Writing and working in a London bookshop

I don’t know if it’s from a kind of  awkwardness that comes with walking into a quiet space,  but I find it really strange when people come into the bookshop singing to themselves. 

 Today it’s been particularly noticeable – perhaps singing makes people feel warmer in this cold weather? One guy sang the intro to Fever, without ever getting to the words, complete with clicky  fingers and a bouncy little walk,  for a good four or five minutes, until his girlfriend very softly, and not unkindly said ‘Why don’t you just shut up?’

Mostly though, people sing little ditties they’ve made up, tuneless things that might just as well be them reading out the words ‘der dum der dum de dee dee’ as there is no attempt to make them sound at all musical.

What I’d really like would be if someone would swing open the door and really go for it, some sort of fat man opera, ideally. Then I could stop what I was doing, and enjoy the distraction rather than just getting unreasonably annoyed by the low level noise.

 My favorite moment of today though, was when a harassed mother whose young daughter was singing Postman Pat at the top of her screech, called her a ‘noisy arsehole’ by accident. She explained to me that she’d meant to say ‘noisy article’. I was very pleased, either way.