For several years, I worked in the book department of a branch of WH Smith. It was a part time job, because my youngest children were still at primary school and I wanted to be home with them after school.

They were good to me at Smith’s, allowing me to fit my hours to my husband’s needs when he was having chemotherapy, as well as paid compassionate leave in the last weeks of his life.

There was a congenial atmosphere, although in all bookselling jobs there is the wearying task of placating dissatisfied customers, chasing up their books with publishers and distributors and the sometimes heavy grunt work of putting out (and removing) stock. We had a canteen where one could order a sandwich from a lady called Jean, at subsidized prices. On the ground floor, they sold newspapers and magazines and the dailies were always up for grabs on the canteen table. When possible, I liked to have them all in front of me, to compare front pages. The redtops spoke of scandals involving people I hadn’t heard of, royal mishaps and, in the case of the Express, forthcoming blizzards.

It was from a customer at WH Smith that I heard about Margaret Thatcher’s resignation. My colleagues rarely expressed political opinions and when the First Gulf War broke out early in 1991, I was surprised to find it wasn’t being talked about. There was however a remarkable uptick in sales of the prophesies of Nostradamus. The customers may have suspected that the end of the world was nigh, as promised by men wearing sandwich boards in Oxford Street.

The fastest selling book in my experience, then or since, was Andrew Morton’s ‘Diana: Her True Story’ which hit the shelves in hardback format in June 1992. Customers queued and bought until it sold out, by which time another delivery was on its way. All the bookshops sold out in no time and the phone rang repeatedly with customers enquiring if we still had stock and, if not, at what hour was it expected. I took to answering the question even before it was asked: ‘We’ve sold out but will have more tomorrow morning,’ which strikes me now as an outrageous presumption. They could have been phoning about Bond Assessment Papers in Non-Verbal Reasoning.

Occasionally we had celebrity signings, the most impressive being Ian Wright on the publication of his autobiography, Mr Wright. The queue extended beyond the store into the shopping centre with the stairs and beyond being occupied by fans. When the staff door of the book department opened and Ian Wright emerged, looking rather small and slight to my eyes, a great cheer went up from the entire crowd, not that they could all see him but they took the cue from each other and knew he was there.

Edwina Currie also did a signing, accompanied by two police officers and, as far as I recall, nobody bought her book, unless the manager forked out for a copy, just to be civil.

We kept Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses on the shelves, come fatwa, come paperback, and it was a regular occurrence to evacuate the store on account of a phoned in bomb threat. At such times, the staff were expected to remain in the field, checking the shelves for explosive devices.

The bomb which actually went off was believed to be a memento from the IRA. It had been placed in a bin outside WH Smith and I had just got off the bus on the way to work when I saw that the police had put up barriers, holding back the public. They did a controlled explosion which made a mighty bang, an uncanny bang, I have to say, as it was unlike thunder or any domestic loud noise, such as the sound of a wardrobe falling down a flight of stairs. Staff who had been inside the shop were offered counselling, I believe.

The staff had to do stock takes about twice a year, which went on until late at night. As you know, WH Smith is a stationer and no one wanted to have to count the rubber bands.

Some toys were sold in the store, especially in the Christmas season. There were ThunderCat figures on sale and, for some reason, there were rarely enough Lion-Os to meet the demand. My son liked the ThunderCats and, like many other children, was a Lion-O short of the set. I remember one of the colleagues coming upstairs to access the canteen via the book department and calling out ‘We’ve got Lion-Os!’ I won’t say there was a stampede but I’m sure I stampeded. Something similar happened in later years regarding the TeleTubbies, when Po – obviously – was the absentee plush toy, but my children were bigger and I wasn’t involved personally with Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po until I became a grandmother. Still, it was nice to hear the triumphant cry, ‘We’ve got Po!’

Why are my WH Smith years in my mind now after all these years? After checking out my groceries today, I looked at the newspaper spinner and made a quick comparison of the headlines. The Sun’s headline was about a crime not on my radar. The Guardian’s headline reproached Israel. The Times had sold out but I think their headline today concerns President Elect Trump. Now, just as in the days when I spread out the papers on the canteen table to view the headlines, priorities vary from one news outlet to another and it’s right that they do this. It’s a free press.