Since the bookshop closed, over the years, it’s been great reminiscing with Sophie and Casper, and it’s helped Casper in particular, get over some issues that were emotionally draining for him at the time. Shortly after I left, the shop was relocated to another part of the town, but because it was a  modern construction, with a larger floorspace, the sales targets were significantly increased to reflect this.

This in itself was overwhelming for Casper, but he was unable to voice his opinions because he knew the only reply he would receive was,

“Tough. Get over it. Buying this new building has crippled the company’s expenses and we’ve still got more shops to refurbish.  It’s up to you to recover the profits, and quickly.”

Adding of course,

”We are a charity.”

Unfortunately, this made it increasingly difficult for Casper to fully enjoy his new surroundings, even with a cosy, new, self-service coffee and seating area.

He marvels at how I remember incidents and people so clearly and in such detail. Some events were so traumatic for him that he wonders if his mind blanked some things out. I am always amazed at how the brain adjusts in order to cope with traumatic situations and I am inclined to agree with his conclusion, because he doesn’t remember Hazel at all, yet she was our most regular and longstanding Saturday worker.

For me, there is an issue more serious to discuss. I’m going say something that might be controversial, but I have to be honest. If I was given the chance to work in a Christian bookshop again, either in person or online, I don’t think I would do it. My spiritual conscience tells me this is a bad idea.

I thank God for the authors who were a marvellous encouragement to me. Elizabeth Elliot has always portrayed a beautiful example of godly womanhood and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to recommend her as positive influence.

However, I am sad to say that over the years, I have discovered that a great number of Christian books do not contain biblical accuracy to the point that they could lead people astray. For example, there is a book out there written by renowned Christian teacher, who claims that God gives Cancer to people as a gift. Firstly, God doesn’t give diseases to anybody, and secondly, God does not gift anyone with anything nasty. Would you give your baby dog excrement to eat if you ran out of pureed potato? This is just one example of many extreme, erroneous teachings.

So many famous teachers and recording artists are coming out of the woodwork claiming that they don’t believe in God anymore and that everything they said previously is a lie. Why would I want to promote that person’s book or CD?

On similar note, there is this big debate going on in the ‘Christian world’ at the moment as to whether churches should play worship songs that have been penned by songwriters connected to certain churches that are blatantly heretical. They are not just misguiding people on scripture, but involving themselves in demonic practices and seemingly not caring when this is pointed out by others.

I am seeing video clips of pastors from mega churches finding it impossible to answer simple biblical questions and some even declaring in the middle of their sermon, “I am God!”. We cannot blame A.I. or extreme video editing for it all – most of it is real.

As much as I still love Christian music, I am not sure that I would be happy to promote some of the artists that I did back then, for that reason and others.

Lastly, there is talk about many bible versions having been corrupted, where it has been proven by biblical scholars that meanings have been significantly changed, and there are particular versions where verses have been deliberately omitted.  I loved it when The Message was released because Eugene Peterson was not hiding the fact that it was a paraphrase.  But today, certain translations that are not translations at all, have eased their way into existence and I don’t think even Louise would be able to hide them behind the Giant Print KJVs.

From a view of spiritual integrity, I could not bring myself to promote and sell questionable items.

It saddens me to think that nowadays, Hindu books sneaking in amongst the piles are the least of our concerns. It is the subtlety of evil things masquerading as good that concerns me, because it is far more deceptive and therefore, more dangerous.

But I should end on a happy note, shouldn’t I?

Despite everything, I still nurture feelings of fondness whenever I look back to my days at the shop. I do wish I could be given the chance to go back in time and put things right that I got wrong. Oh, there are so many things I would do differently! I would have focused more on the positive attributes of our customers, rather than whining about the negative ones. I would have made more effort to listen and been more aware of the needs of my colleagues.

I had the opportunity to read some great books that I would not have stumbled upon had I not worked there. My favourite being, “Soul Obsession” by Nicky Cruz. I also discovered, Phillips Craig and Dean and their album,  “Let My Words be Few” is still one of my favourites.

All in all, I am eternally grateful to Archie for giving me the opportunity to work for the company and I can honestly say it has been the best job I have ever had.

Spring Harvest is a yearly Christian conference for all denominations, that lasts a whole week, with programmes for all ages. The internet describes it as, ‘An interdenominational evangelical conference and gathering in the United Kingdom that started in 1979.’

There are worship sessions, teachings sessions, times of prayer and reflection, workshops, family services, children & youth programmes and the all-important selling of Christian merchandise.

Our bookshop chain was commissioned by the organisation to set up a large stall each year in the foyer of the conference venue. From early morning to late evening, we would sell to delegates, all kinds of products from our stock list. Items like T-shirts which were slow to sell in the high street, would be swiped from of the display stands by young people who did not ordinarily frequent the shops. Children’s gifts and greeting cards were also on demand at these events. The books that were prominently displayed, would be the ones authored by the guest speakers and singers who were working at the particular venue (Minehead or Skegness) for that year.  At the side of the stall, book signings would take place and people would flock to the tables in droves to get an up-close glimpse of the famous singer, band or speaker.

Spring Harvest brought in more revenue than the rest of the year put together, including Christmas sales, so, for our C.E.O., this event was literally a Godsend.

For many years, Head Office would ask each branch to provide volunteers to take a week out of their normal shop duties, to go along to one of the Spring Harvest venues and serve. The main tasks were, doing set-up, operating the tills, counting the money and doing pack-down at the end of the week. As it generated such a massive profit, the demand for more volunteers increased. Eventually, it was no longer an optional decision and staff were told that if they were chosen, they had to go. This meant leaving families behind and travelling to the seaside for one week.

I was asked to volunteer and was excited because the only Christian conference I had ever attended was, Bognor Bible Week; but that was organised by the Elim Pentecostal organisation and was therefore, less multi-denominational. This meant that there wouldn’t be as many people falling on the floor like dominoes during the service, and a larger ratio of white people to black: more like, 80:20. I was not told what to expect, so I was totally unaware of what duties I would be undertaking.

After a 125 mile train journey, I arrived at the Skegness venue and was asked to help with setting up the bookstall. There was just a large empty space with a few tables and shelves scattered around, and myself and the rest of the team were handed boxes of merchandise to sort and price up.

