I’m sad about Liam Ruiséal’s because I played a part in its downfall

Liam Ruiséals: I’m sad it’s going. It was the school books that got me in and then the exam papers. Round about September, the booklets of past Junior Cert and Leaving Cert papers would take over a section in the corner, says Colm O’Regan

A world of painful wonder was revealed when you opened an exam paper. Between 1993 and 1996, it was just around the start of the friendly exam papers with nice pictures with Helvetica font that made you feel it was easier. But as you paged further back the exam papers stretched into the 80s when the questions were in Courier font and if you got them wrong not only did you get no marks, there was also the threat of a duster across the back of the head.

Ruiséals was also a landmark. When I was getting to know how to navigate Cork City by myself, it was an anchoring point so I knew how far up the ladder of Oliver Plunkett St I was. When they changed their shop-front colour, it nearly made the news.

When independent bookshops go, where will the odd, vague and frustrating customers go to be indulged with infinite patience? Indies know who I’m talking about. People who come in and ask for “that book, you know the one they’re all talking about, what’s it called, your man wrote it, the fella that’s always on talking about the thing.” Gradually after a bit of coaxing, they’re probably talking about the Bible or 50 Shades Darker. Or someone who wants their entire opinion shaped for them but then doesn’t want to listen to it. They come in asking for a “good book, one I’d like” and proceed to reject every suggestion before leaving annoyed at the bookseller for not knowing what’s in their brain.

Bookshops like this also have a kind of serendipity. You’re not always searching for a particular thing. You stand and then something catches your eye. Usually in Ruiséal’s it might be a local history written by a fella who has a garage full of back issues of the Southern Star and a long-suffering wife who’s hoping that once he publishes this bloody book that’ll be the end of it.

These aren’t Booker prize books that have “stunning, breathtaking … Salman Rushdie” written on the back. It might be about a 19th century murder and some of the people involved have descendants living in the area and “they’re not a bit happy about the book, as a matter of fact”.

Ruiséal’s gave space to all sorts of these books. They are a record of the past that you won’t find on Wikipedia unless someone puts them in a book first. Who knows what it might become now. Wouldn’t it be great if it were another independent bookshop? Are there any Lotto winners who might like to plough their money into being a bookshop? Surely it couldn’t be worse than, it seems from the TV programme on last week, spending it on eight empty pubs or a Titanic-themed restaurant that was surely fated to sink. Maybe they could employ the family again and just quietly give it back to them.

I’m sad about Liam Ruiséal’s also because I, like a lot of consumers, play a part its downfall and others like it. I have bought books online from a certain giant company bigger than Africa. Yes for convenience. Sometimes it’s cheaper.

But OF COURSE IT’S CHEAPER. THEY HAVE ROBOTS! And the humans that do work for them are so stressed about finding my damn book in a warehouse the size of Carlow, they haven’t time to piss.

And they pay tuppence halfpenny tax because “Well you see, the revenues are not really booked here? They’re actually routed through Holland and Bermuda and then in and out of my hole”.

So bolting the stable door, from now on, I’m going to look the books up online and then buy them in an independent bookshop, pausing only to annoy the owner by asking them if they think I’d like it.