It really is the ‘shop’ in the word ‘bookshop’ that is going to be difficult. I feel like I can move mountains – mountains of books especially I’ve had lots of practise at that as we moved a lot. But I’m slightly allergic to handling money matters.

The other day I was involved in a work-related VAT discussion. A “bilingual” one – as if a monolingual one wasn’t going to be painful enough. There were words like VAT, credit, invoice…I mean just nasty scary complicated stuff. If I thought getting a passport was hard, I hadn’t lived until I looked at the VAT regulations website. Just trying to do it properly can get you in to legal shit and it doesn’t tell you how to undo it to be legal. Scary.

So, I am going to study the administrative side of bookshoppery. I went out and bought a book called ‘how to start a business’. And I have decided I cannot possibly have a bookshop without someone who can help take care of this side of things. So I also have to find a partner in unintentional crime against the inland revenue.

Moving forward! Baby steps…