It was a mammoth task and I didn’t feel too well. Unbeknown to me, my body was having an allergic reaction to some powerful antibiotics I had taken the week before. My skin was slowly becoming covered in large, red, itchy blotches.

I soldiered on, and after an exhausting day, our stall was ready for business.

Ophelia, who was the girl designated to manage the makeshift shop, had somehow discovered that I used to work in a bank, so I was asked to do extra tasks. This meant working on the tills from early morning to late evening with break in between for lunch.

However, my first job on day of opening, was to set up the book signing table for the famous Christians that were due to be swamped by adoring fans as soon as it hit 9.00am.

American writer, Jeff Lucas, was to be the star of the show that year. I had never read any of his books, nor heard him preach, but it was well known that this man was funny. His most popular book in our shop was called, Lucas on Life and I got the impression his take on the world was similar to that of Adrian Plass.

As soon as he arrived, he was cracking jokes and seemed remarkably relaxed about the impending crowd that was due to descend upon him. I showed appreciation of his jocularity by joking along with him, and made a mental note to ensure I grabbed a copy of his book, so that I could get the full benefit of his humour. To date, I have yet to do so.

Years later, I did however, attend an evening of comedy when he visited my church with Adrian Plass. It was called, The Seriously Funny Tour. Now, I loved Adrian Plass, not just for his humour, but his serious writing also. His story called, The Visit had made me cry like a baby when I was young, and I have read, Broken Windows, Broken Lives, five times.

Given that I had gleaned a glimpse of Jeff Lucas’s amusing nature at Spring Harvest, I had assumed that this evening was going to be one of laughter and joviality. It wasn’t. Three quarters of the people in the room were old-time fans of both men and had travelled from other churches and towns just to see them both perform together. They did laugh. But like me, many did not. My young daughter was with me and embarrassingly, the only child in the room. This gave Adrian Plass reason to tell rude jokes and I winced on my seat. I came out of the auditorium thinking the show should be re-named, The Seriously Unfunny Tour.

I don’t think it was totally their fault. When one describes themselves as funny, they are setting themselves up for causing disapointment. Their managers were probably the ones who marketed them as such, especially as individually, they had a reputation of making people howl with laughter – maybe they just weren’t as effective as a team. Nevertheless, I think that is why I have never bothered pursuing, Lucas On Life. I may try and borrow a copy from the library one day, just to see what the fuss is about.

Well…despite the disappointing evening with the two boring comedians, nothing could have been as unfunny as what happened to me on the first night after the customers had gone to bed.

At close of business round about 8pm, Ophelia and I emptied the tills, bagged up the money and took it away to be counted, checked, and checked again, before being entered into a paying-in book. Three men helped us with the counting. The notes, coin, cheques, credit and debit card receipts were then stuffed into several night safe boxes. By this time, it would be approaching midnight. One of the men and I, then drove to the town centre to place the money into the local bank’s night safe.

But on this first night, a money mountain was born and the shock of it was probably what caused me to end up dashing to the doctors two days later.

Having worked mostly on the tills during my time at the bank, I was used to counting coin and placing the correct amounts into a coin bag. On my first evening, ten minutes before we closed the shop, I was asked to gather most of the coin from each till and throw it into a large sack. This was not good enough for me and my pedantic side kicked in, ensuring that each different denomination of coin went into a different container.

When the five of us entered the counting room, we began placing the coin bags on the table and three gentlemen and I, started grabbing bags according to the denomination we desired to count first. I chose the pennies because they were the most fiddly, and I wanted to get the hardest job out of the way first. Suddenly, Ophelia started pulling at the bags and emptying them out all at once. The four of us stared in horror while we witnessed a mighty mix-up. I wanted to shout,

“Hey, what are you doing? These have been sorted already and you’re mixing them up again!”

I stared in disbelief as our metal mountain became one giant mess. By the time the last bag was emptied onto the table, I could hardly see the man opposite me. I looked at Ophelia who seemed unperturbed by her crime. The two men to my right had their heads down and all I could see of the third one was his nose dotting about between some 20 pence pieces.

I was so angry that I began wondering if my blotches were going to spread to my face. It took absolutely ages for us to sort it all out.

We did not get to the night safe until after midnight and did not roll into to bed until 12.20am.

Later on in the morning, I awoke to more confusion. I was lodging with 6 other female volunteers in a chalet on the site, but because I had not been given a timetable, I was unaware of what was going on. I really hadn’t a clue. Nothing had been communicated to me at any stage, so I assumed I would be doing exactly what my housemates did.

The television in the living room was wired-up to the live services so that we could watch what was happening in some of the venues. While we were eating breakfast, the girls mentioned that if they had worked the evening before, then they had the morning off and would not be required back on the tills until the afternoon.

“How do you know this?” I asked.

“Because we’ve done it before. We all worked here last year.” said a German girl called Judit.

“Oh,” I said, feeling relieved. “I’ll watch one of the live services then go down about 11am to see if they need any extra help.”

A few minutes later, the phone rang, and it was Ophelia.

“Where are you?” she exclaimed.

“Er…I’m just having breakfast. I’m at the chalet.”

“But it’s ten past nine! You’re supposed to be on the tills!” she screamed.

“Oh sorry,” I muttered, feeling embarrassed and sad that I might be misunderstood as being lazy. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

When I arrived, I was ushered to one of the 8 tills and set to work. I tried to ask what was expected of me and when I was supposed to get a break during the week, but the answer came back.

“You are supposed to be on all the time.”

I was confused but didn’t dare ask why. I’m not always that assertive and sometimes I just put my tail between my legs and keep quiet. So, I bit my lip and resigned myself to the fact that I was destined to do 12 hour shifts for next 7 days.

In the evening, I grabbed one of the counting guys and told him how flabbergasted I was at what Ophelia had done the night before. His face lit up,

“Me too! That was just ridiculous! I didn’t know what to say so I just joined in, but I thought it was crazy! Right, there is no way that is going to happen again tonight. We are going to keep the coin in their bags and count them individually!”

I praised the Lord and thanked him that I had an advocate. Manager or not, Ophelia wasn’t going to get away with making our job ten times harder that it needed to be.

Before we began, I decided to be honest and tell Ophelia what we thought.

