Our catalogue system is my brain...it really is, for all those highly sceptical folk who think I have said we do not have a book in stock just a little too quickly for their liking.
I presume they think I have said book and simply do not wish to sell it..a fair assumption given my hoarding tendencies...but please be assured..I am in fact here to sell books.
As for the memory "thing"....It's the odd and imperfect superpower of all true Second Hand Book Dealers..that, and in an inspired moment, remembering that book you purchased that one time you came to the Bay 6 years ago...
The interesting thing is I am able to recall books and authors we definitely do not have in stock quicker than those that we possibly do.....its a little like thinking about your pantry...you know there are tinned tomatoes, pasta sauce, and a very old tinned beetroot and condensed milk
...and, thinking hard, there probably is a tin of coconut milk, and possibly anchovies...but tinned banana flowers?...I know for a fact there aren't any..(actually..there is. but you get the idea...)
As most people can understand..we have 40,000 books in store..keeping an up to date catalogue is simply not practical...it would require either a mind and store adaptable to technology...or a person able to type with more than 2 fingers.
I belong to neither blessed group.
I belong to the crotchety old world of second hand book sellers..like something out of a Dickens novel..an anomaly in this modern age I'm afraid...
And, of course I have been wrong (she blushes charmingly), but on average, not enough for me to query the system...
