Shop Story

I had a yes thing going on for most of last year – let me explain. It was born from reading the novel, Yes Man by Danny Wallace and watching the film of the book. I was struck by the optimism that the concept of saying yes to things more often, conveyed. I thought about this last weekend when a friend complained that I’d been fairly slack of late with blog updates. “Why did you start to write a blog in the first place?” he asked. And so I told him...

I had wanted to write for a long time. What I lacked though was a self belief in my abilities to do so and in some ways it felt like a bit of a pipe dream.

About a year ago I was working in an office in south London. I was having a stressful time for one reason or another and had got to the stage where I loathed going to work in the mornings. One lunch time, after a particularly stressful morning in the office, I decided that I needed to get out for a walk and to clear my head.

I walked down Bermondsey Street towards Tower Bridge Road, taking in the buildings and atmosphere that give a village feel to that part of town near London Bridge. I was slightly lost in my thoughts about the afternoon ahead. My stress levels had started to build as I saw the hands on my watch ticking down towards that point when I would have to go back to the office. I turned in to Tower Bridge Road, and was not entirely looking where I was going when a man walked out of a shop doorway and almost bumped into me. “Sorry” he said, as he walked on. My eyes scanned the shop window. It was a lighting shop. As luck would have it I had been looking for a lamp for my flat. I wandered in and looked around, eventually setting my eyes on a box in the corner with a picture of a tall standing lamp on the side of it. The lamp in the picture was exactly what I’d had in mind to go against the wall in the corner of my lounge. I spoke to the girl behind the counter about it. As we talked, I made a passing comment on the unexpected discovery of the shop. “It belongs to my mum and dad. It’s only a part time gig for me though and not really what I want to do.” she said. “What do you want to do?” I asked. “I want to be a writer” she replied.

It turned out that she had been writing a blog on life working in her parent’s shop. Not only that, but her blog had been picked up by a publisher, was being turned into a book and also into a short film. I was enthralled. To my mind, the only people being published were chefs and celebrities who got other people to write their novels for them. However, here was someone who within a few minutes of conversation, had made writing sound accessible and achievable and was something that could become a reality. I told her I’d wanted to write for a while. I was excited and full of questions that I wanted to ask. “To be honest” she said, “all you need to do is start writing and the more you write, the better you will get.”

Needless to say, work and the afternoon ahead were now further from my mind than I could possibly have imagined an hour earlier. I felt newly inspired, energized and full of ideas. I told the shop girl that I would be back at the weekend for the standing lamp and left, in a far more optimistic frame of mind than when I’d first walked in. As I stepped out of the front door a large Western Union poster on a bus stop was staring me in the face. It was carrying their slogan in big yellow letters – yes.

Months and a few blog entries later I was standing in my kitchen making a coffee when I heard the clatter of the letter box. Amongst the collection of take away menus and junk mail for the previous occupant, was a hand written envelope addressed to me. It contained an invitation to a book launch – Shop Girl Diaries, by Emily Benet.