“Oh sorry!” she said, “I just didn’t think. It never occurred to me that they had already been sorted. And I guess I tipped them out so quickly, that it would not have made much difference if you had all spoken up.  I promise I won’t do that again!”

Despite this hiccup, I loved the job and the whole atmosphere. It was tiring, but fun.  I don’t remember collapsing from exhaustion, so common sense tells me that I must have been given some time off eventually and I have just forgotten. However, the only day off I do remember, began with me sat staring at the walls of a doctor’s waiting room.

I ended up having to dash to their onsite doctors surgery to get some cream for my rash, which had become so inflamed by then, that I was beginning to look contagious. I had never seen so many people buy so much stuff and I did not want to be the one to ruin it all. I would never live it down if customers began running out of the shop screaming, “Leper!”

Head Office was bound to get wind of it and make me recompense their lost revenue out of my own wages. Afterall,

“We are a charity.”

I couldn’t believe it –  the room was so full of patients that it took 3 hours before a medical practitioner called me into his office.

On first arrival at the surgery, I had looked around wondering why so many sick people had come to Spring Harvest. Were they expecting one of the preachers to conduct a healing service? Didn’t they realise they were at the wrong event for that? There weren’t many charismatic preachers on the line-up. I thought that maybe I should go down to the beach and try dipping in the sea seven times. But then, I thought that maybe others had already done that and that was why they were unwell – it was the UK after all.

To date, Spring Harvest is still running and thousands of Christians from all around the country are being blessed by this conference.

It’s probably thanks to this event why our chain of shops remained in business for as long as they did.

Now I’m off to the library to see if a man called Jeffrey can make me laugh. Despite my previous disappointment, I’m still hopeful. Any book with a cover that contains a jack-in-the-box sporting a blue Mohican, must be at least a little bit amusing.

Unfortunately, our bookstore chain never survived. The company went into liquidation and all 41 stores closed. Twenty-six of our branches went into administration and the remaining fifteen were sold off to various Christian retailers.  It is sad that in many towns, there are hardly any more Christian bookshops on the high street.

Customers can no longer catch a piece of peace at lunchtime. It was more than just hearing uplifting songs as you entered a shop.

It was about relationships, caring, listening, understanding, encouraging and promising to pray for those who were feeling anxious. It was about asking after someone’s welfare and rejoicing with them when their prayers were answered.

It was about recommending certain titles and giving advice when you thought something was appropriate for their needs.  

It was about letting them feel it was their second home by providing a state-of-the-art coffee machine and a comfy corner for them to relax, with no pressure that they had to leave.

It was about letting them sing loudly and out-of-tune, at the listening post.

It was about having the opportunity to connect with non-Christian delivery drivers, postmen and people wandering in off the street looking for directions.

It was about being able to display the word of the Lord in a public window and getting to know people from all different walks of life and denominations.  

It was about giving the gospel to those with no hope and comforting those who had no money to buy anything, but just visited us because they were broken.

You cannot get any of that online.

As I write these last few lines of my journey back in time, we are in the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic. All over the world, most high street shops are closed. Many will never re-open. For those that do, I fear that any remaining Christian bookshops will not be among them.

My own church has a bookshop not far from the town centre and I am praying that with a large coffee shop attached, it will be one that remains available to the public forever.

But for now, I have reached the end of my journey. Thank you for travelling with me. I have laughed and cried and laughed again.

I am putting down my pen and sending you best wishes as I say goodbye…

for…

 …Jemima has no more bibles to sell, and I have no more tales to tell.

For those of you who are still in the Christian retail sector, what an exciting time for you all! Especially the ladies! If I was in a shop right now, I’d be grabbing every female customer and showing her the 21 gorgeous bibles from the “Inspire” collection, the whole stack of colouring books from “Christian Art” and “Tyndale House”, and the amazing “Art of Life Bible”. The beautiful products that are coming out of Christian publishing houses today are simply breath-taking; and no, none of them have put me on commission to say that.

Back when I was in retail, bible journaling was not a well-known hobby and most fancy bibles were only fancy on the outside. Yes, we had bibles with metal covers, suede and sequins, but apart from a few pretty flowers, there was not as much inner artwork as we have in this generation.

How blessed we are to also have online bible applications and an amazing variety of plans, study guides and topics we can utilise at our own pace. I particularly love apps like “YouVersion”, where one can create their own bible verse pictures to send to a loved-one.

Many people struggle with the fact that technology has overtaken the blessing of being able to wander into a Christian bookstore and just browse in an atmosphere of joy.

If you are someone who has the advantage of still having access to a Christian bookstore in your locality, my prayer for you is that it will at least remain for the duration of your life.

If you work in a physical Christian bookshop, my prayer for you is that the Lord will help you to see beyond the busy schedules, difficult customers and anything else that sways you, to see how magnificent it is to have the privilege of selling the best book that was ever written.

Many years ago, while I still worked for the bank, I was attending a wedding when I spotted a girl with whom I was vaguely acquainted. After the ceremony, she was standing by the door, holding a silver collection plate and guests were placing coins onto it.

“Hi Lucy!” I said. “I didn’t know you went to this church.”

“Oh yes, I’m the verger.” she replied.

I was stumped. I hadn’t a clue what a verger was. Was it someone who took people’s money of them? Was it someone who greeted parishioners at the door? Were they like a wedding planner who hung around to ensure everything went smoothly on the big day?

After changing jobs, I was soon to realise that there were many aspects of the Church of England that I was unfamiliar with.

Blooper 1

Like I stated in the “Staff” chapter, if Trudy wasn’t around when a customer came in for a candle, I would get extremely nervous. I had never attended a church that used candles and had no knowledge of anything remotely Anglican.

It may have helped to have had photographs on the counter for customers to point to, but even better would have been a cabinet displaying the vast array of wax items available. This is because churches often asked for candles in diameter and would then give us their request in fractions.

Trudy would confidently scribble fractions down and march upstairs to the attic to find the box that contained the correct candles.

Whenever I went to fetch a candle, I would stare at all the rows of boxes on the shelves and panic. I just didn’t know where to begin searching for the said item. Usually, I would make an intelligent guess and bring a choice of different sizes downstairs with me, in the desperate hope that one of them was the precise article they yearned for.  I often went back upstairs with the same amount I brought down.

