Bookshops/Homelessness

(Disclaimer: nothing I write here could possibly come up to the standard of Orwell's essay on working in a second hand bookshop, which is a really excellent essay. You can find it in his collection 'Books and Cigarettes' which also has an excellent essay about the price of books relative to smokes. However, his is a light hearted, amusing spiel; this is a bit more self-righteous and upsetting.)


I work in West London, in a desirable, trendy expensive area (needless to say, I don't live there as well. Oh no.) The sort of area where the poor people wear Boden and the rich people are international ambassadors. I really didn't think it was the sort of area to attract tramps.


Nonetheless, last week we had a homeless chap in the shop. He was apparently here for most of the day, with a suspicious carton of drink next to him and snoring continuously. He didn't buy a book, of course, although he offered to, on the basis that he could stay a little longer. A colleague had to threaten him with a visit from the police before he would, in that horrible Dickensian way, 'move on'. (I'm not a huge Dickens fan, but do look up that chapter in Bleak House where Jo has nowhere to go after being turfed out from Blackfriars Bridge. Dickens at his best and truly affecting.) His presence irritated, upset and angered other customers.


I doubt a tramp would last that long in a coffee shop, or food shop, or clothes shop, or frankly, any other sort of shop. Why did he seek out the bookshop (it is along a high street; he could have gone anywhere)? Why did he associate the bookshop with sanctuary? Why did he think he wouldn't be moved on? Bookshops do, notoriously, attract the 'oddballs'. Because they are quiet, safe, and you're able to spend a comparatively long time in them without buying anything: a bookshop is one of the few places you can get away with consuming the product without actually buying it (you don't wear Topshop's clothes, or eat a Starbucks pastry without paying, after all). I guess in that sense, they are extremely appealing to the average homeless guy. Also, let's make some suppositions about your average book buyer. Quiet, meek, unwilling to cause a fuss. Likely to stick nose further into the book he's reading than to kick up.


In some sort of way, I don't really mind the presence of the tramp. I object to chucking a tramp out of a warm, safe place, just because he smells. It offends my sense of what it is to be human (call me self-righteous, but this is important stuff). We have a duty to treat the poorest with the same level of respect as we would the richest. If we let a rich person read Murakami's Norwegian Wood all day (as happened a few weeks ago; darn, she damaged that spine) then we have to let poor people do it too.


On the other hand, I can totally see the perspective of the other customers. Say I'd wanted to sit for ten minutes and flick through the first chapter of my potential purchase. Would I be distracted by a smelly homeless guy next to me? Yes. I'd try to find elsewhere to read the book, and if I couldn't find that space, I'd  move on myself, and Bookshop PLC would lose a sale. Bookshops aren't charities or soup kitchens either. Like any other capitalistic enterprise on the high street, they have a duty (sure, a self-imposed and ethically questionable one) to make money. If this means excluding some customers to ensure the continued fiscal support of others, so be it. However, I've said that I can 'see' this perspective; I don't agree with it at all. I think it's pretty awful.


What saddens me the most is that the situation has come to be in the first place. What chain of events led him to fall into a drunken snooze on a Sunday afternoon? Why was no-one looking after him? Homelessness is the social issue that I care about the most - we are all so perilously close to it ourselves. The chain of events that lead to it (lose job - lose family - lose home) is such a familiar narrative that I think at times we (accommodation-safe) types become desensitised to it. It's infuriatingly easy to accuse the homeless guy of letting himself get into 'that situation'. The accusation that homeless people are 'weak' in some way is painfully untrue; the association between homelessness and poor mental health is one we need to look at again. Plenty of insane people have houses; very few homeless people are mentally healthy. Tramps stand out in a bookshop partly because they smell/dress bad, but mostly because, on sight, we make the assumption that they don't have the mental capacity to cope with reading. Intelligence and mental health are totally different things, guys!


