooking and that's never pleasant. The intimate smell of another person is only tolerable if you love that person.

This obsession means I get through a lot of incense in the shop. Aftre the disgusting old man left I opened the window (it was a VERY cold day) and stuck a strong smelling incense stick into a notch in the wood of one of the bookcases. The next customer didn't see it and knocked against it knocking it flying and marking her coat! In my wn defence I thought that trade was over for the day because it was 5pm and no-one had been near the place since the DOM for at least an hour.