“No, I said one and three eighths, not two and a quarter.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I checked all the boxes and these are the nearest size. Would you like to order one?”

A lady walked in on a sunny afternoon and asked me to fetch her a votive candle.

I didn’t know what votive meant. I asked for clarification.

“We are having a vigil. We want to use it for a service we are having on Sunday evening.”

I was none the wiser.

“You know – like the ones that are used for Christingles.”

I could feel tiny beads of perspiration breaking out under my fringe, as I did not know what a Christingle was either. I had heard people talk about Christingle services and I had a vague recollection that this was around the time of Christmas. But it was May. I thought about that lady whom Casper told me about on my first day and I wandered if this woman was thinking I was a little dense.

I imagined her leaning forward and saying,

“Didn’t you ever go to school Dear?”

Even though I asked the lady to describe the required candle in more detail, I must have stopped listening at the most vital point. Somewhere in her description she would have mentioned that the item she was after was only half an inch in diameter.

I trundled upstairs and scanned the rows of boxes. Aha! I was sure I spotted the correct one.

As I descended the last few steps down to the ground floor, the customer looked up at me and stared at my chest. Her mouth opened and remained in that position as she looked around the shop to see if perhaps, I was serving two customers at once. But no, my eyes were on her and I was clutching the product I thought she had asked for.

On placing the candle onto the counter, the poor lady’s legs buckled. I was smiling, happy that for once, I had got it right, but confused by her odd reaction. She clutched her stomach and let out the most enormous laugh – one even more raucous than Sophie’s.

“I wanted a Christingle…” she gasped. “…that’s a Paschal candle!”

I stared sadly at my 18 x 3-inch monstrosity that was obviously more than 6 times larger than what was requested. Later on, I learned that a Paschal candle is used at Easter and that Christingles were those tiny little things that kids push into oranges at Christmas. The thing I had selected would hardly fit inside a car, let alone a piece of fruit.

Blooper 2

I seemed to be developing a habit of confusing Christmas with Easter. Again, my Anglican ignorance came into play one early February when a customer asked,

“Have your books on Lent arrived yet?”

I have never attended a church which practiced Lent or studied the principles. I didn’t even know people wrote books about the subject. I thought that folk just gave up eating treats because they felt guilty, knowing that in 5 weeks’ time, they would be tucking into chocolate eggs.

My customer had used the correct word, but having just gotten over Christmas a few weeks before, I was thinking about all the Advent books we had distributed to churches two months previously. They had been eager to participate in detailed studies about this important time of the year in the Christian calendar. The word ‘Lent’ is similar in sound to ‘Advent’ and the word ‘Advent’, was still in my head.

So, I replied, “Oh, I’m deeply sorry but you’re far too early. They won’t be out until the third week in November.”

Looking back, I realise we should have provided chairs for our customers to sit on.  This would have helped considerably in times like these.

Thankfully, his stupefied expression prompted me to consider my words and work out what had gone wrong. I am thankful also, that I managed to rectify the situation before he needed that chair.

Blooper 3

We had a damages box where soiled or ruined items were placed. Anything that arrived from the warehouse worse for wear were immediately returned, but items on display would also become grubby from over-handling and dust. Twice a year, Casper would choose a time in the month when we would have a big sale, where everything in the damage’s boxes were marked down by 50%.

One day I received a call from a lady who wanted to know the prices of various bibles. She was particularly interested in the “NIV Study Bible”. I raced upstairs to obtain a copy, so that I could describe it to her in detail while on the phone.

She loved the description and was certain that this was the right bible for her, so she enquired about the price. Her voice quivered and dropped an octave as she declared that at, £39.99, it was way above her budget. I comforted her by saying that maybe a loved-one could buy her it for her as a birthday gift, or at least, put some money towards the cost. This was of no use to her, as her birthday was a long way off.

After the call ended, I felt sad for the lady and I prayed that God would bless her with the finances to be able to afford to buy the bible presently.

As I made my way back up to the first floor to put it back on its shelf, I stumbled up the stairs. It fell out of my hands and landed on its top two corners. I picked it up and surveyed the damage. Having fallen from such a height, both corners looked like an accordion where the hard cardboard had compacted into tiny ripples. What a shame! This was now too mutilated to be put back on display and I felt bad that this accident would be yet another incident that would affect our profits.

Then I remembered the customer. After discussing the situation with Trudy, we both agreed that this was a special case. Why make the lady wait until the next big sale?

I ran back downstairs, hoping that nobody else had used the phone so that I could trace the phone number of the last incoming call.

When the lady answered, I explained about my unfortunate stumble.

“…so, it is now classed as a damaged item. Would you be happy to own an NIV Study Bible that has its top two corners all bashed in?”

“Ooh yes! Yes, yes, yes! If that was the only thing that was wrong with it, it wouldn’t bother me at all.”

“Well then, it’s yours for £19.99.”

The squeals of “Thank you Jesus!” that I could hear from the other end of the line, made up for the guilt I had for being so clumsy. I thanked God for answering my prayer in record speed. It wasn’t answered in the way I had prayed, but it certainly blessed the lady just the same.

Blooper 4

Being the Multimedia Queen, the reps would leave me with posters of popular music artists to display in the shop.

Casper however, did not like the way these posters looked dotted around, and so he told me to leave the walls bare.

Therefore, most of them then ended up in the bin, or given away to customers if I knew they were a fan of the particular singer or group. One day, the Kingsway Music rep left me with an A3 size poster of Graham Kendrick and just for fun, I thought I’d put it up in our tiny staffroom.

None of my colleagues objected to this, nor made any comment about it at all, so it remained there for many months.

There had been a long-standing joke between Cammie and I over a certain secular TV celebrity, who I thought was cute. When I had first mentioned this, Cammie’s reaction had been so volatile, that it stirred me up to keep going on about him, just to tease her. It was entertaining watching her facial expressions each time his name came up in conversation.

“But you can’t like him, he’s not a Christian!” she would exclaim, appalled at my flippancy.

I didn’t fancy this guy at all, but I found it so funny watching her squirm and reel in horror at my apparent attraction to this man of the world.

One day, there was a report on the national news about this same guy being spotted frequenting brothels, and Cammie said to me with delight,

“Aha, you can’t like him now – he sleeps with prostitutes!”

Avoiding her gaze, I put on an air of complacency, shrugged my shoulders and simply replied, “So?”

