Sally Goldsmith, a Sheffield poet currently on a writers’ retreat at Hawthornden Castle, came into Edinburgh today for the Scottish Poetry Library Small Press Fair. Sally arrived in Main Point Books mid-afternoon, not long before the baying of stag parties starts to dominate the street soundscape. We quickly fell into conversation and I discovered that Sally has has written several plays for Radio 4 – and has made one documentary ‘Now Wash Your Hands’ – about the history of Izal Toilet rolls. I only too well remember those hard, disinfectant-impregnated toilet rolls. It was the unforgettable Izal experience that made it possible for everyone who grew up during the 50s and 60s to tolerate even the nauseating Andrex puppy schmaltz.

It turns out that while she was working for Sheffield Art Galleries mounting exhibitions in community venues, Sally toured an exhibition of drawings by artist and cartoonist W. Heath Robinson commissioned by the Izal manufacturers – hence the theme for the programme.

Sally gave me a copy of her poetry pamphlet Singer, which includes this poem based inspired by the entry on hares in a field guide on British mammals.

HARE GHAZAL

Fleet footed and solitary, makes a shallow scrape or hollow
in a clump of long grass. Does not burrow for hare

is leaping, zigzagging, doubling back. Somehow it all feels random,
unfocused, the way you sit at the screen but can’t settle. You’re hare-

brained, mad as, lolloping from one damn thing to another,
hopping and boxing yourself into this clumsy metaphor.

You think of dusk and the path in a moonscape of dunes,
still your mind, make a noose of it and call her, draw her

Bawty, Malkin, Scavernick, Skyper, Katie, Laverock,
Caproun, Whiddie, Cuttie, Wintail Puss – yes, draw her, Poor Hare,

to where you first started her. She held herself in a stichery of marram,
her glassy eye a window, perhps a funenl. You pour, hour-

glass yourself back into rank grass, trust that after the running
you will find your form and name: Old Sally; your creature: hare.

Today a man came into Main Point Books in search of a leaving present for a work colleague who has a phobia about being trapped in a sinking ship. So he cheerfully asked to be directed to the shipping section and ended up choosing Voices from the Titanic, which he was delighted to find. Whether his friend will be delighted to receive it is another matter. I suggested he might also spoof-email her a purported win of a free cruise. He left with a thoughtful look in his eye.

Two of our customers this afternoon happened to be Turkish, strangers to one another. One gathered a slim bundle of plays, several by Samuel Beckett. He might have been a director, an actor or a teacher but I didn’t have time to settle my speculations as he left talking animatedly but non-specifically of how he was looking forward to using them in the future. Three hours later there followed a PhD student from Marmara, looking for anything about publishing. On impulse I allowed her to raid the small cache I’d accumulated, including Julia Horn’s book on editing and I remembered attending a short course she gave at Publishing Scotland where she laid great emphasis on the fact that publisher and author are as likely to be antagonists as allies – with the editor in between.

Our bookshop at 8 Lauriston Street, Edinburgh is one of a dying breed, or so we’re told. We know it as a living space and not a day goes by without a special moment. Yesterday it was the American who buys Bertrand Russell on Leibnitz and says how urgently he feels the need to reimagine his country’s future; the young Spaniard working out what the civil war of 75 years before means to him; the woman wearing the niqab who buys Catch 22; the chocolate maker who tells of visits to ‘secret’ plantations in Venezuala where subtle old strains of cocoa are being grown again.