30 Days to build a Bookshop: Day 21

With just 10 days to go my anxiety has rocketed and my left eye won’t stop twitching. I headed in to the shop for 8am which is a ridiculous time for a bookseller to be awake but Openreach were going to give it another go getting us connected to the internet. The socket that the last engineer swore blind wasn’t anything useful turned out to be exactly what we needed. It still took the lovely new engineer all day to get sorted. I gave him a cookie which really didn’t seem like enough after all the work he’d put in. 

I ordered some hairpin legs for the interim counter we’re assembling. Gary is going to cut me a sheet of birch plywood and I’ll put the table together when it arrives. Once the real counter is built this will move to the back of the room as a display table. 

Callum turned up to take the rubbish away (little video here) but sadly didn’t have enough room in his truck to take it all so we’re scheduled to do it all again tomorrow. As the shop isn’t cleared yet Gary can’t start work on the floor and walls. Everything is feeling bitty and frustrating and increasingly unlikely to succeed. Spent a lot of time brushing dust off the floor and catching up with emails. 

High point of the day came when The Bookseller did an article on us which was very kind. It gave the crowdfunder a little boost and we made it to 70% which is AMAZING

Market next door we’re open again today which meant I could eat their incredible salted chocolate chip and chilli cookies. I was very happy to have my Neighbour back. 

Now I’m settling in for a blissful night of reading (complicated legal documents). Somehow convinced it’s all going to work out fine. 

9 Days to go.

is that right?