So sure, those few lines above are an invitation for a longer argument about the causes and effects of homelessness. Let's come back down to the micro level: the one guy I saw. He still matters. He's an individual, and probably spent Sunday night curled up in a doorway (my dad made the very good point that tramps might be attracted to that part of London precisely because the doorways are so generous and make good sleeping places). The bookshop was a haven for him, and it embarrasses me that the other customers felt it appropriate to complain loudly about his presence. Hell, I'll say it again: he's still a human. Please can we not  be so offended by those who expose exactly how fragile out comfortable, financially secure, home-inhabiting, book buying lives are? Can we please do something constructive about the situation. He was threatened by a police call: was this really the best approach? He didn't do anything illegal, or offensive (in the sense of harassment, rather than sensibilities), and eventually left. 


I think a revealing irony lies in the location of the episode, the bookshop. Why do we read? To expand our minds, and to think about the world around us, and to try and be better people (at least, this is what your average Joe would say). None of these processes were evident in anything I saw last week - it seems that we're all very good at talking the mantra. But when it comes to doing it? I didn't see anyone actually being the change they wanted to see. No-one offered to take him to a shelter, or to walk him to a bus stop (he offered to buy a book, so possibly had some change on him), or to even direct him to somewhere that might have been of use. This collective failure, from a bunch of people who have the time, money and facilities to help, happens on a daily basis in London, but that doesn't stop this one example I've discussed being painful to watch.




A note on language: yes, I've written this from the point of 'us' and 'them' whilst at the same time acknowledging how close the two are. An error perhaps. I've also used the word 'tramp' pretty freely. Is that a problem? I don't think so. Everyone knows what I mean, and I don't want to use a word or phrase ('accommodation negative citizen' to make up a ridiculous example) that totally desanitises the problem for 'us'. I think 'tramp' is a good word because it shocks and makes people uncomfortable, and that's exactly what we need to do on this issue.

Big Green Bookshop

I'm not sure exactly when I turned into a Guardianista, but for a while now I've been a fan of their Life & Style pages, and the Culture pages too. Imagine my delight then, to find an article about bookshops (and local ones at that) on the front page.


Alas, it took me just a quick click and a dash of trade awareness (and the headline, of course, but let's not be literal) to realise it wasn't going to be a happy story. Oh no. The Big Green Bookshop is facing bankruptcy and soon to close. The chain British Bookshops went into administration recently, and Waterstone's have also recently made public plans to close 20 stores (of course, closures don't hit chains so bad, but redundancy is sad for anyone). The book trade hasn't been in a good way for a while, but this recent spate of closures doesn't set the tone for a good year.


To avoid closure, owners Mark, Tim and Simon have set into action an impressive publicity campaign. On their blog (humorous, regularly updated, and full of character) they've written about the problems they face. They've helpfully included the visual aid of the 'Strugglometer', reminiscient of a Blue Peter charity appeal, to let readers (bloggers and book-buyers, geddit) know the progress the store is making. [Hello, BBG: I hope you don't mind me copy+pasting this.]





Anyway: to get to my point. From 6th - 12th March, the Big Green Bookshop are asking people to buy just one book from them. Just one (by which of course I mean, 'at least' one). They already have 1000 customers on a loyalty card scheme, and I don't doubt this number will increase thanks to their publicity efforts. According to the site, a cash injection like this will save them from the abyss.


So. Please go to buy a book from them some time that week. Please. I write this as someone who loves books and the book trade too. Let's not turn our high streets into identikit shopping areas with identikit bookshops and identikit titles. Let's celebrate a local bookshop, one that certainly seems to go way beyond the remit of just a 'shop'. Look! They have board game days and readings and book groups and events for children. They seem like a hub of their community (N22) which is something that all bookshops aspire to do - so few do it well, so let's save the ones that do.  Bookshops matter. They matter so much - Amazon doesn't get chatting to you about your current read, Amazon won't give you honest, from-the-heart recommendations, and Amazon couldn't give a toss, frankly, about anything but profit (see this damning description of how they treat their staff).  Moreover, the chaps behind this operation seem like such lovely blokes - do we really want to see them made redundant, having set up the shop three years ago after the Waterstone's they managed went under? No, we don't. So let's buy some books!