A tide of magazine clippings, jottings on lined paper, sketches and headings like ‘A Good BIG Dinner’ blocked out in red felt-tip capitals spilled over the counter. They were accompanied by a nasty smell. Some of the papers were very greasy and I spotted a flaccid curl of bacon rind sticking to the reverse of one of them. I stopped myself from taking a brisk step backwards.

‘Colin, we’re not book publishers. I told you that, didn’t I?’

He gazed around him with an ever fresh air of surprise and bewilderment. ‘Yes, you are. I know you are. Look at all your books.’

‘We just put covers on them. We restore old books, we bind people’s academic theses, we take care of books that have already been published.’

‘Exactly.’ Colin nodded triumphantly. One of the most exhausting aspects of dealing with him was the way he agreed with your disagreement and just went on repeating his demands. ‘So you can put covers on mine. I’ll pay you, you know. I’m not asking for something for nothing, not like all these refugees coming over here and expecting to get given money and big houses. It’s not like that, you know.’

‘I know, Colin. But we aren’t publishers. Putting a cover on … on your manuscript here, that won’t get it into the bookshops like Smith’s in the High Street where people could buy it. That’s a completely different process. You have to … well, you have to have the text edited and all these recipes would have to be tested. Then artists and marketing people would have to look at designs for it, and thousands of copies would have to be printed by a big commercial printers, and then salesmen would have to sell it to booksellers …’ I felt weary myself at the mere thought of all this effort.

‘Exactly.’

‘But we don’t do any of these things, Colin.’ I reached out for his plastic bag and very gently began putting the rancid pages into it. From past experience I knew and feared what was likely to come next.

He watched me for a second or two, then he grabbed the bag from me and began hauling the contents out again. ‘It’s my book.’

‘I know, but I can’t publish it for you because I’m not a publisher.’

‘My book’s important, I’m telling you. It’s taken me a long time, these things take time to do properly.’ His voice was rising. We tussled briefly with the bag, me putting in and him taking out. The bacon rind dropped in a limp ringlet on the counter. ‘I’m not stupid, don’t make that mistake. I’m as good as anyone else and I was born here, not like these blacks and the rest of them.’