She was suitably horrified and I walked off laughing to myself at how easy it was to wind her up.

Eventually, Cammie came to realise that I was just doing all this to tease her and appreciated the humour. However, in finding a random picture of this man in a magazine, I couldn’t resist the temptation to do one more naughty thing.

I brought it to work and put it up in place of Mr. Kendrick.

Like before, all my colleagues ignored the fact that there was a man staring down at them while munching on their sandwiches, and they never made a comment about its presence, but one morning, we had a visit from the area manager Archie, and just as he was leaving the staff room, he stopped, turned around and said:

“So…who fancies ******?”

I laughed while Trudy and Louise looked puzzled. Cammie however, so repulsed at the thought that Archie might think it was her, instantly replied:

“It’s Sharon!. Sharon fancies him. She put that poster up. I told her not to. He’s horrible isn’t he!”

It was the first time that I felt a little awkward about the situation, so I needed to diffuse to the  issue quickly so he wouldn’t think I was becoming a lukewarm drooler of a hunky heathen.

“Oh, it’s not been up for long.” I explained as casually as I could. “I had Graham Kendrick up before that and he was there for many months.”

Archie picked up his briefcase and peered at me over the top of his spectacles. With a tinge of joviality in his voice he said,

“You sad girl!” Then walked out the door.

I stood there feeling confused. Why was it sad to have a picture up of a well-known Christian singer who wakes up every morning singing, “Shine, Jesus Shine,” rather than one of a young man who likes to hang around the red light district in his spare time?

It took me a while to figure it out but when I did, I cringed and wailed.

“Agh! He thinks that having a poster up of a person means someone is attracted to them, like how mechanics have up calendars of scantily-clad models. Even worse, I declared that he’d been up for months! He must think I have an obsession and is in desperate need for counselling! Oh no, I hope he doesn’t refer me to Ellel Ministries!“

Everything in me wanted to phone Archie and say,

“I don’t have the hots for Graham Kendrick! You misunderstood what I said!”

But it was too late. My prank had backfired.

Cammie didn’t saying anything but her expression screamed,

“Serves you right!”

I ran upstairs and ripped the poster off the wall and threw it in the bin. There was no way I was going to continue sticking images of old men above the fridge, nor those of unregenerate celebrities.

I thought my colleagues believed me when I explained that it had all been a big joke. However, I am not sure the entire crew were convinced. A photograph of Billy Graham suddenly appeared in my in-tray.

Blooper 5

Whenever somebody came in requesting communion wine, the first question we would need to ask them was whether they required alcoholic or the non-alcoholic type.

I had asked this question many times, but this day, my mind was in overdrive. A young woman had requested two bottles and I was off to the attic to fetch them. Just before I mounted the stairs, I rattled off the usual question – or so I thought.

“Red or white?” I said.

She frowned and replied,

“Red!”

“Okay.” I answered joyfully and mounted the stairs.

Something didn’t feel quite right though. She was staring at me earnestly. It was a sort of half mocking, half-shocked glare.

Then I realised what had come out of my mouth.

After we both had a good chuckle at my faux pas, the lady admitted that she was wondering about my understanding of basic theology.

Of all the bloopers, I think you will agree with me when I say that this was the worst. Thankfully, on each occasion, my mistakes had been recognised and rectified before the customer had chance to leave the shop and tell the whole world what an idiot I was.

But it’s got me wondering. How many bloopers did I make that I am blissfully unaware of? Maybe, it is for the best that I do not know.

“Get over it!”

How many times have people said that when somebody is harping on about an issue that bugs them?

Cammie was very patient. I constantly whinged to her about the dreadful toilet area at work and she graciously listened. But I wasn’t satisfied. She was not giving me the sympathy I craved.

“You need to see it for yourself!” I urged.

Now, I’m not a diva. I’m happy to roll up my sleeves and get knee-deep in muck. I’ve endured mission trips where the only toilets amongst 150 campers were 6 outside hole-in-the-ground efforts where one could hear everything going on in the space next door. The doors were so low a tall person could walk past and wave. No seat, no flush, just a hole the size of a can of beans and the hope that your thigh muscles were strong enough to hold you in the squat position for the duration of your ablutions.

But this toilet room was in a league of its own.

One day when Cammie popped in to purchase a journal, I dragged her upstairs to the staff area.

“Casper won’t mind.” I said. “Burglars have wandered up here and been so traumatised, they’ve run back down and cleared us out of counselling books.”

As we walked past the unlockable lockers (we are a charity), I stopped by the entrance of the Room of Doom.

Cammie had glimpsed the ‘kitchen’ and pulled back, frightened by what she saw. I grinned with satisfaction. The emotion I had desired was soon to be displayed.

I pushed the toilet door open so she could get a good look, although she was already gagging at the sight of the ‘kitchen’s’ draining board.

She looked around the cubicle in silence then said in one of her high-pitched whispers,

“This is nothing like you described! It’s so much worse!”

Long pause.

“It’s Alcatraz!”

I was delighted that she not only had gone into the much-awaited hysteria, but she had blessed the wretched place with a most apt name.

As mentioned in the chapter about the staff, Cammie eventually ended up getting a job at the shop, but unless she was desperate, she avoided Alcatraz like the plague. She would dash off to use the facilities in MacDonald’s down the road.

I have seen pictures of Alcatraz prison – the ones with the lime green walls, and they look more inviting than what we had to face on a daily basis. Not to mention, these cells actually had a sink to wash your hands. Oh, did I not mention that? We had no sink.  The window behind the loo was high up and dirty – dark brown glass. Infront of the windows was a thick steel railing, like the ones one would see in a jail. Why anyone in the right state of mind would be tempted to enter this room from the outside is a question yet to be answered.

Outside of the cubicle was a filthy recess that contained a Belfast sink. I am not going to elaborate at this point for fear of venturing into too much negativity. Ha, you may well laugh and state that I am there already. Little do you know…

But my desire is not to shame anyone or point blame – just to say that the staff who dared place their mugs into this sink knew that it doubled-up as the sink for the toilet. I kept my mug in my locker and left everybody else to their own choices.

Casper had often complained to Head Office about the unhygienic situation.

