Just a quick visit. The shop was very cold today, the heating is poor, and by mid afternoon, when I realised I was cold, it was too late to do anything about it. I was frozen to he core, shaking, and looking forward to getting home. When I did, I sat in front of the fire under a heap of clothing and, over the course of three hours, thawed out.

This is a brief trip to the dining room to clatter out a few words on the computer before going back to the warmth of the living room. The back of the house faces north and is a bit draughty, which isn’t what I want right now.

I was intending having a night off from writing anyway, so it has just fallen right.

Tomorrow, I will check on submission windows for February and will start again.

We had constant phone calls today. Every time I tried to use sellotape, or was halfway through licking stamps, someone rang. Rare £2 coins, rare 50p coins, a coin bought in a Charity Shop . . .

I also made three appointments for people to come and sell us stuff. It would be better if they wanted to buy, but there you go. That’s how it always is in a shop. It’s easy to buy junk, hard to buy quality and even harder to sell anything. Now that people are used to buying on bay and places like that they don’t come into shops. They still want us for information, but, with rare exceptions, nobody buys in coin shops these days.

Somebody offered us £1,400 for a gold coin. We have it on at £1,950. So we declined. He came back with an offer of £1,500. We ignored it. Time is money and we are getting fed up of wasting time on people who are basically

picking our pockets.

We frequently get offers of less than the bullion price. My favourite ones say “I’d be happy to pay £X for this.” or variations on that theme, when X is less than we paid for it. I really want to write back and say “So would I.” but the boss won’t let me.

If I were to write a song about today I would call it The Shopkeeper’s Lament.

An enamelled crown of 1887. An under-dressed St George slays a dragon. Frankly, I don’t think boots and a cloak are the right kit for the job. I’d want a decent pair of trousers too – even if you don’t get your bits and pieces singed by dragon fire, they need protecting from chafing. And a lance would be handy too.