Trapped in a bookshop? My idea of heaven

I would have had more fun than Dave. Rearranged all the books, signed a stack of them and plundered the café...

It began like something from the opening of a Roald Dahl story, in which all sorts of whizzpopping adventures will occur. But rather than in the pages of a book, this story played out over Twitter. (Come to think of it, Twitter sometimes sounds like a character in a Roald Dahl story – one of the really scary ones.)

On Thursday night, a Texan tourist was locked in a bookshop for two hours after getting distracted just before closing time at 9pm. David from Dallas had just been hanging out in Waterstones in Trafalgar Square, when he got up from the chair he had been sitting in and walked downstairs to find that all the lights were off and the doors locked. That's what comes of putting chairs in bookshops ….

Dave was reassured that help was on its way, but it was only when he tweeted a photo of the darkened shop with only a table full of copies of Kevin Pietersen's autobiography for company that millions of bookworms sat up and took notice. Not with sympathy, but with envy.

According to booksellers I know, Dave from Dallas is by no means the first customer (or bookseller) to wake up in a darkened bookshop. (One particular Foyles in the 1990s had a cosy basement, apparently, where staff could doze off behind some piles of Christina Foyle's So Much Wisdom.) It's what they do next that is the real test of character. Waterstones immediately blogged a list of "what to read when you're locked in a bookshop", but if I had been him I would have had a lot more fun. Rearranged all the books. Plundered the café and made a George's Marvellous Medicine. Thrown sweets at Nelson's Column. Signed a stack of books. Looked for survival tips in Robinson Crusoe ….

So, what did The Waterstones One do with his two hours of glorious alone time to run riot inside a bookshop? "I had my own book but I mainly people-watched and stared out of the window," he said, "and just waited to be rescued." What a waste!

Granted, it's a shame that Texan Dave wasn't stuck in the Waterstones just down the road in Piccadilly, where the top floor bar does one of the best Bloody Marys in London. Or the new Foyles nearby, where he could have slid down the twisty bannisters all night. Or Shakespeare and Company in Paris, which is as much bedroom as bookshop, anyway. Or the biggest outdoor bookshop in the world, Bart's Books in California, where he could have just scaled the wall. But staring out of the window and waiting to be rescued? What kind of rubbish bookworm is he?

The answer finally came when David was interviewed after his release from the shop. Why did he enter a bookshop at 8.55pm, anyway? "I walked in … and I needed to use the internet," he explained. He's not a bookworm at all! No wonder there is such a boring end to his story.

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