In case you are wondering what all the fuss is about: Some residential houses have a loo with a separate sink area, but that sink is not then used for washing dishes. Also, this applies to a single family. Toilets are not supposed to open onto a kitchen area unless there are double doors and even in these cases, the toilet is supposed to have a sink inside the same cubicle. Common sense tells you that if somebody hasn’t got a sink in their toilet cubicle, the lock and door handle is always going to contain germs. This is not acceptable in a work situation, where as many as 14 are using the same toilet and then placing bacteria onto the kitchen taps.

Sorry to be a bore with my repetition, but the reply from Head Office was that they did not see this important enough to do anything about it and we should just praise the Lord and accept our lot because,

“We are a charity.”

For the rest of her time working at the shop, Cammie continued to escape to the yellow arches whenever she needed the toilet. This practice made her look like a suitable partner for Louise, for each time they worked together, Cammie would be seen dancing along with her. The two of them appeared to be the perfect duo, but in reality, Cammie was just desperate to visit McDonalds.

Despite my own restroom angst, I thank God for Alcatraz. It gives me good memories of a place where nobody apart from my colleagues could ever believe existed in the middle of a posh town. It also gives me fond memories of Cammie, who made me laugh even more than Casper did.

One of the best aspects of working at the shop was that there was a large variety of jobs to do and different skills to learn for each of them.

Good

We had two bookstands to fill with the month’s top ten bestselling titles. Similarly, we were given a list of the top 100 bestselling book titles and we had to display as many as we could, in a prominent place on the ground floor. This was updated by Head Office on a monthly basis and when we were sent the updates, our bookshelves were expected to reflect these changes.

It was a fearsome task because titles by the same author were supposed to be displayed together. Philip Yancy, Max Lucado and Joyce Meyer had many books on the list, but because they were of different sizes, and the widths of our shelves were different sizes also, the titles had to be scattered around. It was quite an assignment trying to make it look like it had some semblance of order and it would take Trudy and Casper up to 3 days to complete.

One day, Trudy suggested to Casper that the job be passed onto me. The two of them usually had other staff to rely on to cover the tills and serve customers while this job was being done. Casper agreed to Trudy’s suggestion but when he first asked me to do it, the job was already weeks overdue. Added to this, we were extremely short-staffed, so I was expected to serve customers while tackling a duty I had never done before.

I stood before the large, oddly sized bookshelf and stared at the books in disbelief.

I began talking to myself quietly:

“So…what normally takes one familiarised person to do in three days, with no extra duties, has to be done by clueless me, in one day, with a whole load of other jobs to do. Great!”

Just before Trudy went upstairs, she gave me a sweet smile and whispered,

“Bless you.”

It was not appreciated. I was furious.

As I flicked through a four-page document of titles, I decided that anger was going to get me nowhere. As much as I wanted to impose a form of asphyxiation on Trudy for, ‘dropping me in it’, I had to get a grip of the situation.

I thought back to times in the bank when my superiors would expect me to be in two places at once whilst producing an empty in-tray by the end of the day. I recalled the times I had put my own work on hold, to cover somebody’s desk so they could have a boozy two-hour lunch because it was their birthday. I had prayed. I had asked God for help. I had raised my faith to believe that God would not allow me to be given anything to do that I couldn’t handle with his assistance.

By this time, six customers were browsing and there was one heading towards the till. Each time I got inspiration about how to tackle the task, I would have to put my sheet down and serve somebody, losing all ideas to the back of my mind.

During a quieter spell, I rushed back to the bookshelf and took a deep breath,

“Lord, you know how unfair this feels. I haven’t a clue what I’m doing or where to begin! But you are sovereign and mighty, and I know wisdom comes from you. Forgive me for being angry. Help me to keep calm and trust in your providence. Please help me to not only get this job done properly, but in record time. I don’t know how you’re going to do it, but I really need your help right now, please!”

All of a sudden, I felt the Holy Spirit say,

“Remove that book and put it there. Take that one from there and place it here. Swap those two rows around and put that one in the corner. Those over there need to go here. Look at the bottom row – it would look really good if all titles pertaining to that subject go down there. Those ones are too big for that side, so take these smaller ones and pop them into that space. Right, now move this to over there…”

Two and a half hours later, I was done.

On the way home, just before we reached the train station, Trudy turned to me and asked me how I managed to complete to job so quickly.

When I told her that it was the Lord who helped me, I think it sounded rather super-spiritual, but there is no way of explaining some things other than simply saying,

“I asked God to help me, and he did.”

It really was a miracle. There was no way I could have done any of it in my own strength. If I hadn’t prayed, I would have probably had a meltdown and thrown copies of “Run Baby Run” over my head like a juggler who’s been drugged. Several editions of, “The Purpose Driven Life” would have probably ended up landing on someone’s temple before I made a dash to the mezzanine balcony to successfully perform the leap that Casper hadn’t yet accomplished.  

But prayer works because we have a loving father who is concerned about the little things that annoy us, just as much as the biggies.

Looking back, I am so glad that Trudy and Casper made the decision that they did. I remember exactly how ridiculously hard this job was and therefore, I am reminded once again, of how good God really is.

Bad

Amongst the many other tasks there were to do, Louise and I found ourselves with an extra one. Discarding books on Hinduism. I don’t mean books explaining what Hinduism is about, I mean books promoting it. When Head Office first began sending us books for the bargain basement, we assumed they could just be placed on shelves, tables and in baskets. But we soon discovered that every single one needed to be vetted, for, the occasional book was against Christianity in its promotion of another religion or idea. We promptly binned them but did not understand where our superiors were getting these titles from.

Lou and I also had a bit of a problem with the Apocrypha. We knew that some Christian scholars used it as a reference book, but to us, our stance was that the bible is all the reference one needs. Being ever aware that God warned mankind to not add to the words of the bible, Louise and I were particularly disturbed at the bible versions like the NRSV, that included the Apocrypha within them. There was nothing we could do about those, but for the individual Apocryphas, I would convulse with laughter as I watched Louise hide them behind the large-print hardbacks.

Ugly

Every 3 months, a large box would arrive that was ushered to the first floor. I would look at it with trepidation. I knew that the time had come. Inside that box were the ugliest, scariest books that I’d ever seen. No, they were not demonic – they weren’t destined for the bargain basement. These books were for the learned. They were for people obsessed with theology. They were the most doctrinal books known to man. They were… the “Nota Bene”.

