5

IN WHICH… I FEAR A NIGHTMARE DREAM

Confirmed compulsive collectors may imagine that running a second-hand record shop would be some kind of dream existence. Those actually doing it might disagree. When I visited Julian and Helen Smith at Second Scene in Bushey, near Watford, on Friday 29 September 2017, their body language and exhausted demeanour were suggesting they were seriously considering whether, after six years running the shop, they should close it and just trade records online. The business was going well financially, but appeared to be taking an unexpected toll on their personal well-being.

Julian, also a musician who plays drums with cult outfit Cranium Pie (and their associated Baking Research Station), changed direction from selling fireplaces to selling records, albeit from the same premises, which led to a few comical misunderstandings in the early days of the new business. But now his initial enthusiasm and enjoyment were being chipped away – mainly because of certain customers.

‘My ideal customer would be a Russian who came in with loads of money just wanting to pay good prices to take records back to Russia to sell there. But many of the customers I get would despise someone like that. They consider themselves to be the true elite of record buyers – but they can come in, spend hours talking to – or more often at – me, and then walk out, having got in the way, caused more work for me by moving stuff around, listened to records they had no intention of buying and then cleared off, having spent nothing.’

Did he mean customers like me, I began wondering, a little anxiously?

His wife, Helen, was even more damning of some of their clients: ‘I started off quite liking records but now I’ve grown to hate them, they’re just square packages with discs in. Sometimes customers make me feel like just shutting the doors, locking them up and walking away.’

Perhaps it was just an iffy day. After all, when a lady came in, asking for a couple of singles with which to decorate the cake she was making, Helen handed her half a dozen and charged her nothing at all, after she explained the cake was being made in memory of someone who had recently died, aged just 45: ‘It’s very sad, really – his brother asked me if I’d do it.’

I suggested to the couple that maybe their problem was that they didn’t take enough time off, away from their admittedly rather small shop in which claustrophobia might occasionally overwhelm them. Couldn’t they make a little more time for themselves, instead of opening five days out of seven as they currently did? They would go on to implement that suggestion, closing Sunday, Monday and Thursday.

Or how about putting someone else in charge when they fancied taking time off?

‘We did try that, and had a lovely girl looking after things, but one day I was out and a guy came in wanting to move a huge collection of records which he’d been asked to clear on behalf of a former DJ – literally thousands of singles, which he wasn’t even looking to get money for. She took the ones he’d brought in, but didn’t ask for any contact details. I reckon he may have had thousands more. OK, everyone makes mistakes and we all have to learn the hard way, but that probably cost me a fortune – I still have nightmares about it,’ said the obviously still frustrated Julian.

I had an almost opposite experience once. I was taking the dreaded walk to a dental appointment, hoping against hope he would have been taken ill and the appointment would have to be postponed, when I noticed a container sitting on a wall I was about to pass. As I glanced down, I saw that it seemed to be full of LPs. Closer inspection showed that indeed it was. And there were two more, equally well endowed with vinyl. What were they doing there? Was someone moving house? Had they been left there for a purpose? There was no sign of anyone in the garden behind the wall on which the records were perched, and no removals van parked anywhere nearby. I looked around wondering whether there were hidden cameras anywhere, whether this was some kind of sting or set-up. Couldn’t see anything.

Hm. I could hardly pick up an armload and lug them all the way to the surgery, really, and if I picked some up and took them back to my car, I’d be late for the appointment which, although fearing, I really needed. Common sense won out and off I went to see the gnasher mechanic. Returning about 40 minutes later, the records, like most of my teeth, were still in situ. There was still no one around. This time I did scoop up as many as I could hold – noticing from the covers that they were predominantly heavy- and death-metal style albums, most of whose band names I didn’t recognise.

I put about 30 or 40 in my car and went home, telling my disbelieving wife where they came from. As she was accusing me of having bought them and not wanting her to know how much I’d spent, I offered to show her where they’d actually come from, and drove her back to Spencer Road. There were scores of records still sitting there. ‘Now will you believe me?’ I asked her.

