Sorry, sir, we only stock books we agree with

I was on my way to the pub the other evening, about seven o’clock, rain lashing down on my head, when I saw that there was a dim, yellowish light on in the bookshop. Peering closer through the downpour I could see five women sitting on a circle of chairs around either a table or a cauldron, talking animatedly to one another. Or perhaps chanting, I don’t know.

I crossed the road and stood directly outside the shop window with my arms outstretched, mouthing at those inside: ‘Where’s my book? Where’s my book?’ Six weeks previously I had wandered into the shop to see if they were stocking The Great Betrayal: they weren’t. And when I asked the lady behind the till she became somewhat evasive. This time, after watching me standing there like a loon in the rain, the same woman came forward and opened the door. ‘I’m sorry, Rod,’ she said, ‘but I don’t stock political books.’

‘But…’ I began pointing to the large array of political books in her window. ‘Apart from those dealing with feminism, the environment, climate change and gender issues,’ she replied. I said wasn’t it a pity that a book which was written 150 metres from her shop, which quoted local people and had reached number four in the Sunday Times bestseller list, couldn’t find room among the interesting tracts about why maths is racist and how we’re all going to burn to a crisp very soon, but our conversation was cut short.

Another woman, with long straggly hair and a face like the blade of a freshly sharpened hatchet, got up from her chair and said, ‘This is a private meeting, goodbye’, and slammed the door in my face — and that was that.