The Aardvark Blog

Lockdown is definitely coming - people are buying games and sex books
18/10/2020

I came into the bookshop in a really good mood this morning, beautiful autumnal weather, and the life-saving Griffiths garage has re-opened with the second pump repaired (yes, I know it is a small point but the whole area has had to share one pump for months).

Then I come in and R prints out the orders and turns to me and says: people must think that another lockdown is coming because they've started buying games and sex books - and suddenly my good mood disappears.

What an incredibly weird time we are going through, but how well - by and large - most people are coping with it. I get it that there are some late night revellers (yes, I am talking to you, Mr Hancock), rule breakers, Svenskophilics, people who believe that a long trip to the healing shrine at Barnard Castle will cure all that ails them etc etc, but most people are remarkably nice, sane, caring and chatty. During the period since March (which has taken in lockdown, the between time and now groundhog time) conversations on the weather and other inane topics have fallen away to be replaced by some quite meaty political discussions, a lot of increasingly on the nose satire and surreal humour, and talk about all the amazing things we are going to do and places we are going to go to when this finally ends.

In a normal year I would not be here as Ethel and I would be running around like crazy people at the Frankfurt Book Fair. But this is not a normal year and maybe things won't be normal for a while. But good books will still be good books, Flash Gordon (now out in a 40th anniversary reprint) will still be the greatest sci-fi movie of all time, and the world will still contain more love and friendship than discord and hate. So keep buying those games and sex books and whatever else you need to get you through. It is our pleasure to sell them to you - either in the shop or onlline - and I am prepared to face the worst imaginable Bore Worms to continue to do so: surely you didn't expect to get away without me making at least one lame Flash Gordon reference!