More Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops (5 page)

CUSTOMER:
I don’t like biographies. The main character pretty much always dies in the end. It’s so predictable!

CUSTOMER
(with a French accent)
: Where is the cemetery?

BOOKSELLER:
Oh, you go out of the bookshop and turn right ...

CUSTOMER
(angrily)
: No, in French.

BOOKSELLER:
Excuse me?

CUSTOMER:
You tell me in French.

BOOKSELLER:
... I don’t speak French.

CUSTOMER
(outraged)
: You do not speak French?

BOOKSELLER:
No. I can draw you a map, instead?

CUSTOMER:
Non! Only in French!

WOMAN
(holding a copy of a Weight Watchers book in one hand, and
The Hunger Games
in the other)
: Which of these dieting books would you recommend most?

CUSTOMER
(to her friend)
: What do you do with your books after you’ve read them?

HER FRIEND:
Sometimes I burn them.

CUSTOMER:
You burn them?

HER FRIEND:
Yeah. If I’m in the mood.

CUSTOMER:
You know, I eat every good book I read.

BOOKSELLER:
... Excuse me?

CUSTOMER:
I like to feel as though the book’s really part of me. So, when I’ve finished, I rip the pages up and put them in my food.

BOOKSELLER:
What about the books you’ve read but don’t like?

CUSTOMER:
Well, obviously I don’t eat those.

BOOKSELLER:
Oh, yes, obviously.
(Pause)
What food goes best with paper?

CUSTOMER:
Stews, mostly.

BOOKSELLER:
I see.

CUSTOMER:
And apple pie. That’s good, too. But you must never make books into milkshakes. I tried that once and it was not nice at all.

BOOKSELLER:
... I’ll bear that in mind.

WOMAN:
Last night I had a dream that your bookshop burnt down.

BOOKSELLER:
Oh, well, thankfully we’re still standing.

WOMAN:
Well, just you be careful. I have a sense for these things, you see.

WOMAN’S HUSBAND:
She does, you know. She had a premonition that her sister’s house was going to be burgled.

WOMAN:
That’s right; I did. I warned her about it and everything, and did she believe me? No, she didn’t.

WOMAN’S HUSBAND:
Didn’t believe her at all. And then, the next week, we went round to her sister’s place to feed her cat when she was away, and we forgot to lock the back door and what do you know?

WOMAN:
Boom!

BOOKSELLER:
Boom?

WOMAN:
Burgled.

BOOKSELLER:
... I see.

WOMAN:
If only she’d listened to me. She could have stopped it from happening!

CUSTOMER
(buying a copy of
Gulliver’s Travels
)
: I’m thinking of going travelling, so I thought I’d give this a read to give me ideas of places to go. He seems to have gone to some really crazy parts of the world!

CUSTOMER:
I really don’t like the planet today – can you recommend a book set far, far away?

CUSTOMER:
I just baked a cake and I’ve burnt it all the way through. Look.
(She lifts a very burnt, blackened cake out of her bag.)
Do you have a book with instructions on how to fix it?