_{(These were theology books sent to us by a religious book company and their catalogue was called, Nota Bene, so the staff collectively gave all those books that same name.)}

A colleague would shout across to Casper to let him know they had arrived, and it would send shivers down my spine. Who is it that determines that books for bible scholars should be so ugly? The front covers contained pictures of matchstick men on a cross turning up their eyes, pictures of uninteresting architecture, depressing landscapes or unattractive shapes. The colours of the dust jackets were usually a boring brown, or a dull grey. They were also usually hardback, very large and extremely heavy.

These books were sought after by the town’s pastors, curates, theologians, wannbe preachers, vicars in training and those with a deep interest in Aramaic, Latin, Hebrew and Greek.

One of the most popular titles was, “Systematic Theology” by Wayne Grudem. Other titles were penned by authors who had a penchant for printing the first two initials of their name on the front cover. Thus, we had books by NT Wright, JI Packer, RA Torrey, FB Meyer, AW Tozer, FF Bruce, DM Lloyd-Jones, AW Pink and RC Sproul. The mothers of Karl Barth and John Murray are probably regretting not being more adventurous.

There was a young couple who visited us regularly. She had the longest hair I’d ever seen. He was Nota Bene’s most devoted fan and would spend a fortune on the books each quarter. He was a lovely man who was always had a cheerful disposition and he enjoyed blessing us each Christmas with delicious boxes of Panettone.

I used to enjoy watching his face light up whenever Casper told him the next lot of books were ready. The sight of the front covers obviously did not faze him one bit, but I often wondered what his dear wife thought about them. She was always rather quiet, and I wondered if it was owing to visual trauma, after all, his house was full of these books!

For me, one of the scariest titles is a book called, Before Jonathan Edwards: Sources of New England Theology. On the front cover, it has a ghostlike face of what I assume is the man himself, drawn in grayscale. He looks like his right eye has been blinded and that if you come too close, he will slice your ears off. Thankfully, I do not remember seeing this book amongst our Nota Bene collection, and if I had, I probably would have battled bouts of insomnia.

Go on, ‘Google it’ – you know you want to.

Apart from The Gaithers and anything black gospel, our all-round most popular selling music was an Irish lady called Marilla Ness, Celtic singer Máire Brennan, composer of choral music, John Rutter, anything by Hillsongs, and CD compilations from yearly events such as Soul Survivor, New Wine, Spring Harvest, The Mandate and Grapevine.

I liked Casting Crowns and Phillips, Craig & Dean. Casper liked Michelle Tumes. In fact, apart from Máire Brennan, she was the only singer he did like and was therefore very relieved when I was asked to take over from him as the multimedia specialist.

In my teenage days, I had been Amy Grant’s greatest fan and I had also loved Clay Crosse and Sandi Patti. I then moved onto Point of Grace, Gary Chapman and Cindy Morgan.

Being black, however, there was pressure on me to stereotypically like the music of everybody negro.

There was no confusion about what expectations our customers had. I could just about tolerate Christian reggae and Hip-hop, but this was not enough for our ethnic possé. I was expected to be heavily into the Black Gospel genre, which I did not like at all.

I hated the sound of their keyboards resting on one note in vibrato and I could not bear the way Afro Caribbean singers tended to strain out a syllable so that every short word would take fifteen seconds to sing.

To date, I have seen the error of my ways and there are a few gospel singers who I appreciate, especially, Ce Ce Winans. I also love Nigerian worshippers such as David G, Jimmy D Psalmist, Joe Praize, Mercy Chinwo, Nathaniel Bassey, Chris Shalom and Minister. Also, who doesn’t love Hezekiah Walker’s, “Every Praise”?

But back then, I disliked everything that had that native sound and I had nothing like it in my music collection.

I would complain whenever Integrity Music, Authentic Media or Kingsway categorised certain singers as ‘Black Gospel’, because of their ethnicity, rather than their musical style.  I loved Ron Kenoly and Nicole Mullen. Neither of them sang ‘black’ yet in the catalogues, there they were sitting in the same section as Kirk, BeBe, Israel, Donnie, Fred, Deitrick, Marvin, Smokie, Kurt, Dottie, Byron, Darwin, and Andrae and The LCGC.                              

When their new titles arrived, I would place Nicole under the section entitled “Female Singers” and Ron under “Hosanna Music”.

At the end of the day, inevitably, I would find that Nicky and Ronnie and been surreptitiously re-homed somewhere between Alvin and Yolanda.

I didn’t feel it was right to reveal my true feelings. It made sense to focus on the two most popular genres while at the same time, not to let on that I wasn’t keen on either of them. I was warming to The Gaithers after noticing how dedicated they were to magnifying the Lord and how well their videos were put together, but I didn’t appreciate them half as much as I do now.  Best sellers deserved a prominent place and the buyers of them deserved to have a sales assistant who at least appeared to be as enthusiastic about their favourite music as they were.

Gospel lovers were not the slightest bit interested where Bill and Gloria were travelling to and why they were always homecoming, but never actually arriving. Likewise, Gaither fans wanted to own all of Bill & Gloria’s DVDs so they could pretend they were sitting in a circle with the gang, singing about the joys of Heaven.

So, I had to be shrewd. Very shrewd. Our customers needed someone to know what the fantastic new releases were, and they needed that someone to be ecstatic about it. But pretending was hard. I liked Mary Mary’s ever-so-popular, popular, “Shackles”, so I played it often, hoping it might throw people off the scent, and nobody would realise that I was actually into ‘white worship.’

I may be deluded when I say that I managed to fool them quite well. Maybe they all knew I was a fraud and laughed about how pathetic I looked when trying join in with their enthusiasm. But I do know that there was one guy who was suspicious of me from the very beginning.

Whenever he asked me a question about an artist, he would peer at me through his glasses and squint. One day, a few weeks before I went off on maternity leave, he was squinting at me so much that I could no longer see his eyes. I had done my usual acting and had tried to be in a rave about the upcoming new gospel releases. Then it happened. He glared at me and said,

“So, who is your favourite gospel artist then?

I quickly named the most popular person I could think of:

“Oh. Well Kirk Franklin’s quite good, isn’t he?”

He wasn’t going to let me get away that lightly.

