Work Experience - Two Fresh Pairs of Eyes

Hi!

My name is Sarah Woods, and I've spent the last week doing work experience at Bailey Hill. So I'm going to say a little about how I've spent my week!

Day 1: Met the very nice (other) Sarah, and the very nice owner, Lynn. Learnt how to use the till; tho managed to mess it up quite a few times during the week! Opened the order and sorted all that out; then set to work on Project One: The Childrens Section.

So I tried to sort the whole section out; learnt about tapping the books into a straight line with another book, then learnt the hard way that you cant just do it with your hand! After kinda managing to slot all the lose books into place (dont look at the left of the second picture!) I set a couple out for display, trying to work through the classics that I'd really enjoyed myself at that age; starting off with the Michael Morpurgo, Stig of the Dump sort of end, then working up to the Lord of the Flies, 1984 'proper' novels that really introduced me to literature. Its amazing how satisfying setting the whole thing in order was, and sorry to anyone who saw me prowling around over the next few days, trying to protect my shelves from disorder!
Other activities of the day included watering the plants, learning how to cover the second hand dust jackerts of some gorgeous books, took all my fingernails and only half the stickers off a big pile of architectural textbooks from Bruton with a huge helping of lighter fluid (all the tricks of the trade), and of course a lovely lunch from the deli two doors down!


Day 2: On Tuesday I had the pleasure of meeting Clare and her daughter Verity, who was also getting some work experience. Whilst I set to work on the upstairs, she got down to the proper dirty work of cleaning all the brass on the outside of the shop (making me feel very guilty, but lucky!)! But her efforts were definitely appreciated (by everyone who walked past) and at the end of almost two whole days of scrubbing, and thanks to one helpful passer by who suggested lemon juice, the shop looked amazing!

Right down to the door handle...

 
Day 3: Wednesday was cleaning and clearing day! After doing the order again I set to work polishing and cleaning up a lovely pile of secondhand books, then covering them and pricing. It might have been a bit tedious, but I can't imagine how anyone coped in the days of paper! At the same time Verity put the finishing touches to the gleaming outside of the shop, then set to work on the gardening and cookery.

Then the afternoon brought time for cleaning up the Nature and Religion sections, finding some odd books,like 'How to raise a scorpion as a pet', or '1000 images of cats'.

Day 4: Thursday became the day of cataloguing; learning to find my way around all the websites, gathering all the info anyone could ever hope to need on the secondhand books I'd cleaned and covered during the previous days, right down to measuring them with a ruler! I was really impressed by the systems used and the complexity of it!

A cleaned, covered, catalogued and photographed book! Sucess!

Day 5: Friday started with a little more catalogue work, but it was finally finished! Then the task was to photograph all the books for their website listings, which surprisingly didnt take that long (but sorry to anyone I blocked on the stairs whilst doing it!) Then it was into the window! This consisted of agonising over my choice of books (I'd been given something of a free reign to make it my own - it was children's section all over again!) which seemed like it took forever; especially as Clare had beaten me to my idea of a classicly themed window with her use of the unbeatable 'Very Hungry Catapillar' in the Children's window. It was on to Plan B therefore, which was me raiding the poetry section for all the Faber & Faber editions I could find (they're gorgeous and simple, and very very good) and having all the fun of aranging them in something resebling a rainbow - if I had to recommend one book to anyone whose ever had to do Latin/Greek, or ever thought they should read Homer, or has just seen the film Troy, then it would be Christopher Logue's fantastic adaptation - War Music. Then I filled out the bootom with some of the gorgeous selection of cards and lovely second hand set; and managed not to fall over or knock things over too much!

And this blog is the result of that afternoon and a generous icecream :)

My time here has been a lot of fun, and hard work, but I feel really satisfied with everything I've been able to do; which makes me wonder whether instead of trying to read English at Cambridge, my destiny instead is to find immense satisfaction as a cleaner of some sort! It was a privaledge and a pleasure; even though it did seem that everytime I left the shop the people poured in!

Thanks Lynn and everyone at Bailey Hill! :D