Of course, I felt obliged to rescue the remaining records from this state of unappreciation and imminent decay once the rain started. I went back again the next day and got some more. To this day I have no idea what was going on there. But I managed to flog off many of the albums for a decent profit!

Back in Bushey, Julian was even beginning to rail against some of his regular customers, quickly adding, ‘Not you. I like you, but there are plenty who come in here probably because they have nowhere better to go and spend an hour and a half in here without buying anything.’

A surreptitious glance at my phone revealed that I hadn’t yet been in the shop for much longer than an hour, watching Julian run a stream of singles through his cleaning apparatus before putting them out for sale. But, no, I hadn’t bought anything, even though I was casting covetous glances at the £50 Audience album, displayed beguilingly on the wall. I own a copy, but its cover was damaged in my personal ‘Watergate’ disaster. But, if I just purchased the cover of another copy and inserted my original copy into it, would I really then have a flawless copy? I didn’t buy it. Now he’ll definitely hate me too, I thought.

There are other reasons Julian and Helen may take against their customers. Some of them whiff a bit, some haggle too much over price, others don’t like to haggle at all, but he wishes they would! And he certainly doesn’t enjoy it when customers try to find out whether he has better records than they do and then complain about him when he almost invariably does.

I concluded that it was a bad day at the office and that the two had been imposing too much pressure on themselves and not paying enough attention to their own health.

They are a genuine, generous, friendly couple who created a thriving business from a standing start but who, like so many small-business operators in all kinds of different fields, may occasionally feel overworked and under-appreciated.

I wouldn’t fancy doing it myself. I know that, because I could easily have sought to get involved when I heard that the Sounds Retro shop in Watford would soon be closing, and that the business was buyable for the right price. The idea of checking it out and considering a purchase did enter my head for a few fleeting moments. It didn’t remain there for long. Poachers really shouldn’t turn gamekeepers. Plus, Julian had told me that when Record Collector had run the story about my intention to visit all of the record shops, illustrating it with a photograph of me standing outside his shop, this had apparently enraged Sounds Retro-man for some odd reason, given that we did not know each other. I doubted he’d want to sell to me.

A couple of weeks later, a friend wanted to film a short interview with me about my experiences during a working life in the bookmaking game. It would become part of a series Simon Nott was creating to go on to the website of his employer, Star Sports Bookmakers. I’d be in good company, as amongst the most recent subjects were Mick Channon, international class footballer turned international class racehorse trainer; and successful jump horse trainer, David Pipe, son of a record-breaking father in the same line, Martin.

I was naturally flattered to be asked to join such illustrious company, and when he asked for an appropriate if quirky location, I suggested Julian’s shop, hoping that Simon, who has a serious record collecting background to go with his bookmaking expertise, might be able to include Julian in the interview at some point and thus give him a little positive PR.

Julian was happy to let me use the shop on the day but told me that he was now ‘on tablets’ and had been advised that he might be better off not spending as much time there, as he currently did. He wasn’t, though, quite sure how he could manage to do that and still run the business efficiently. He really was having doubts about the long-term viability of the shop. He talked again about the rigours of having to be pleasant to some customers who he felt were time-wasters.

I would soon hear very similar views from another record shop owner with whom I’d become quite pally. He was frustrated by the uneven spread of business he was experiencing since he’d started a couple of years earlier. He, like Julian, was dealing only with second-hand vinyl, no new stuff, no CDs: ‘I think I may have to get a steady, reliable job. This is an unpredictable business. One week I can take almost nothing financially, the next someone can come in with a large collection and I can have a really good week. But with a young child to worry about bringing up we really need a reliable income.’

I knew running a record shop was unlikely to lead to instant riches, but had always believed job satisfaction would compensate. Now my clearly rose-coloured impression was being shown up as unrealistic and simplistic. I began to worry about the well-being of these good people and the viability of the businesses they were running, which had to support their families and lifestyles. It was time to change the subject…