“So, what is your favourite track of his?“

I picked one of his most popular songs.

“Stomp.” I said hurriedly avoiding his gaze.

But alas, I had made a fatal error. ‘Stomp’ had been released many years before and was now quite old.

“What about a more recent one?”

I was beginning to panic and wondered if I should feign the early stages of labour.

“Well, I like er…er… other artists too.”

“Such as?” He raised an eyebrow. This guy was definitely on to me.

Thankfully, my husband was a long-time fan of Ce Ce Winans, so I was familiar with her songs.

“Well, I love Ce Ce ya know. “Throne Room” is well good innit?”

Why I tried to ‘talk black’, was beyond me. Living in an area that is predominantly Pakistani, I ended up sounding more like an Asian teenage boy. I couldn’t do a Caribbean accent if my life depended on it. I couldn’t even do that ‘fan thing’ properly. You know – when ethnic women are trying to show contempt or disapproval of something, they spread their fingers out in a fan shape, and wave it near their neck. My poor attempts always made me look like I was trying to dry my fingernails or swat a fly.

I was getting nervous. I shifted from foot to foot hoping that his eyes would do the same and move away from my direction. They didn’t.

“Umm…” he retorted. He picked up his goods and said goodbye, not before taking one last narrow-eyed glare at me as he descended the stairs.

I had managed to sell a great number of gospel CDs by forcing myself to be a little interested in something I really couldn’t bear. I wondered if this guy thought I was a coconut – brown on the outside, white on the inside. I wanted to call him back and say,

“Hey, I don’t have a problem with my race. I like some Christafari.  I have a Tonex album. My parents love Mahalia Jackson.”

But he was gone. Off to spill the beans and reveal to all about the imposter that I really was.

Repentance Review

It is never good to be deceptive, even if it is to help boost your employer’s sales. I realise that I should have been more honest with our customers. Maybe they could have taught me some things about that genre which would have helped me to appreciate it more.

I still love a large variety of Christian music and I am also pleased to say that before I ceased working at the shop, I eventually developed a love for The Gaithers, even if I couldn’t persuade Casper to.

Like I mentioned earlier, I have developed a deep appreciation for many Nigerian worshippers so, all in all, I feel less of a coconut these days. Besides, my arms are not that hairy.

He always looked like he was posing for a photo shoot, but to actually call him a ‘poser’ would be cruel because not only is that a negative judgement, but he’s not here to defend himself.

I settled for ‘Mafia Man’, not because he wore a hat with a white band or spoke with a thick gangster accent, but because he looked Italian, wore a dark suit and never entered the shop without pair of sunglasses in his hand. No matter the weather or season, the shades were his close companion. There was nothing wrong with his eyes, I’m sure. Our bright lights were more dazzling than the dismal streets outside, yet he never once squinted or put them on to look at something.

He was a tall young man in his late twenties but acted rather odd. Whether this was to draw attention to himself or not, I cannot say. But if it was attention he was after, he got it because he was very good-looking. It appeared that he knew it, and that was what made people stare.

He came in weekly, without fail, but to my knowledge, he never bought anything. He would just wander slowly in a circle around the 3 square display tables, looking down at the goods, but not touching them. Despite being young, he never perused the music and neither did he ever venture upstairs.

After his usual trip around the tables, he would leave the shop and turn left, walking past our large window. While striding ahead, a ritual would take place whereby he would put on his sunglasses with one hand while placing the opposite hand in his pocket. It would be raining, cloudy, dark or snowing, but ‘Mafia Man’ never failed to do his catwalk strut with dark lenses in front of his eyes.

There’s nothing more annoying than knowing that somebody who appears to be wanting attention knows they have succeeded in getting it. With this in mind, I tried not to watch him when he did his exiting the shop ritual. But it was hard. I knew that his peripheral vision would pick up on the fact that I was standing by the till turning my head to the left and watching him walk off down the street. So, I would put my left hand on my cheek with my fingers just above my eyebrow, and peer through them, not-so-surreptitiously. Usually, the better option was to swivel around 180 degrees, to face the computer software that was displayed on the wall behind me. This, he noticed too, I’m sure, especially as Ilumina boxes weren’t that interesting.

As time went by, his hairstyle changed from a floppy fringe and short sides, to a slicked-back shiny pompadour, with the nape area so long it could have been placed into a small ponytail. This did not suit him at all, and it only served to make him more worthy of his new name, because now he looked like a godfather in training.

As no purchases or queries were ever made, I only ever had one conversation with him. That day, there was no-one else on the ground floor and just as a full circuit of the first table had been completed, he uncharacteristically decided to give me eye contact and ask what church I attended. His air of mysteriousness dropped as he proved he could carry-on a conversation without checking his appearance in the reflective surfaces nearby. We chatted for a while and I felt rather guilty for assuming he ‘loved himself’, for he was quite gentle-natured.

Casper suddenly emerged from the basement, and the ‘Italian gangster’ ended our conversation abruptly. He quickly became ‘Danny Marcini’ again and made his way to the door. After removing his trusty shades from his pocket, he headed up the road back to Sicily.

Repentance review

Isn’t it foolhardy how we can judge people by their appearances when in reality, they are nothing like we imagine? I wonder how I would feel if I knew that somebody was making incorrect assumptions about me by the way I dress or by my manner.

We do not really know what is going on in someone’s heart and we often are completely wrong about how we think they would be in any given situation. One year during the stocktaking week, I remember being mildly offended when Casper admitted to me that he deliberately did not pair me up with his father-in-law, because he feared I would be too much for him.

“What do you mean?” I had said defensively.

He thought that I would become over-familiar and distract him from his calculations. He thought that I would start going on about Jesus in between calls of ‘£6.99.’  I knew I would not have been like that at all, and besides, I would have been too busy trying to make sure my elderly companion did not trip over the wires. I frowned at Casper but realised there was no use in defending myself; we all misjudge people from time to time and it is something we constantly have to work on with the help of the Lord.

I’m sure that our non-buying friend had a perfectly good reason for acting the way he did. Maybe he was one of the many customers who enjoyed visiting the shop in their lunch break just to feel the Spirit’s presence.

I will never know, but one thing I do know is, I was guilty of doing the very thing Jesus warned us about: “Do not judge others or you will be judged also.”