Michael Moynihan: Romance rules as big chapter in Cork culture closes

Cork will be poorer because of the closure of John Coffey’s Uneeda Bookshop

John Coffey, Uneeda Bookshop, Oliver Plunkett St, Cork is set to close its doors. Picture: Larry Cummins

When people ask me where I get my column ideas I sometimes tell them Italian coffee and apple crumble combine to offer fail-safe inspiration.

And sometimes I tell them the truth.

This week I was going to repurpose some of the pressing urban questions of the day and apply them to Cork (to wit: could this be termed an anarchist jurisdiction? Or does that apply to just one of the southern suburbs? What are the possible benefits of re-wilding for Cork? Just how deserted will those large office blocks be in the far-off post-covid landscape?) 

Then news drifted through that the Uneeda bookshop on Oliver Plunkett Street was about to close.

I wrote here a couple of weeks ago about T.W. Murray’s, the famous hunting and fishing supplies shop on Patrick Street, which has been on the go for almost two full centuries. 

Uneeda, which also sells records, has not been in operation for quite as long, but its impending departure is another rip in the fabric of the city.

Fabric is a word I use advisedly.

The atmosphere of a city is changeable even when it’s not hard to define in the first place, but the physical experience of an area, the impact on the senses, the texture of a place, is by definition a far more concrete proposition.

Hence the widespread disappointment that the little haven at the Grand Parade end of Oliver Plunkett Street is nearing the end.

A second-hand book- and record-shop is one of the last romantic outposts: there’s a reason that Nick Hornby used a used-record shop as the setting for High Fidelityall those years ago, after all.

These are venues of harmless obsessions and sudden discoveries, zones of intersecting interests, and those dual-mission outlets are an intersection of soothing mustiness to the nose and satisfyingly square vinyl to the touch.

Years ago an American comedian had an elaborate routine on the civilising message inherent in the presence of a bookshop: here you have a place filled with knowledge and information and not only does its owner want you to come in, you’re positively encouraged to look at and read as many books as you want before making a purchase.

The essential message, that of a bookshop’s ennobling influence on its general neighbourhoood, is hard to miss and remains impossible to contradict. The stretch of Oliver Plunkett Street housing Uneeda is mostly devoted to the more sensual pleasures, which made it an even more apposite counterbalance to the pubs and fast-food outlets.

The simple pleasure of a good second-hand bookshop (or even a bad one) can’t be overstated, though the circumstances have to align in a particular sequence.

A wet day, for instance, or bitterly cold, you’re in town to meet someone but they’re delayed or you’re too early, and with time to kill you duck — no other verb will do the job — into the book-lined haven of your choice. Once you shake off the raindrops/thaw out a little, you let your gaze range over the spines arrayed before, when you freeze in place.

Is that — really? Is that the book? Not that one, the one you haven’t been looking for on and off for 10 years as much as the one that you gave up looking for 10 years ago? A different cover to the one you remember, a font that doesn’t look familiar, but yes. It’s the one.

You open the book and glance at the first page for the number pencilled in across the top right-hand corner, but unless the price involves one of your kidneys, you know well you’re going to buy it.

Up to the counter, the man at the register recognises the glint of fulfillment in your eyes and doesn’t charge the exorbitant price you’d willingly pay.

Out you step into the street with the book under your arm and you know the day cannot possibly improve after this.

This was a scenario well known to Uneeda proprietor John Coffey in his decades as a bookseller.

He spoke to Marjorie Brennan of this parish only last year for her series on Irish bookshops, and his genial personality and love of books were equally visible in his answers.

The critical clue, however, is in the title of the series: We Sell Books.

Coffey gave a glimpse in the interview of the grit necessary to survive in retail for decades. Take adaptability: he didn’t start off as a bookseller, for instance, but worked instead in a completely different industry until technology made his job vanish: “They (Goodbody’s) made hessian bags, and I was in charge of the turner, you would turn them inside them out, clean them, and repair them for the farmers for the harvest. That all changed when the plastic took over.” 

Coffey didn’t take the disappearance of his job lying down. He remade himself as a bookseller and learned on the job.

He said: 

If anyone had a problem, I gave them their money back.  

"I also know books. There’s nothing in that window that’s not saleable. I have an innate understanding of what people will or won’t buy.” 

There’s a lot of white noise when it comes to entrepreneurship and marketing, but you can’t beat someone who’s spent decades at a counter to cut to the quick and identify the specific qualities needed to survive (“A thick neck and durability”).

Retail was already undergoing major changes before Covid-19, and yet the curious reversal in music technology helped the shop, he added: “What is saving this shop is the return of vinyl. Vinyl is keeping my door open. Although there is something happening in the last six months or so, the sale of my books is going up. People are giving up the electronic readers and going back to the paper book in the hand.” 

Still, not all of Coffey’s counterparts made it through to the 2020s. Anyone who strolled the streets of Cork in the last couple of decades will recognise some of the names he recalled: “A lot of people don’t realise that all these shops like mine are gone. The Lee Bookstore, Connolly’s . . . when I started out, there were about 20 or 30 of them.” Now their ranks will be even thinner.

Nothing against the multiplying barbershops and tattoo parlours, which seem to spring up in such numbers that you almost expect to find a barber’s in a tattoo parlour housing another barber’s shop with yet another tattoo shop within that, ad infinitum, but the Uneeda will be missed. Cork will be poorer for its absence.

Not just because it’s another Cork-owned business closing down. Not just because it’s another bookshop pulling down the shutters. And not just because your columnist tracked down In This Corner by Pete Heller there only last week, though that’s important too.

Cork will be poorer because of John Coffey’s parting message for We Sell Books.

“Mills and Boon are my bestsellers. A lot of people think commerce runs the world — it doesn’t. Romance rules the world.”