We have new shelves in the front room of the shop. This may not seem like particularly exciting news to you, but it is to us. They are our special new titles display shelves, designed and made by the fair hands of our very own Adam, and the customers *love* them. They stand there browsing for hours. They pick books up. They read them. They even buy them. It is like a salt lick at a safari park. Everybody is happy. Who'd have thought a few sheets of plywood could spread so much goodwill?

Local author William Blake was a classic example of the artist/genius who was almost completely overlooked by his peers.

One man who did see some merit in his work was Sir Thomas Butts who patronised William Blake and made it possible for him to produce the work he had to produce.

We now have a book by Thomas Butts's great-granddaughter in stock and it is brilliant.

The Taverner Novels is in fact two novels by Mary Butts, Armed with Madness and Death of Felicity Travers.

Gloriously eccentric these overlooked classics are some of the most interesting modernist works ever produced - YES! Up there with Virginia Wolf, Katherine Mansfield and DH Lawrence.

The preface is titled "The Hummingbird of English Prose" and a few lines express sentiments that I thought made this book an obvious choice for something to blog about:

"She (Mary Butts) knew that a good thing would out and did not require commercials; indeed she thought it was better to leave a thing to find its own way, gently propelled in roughly the right direction by style, then left to float into others' lives..."

How VERY C & P...

Seekers will find Mary Butts on the table, presently resting beside the complete stories of Flannery O'Connnor and Patrick Hamilton's 20000 Streets Under the Sky.

At last, spring has sprung. I know this because this morning I was not only enticed into the garden by the sight of daffodills etc I was able to stay out there without freezing in sub-zero Siberian winds. I also noticed the acid-green beginnings of leaves on the birch trees - always a sure sign that the season has finally changed.

I love that colour, the first shy signs of the summer to come. I particularly love it on days like today when it clashes delightfully with the clear empty blue of a cloudless sky.

The change of season brought other acid-green creatures onto the street in vast numbers. Cyclists! Did you see them all? Of course there are the nutty ones (like adam and tall paul) who keep going through the winter, bouncing off cars and swearing through traffic with the water spraying off their tyres and mud in their eyes but there were loads out today who got a bike for Christmas and this was the first day they thought they might actually like to use it. The bright green "Don't kill me!" vests obviously came with these brand new bikes.

Have you ever noticed the sound of cyclists? En masse they click and whirr like beetles. Listen out - they really do...

Ah cycling - such a good idea.

Much better than cars in the city. Where cyclists resemble spring shoots and sound like insects cars resemble insects (all hard shiny carapace) but sound like distant oil wars or the end of the world happening somewhere in the future.

I really do not like cars much. A problem as I recently inherited one from my grandfather. Well I mean I love cars. They are great! Zoom around in a little bubble, listen to music you like, travel with folk who don't stink too bad or vomit on the floor next to you - cars make me go all Mel - FREEDOM - Gibson...

But they are also bad news. I mean those little shoots in the garden this morning. All that slow delicacy. And what do cars use to power them? The fossilised remains of the ancient ancestors of said green shoots. Millions of years of time and slow growth burned away in an instant so that Jr can get to school on time (he's too fat to walk!) or dad can do the shopping all in one go so he can get home in time to make lunch for mum (who is a rally driver)...

I'm sure cars are the ultimate symbol of our age really but the problems of the world are great and my brain is rather small and at the end of the day (even if it's after my fifth coffee and I'm feeling pretty clever) - I suspect I'm with Voltaire - il faut cultiver notre jardin!

I have blogged here before about the delights of Crockatt & Powell's favourite radio station, Radio Deliro.

Imagine my joy, then, when this afternoon the station in question started playing one of my mother's favourite songs, a song that she has sung me, perhaps not quite as a lullaby, but certainly for many years. It's called Gare Au Gorille and is the tale of a virgin gorilla who has been, shall we say, unusually blessed by god in one particular area. One day the gorilla escapes from the zoo, and is keen to try out his, ah, blessing. The only people nearby are an old lady and a young judge...

Francophone readers can find out what happens next here. Anglophone readers will just have to ask me - or my mum...

Did anyone else see that thing in the Grauniad on Saturday where Martin Kettle waxed lyrical over Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman?

The piece was titled "Out of the ruins of Stalingrad, a book that changed my life."

I tried reading Life and Fate some years ago and it did change my life. I was bored for about a week!

I am perhaps missing something here. Usually I love all things Russian but I found Life and Fate impossible to connect with.

PS If anyone is really desperate to read a copy I have one at home you can have for a tenner...One careful reader...

Oh it's a beautiful thing when you put a book on the table by one of the most brilliantly obscure and yet still brilliant writers in America and people...

buy...

it...

YES!

The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams is the kind of quirky weird but fantastic book that I would love to write.

If you like the Flaming Lips, The Fall, The films of David Lynch and/or hedgehog flavour crisps then you will love this...

As requested...

This happened a while ago, at a branch of a certain bookshop that we never name on these pages, as they certainly don't require the oxygen of publicity from us. (Though I understand that many of the employees, sorry, friends, that work there are regular readers, so hello to them.) This was where Matthew and I first made acquaintance, and on that particular day we were just doing our usual thing, working *very hard* as we always did, and not just standing around talking as people unaccountably used to accuse us of doing, and in came a fellow who was somewhat the worse for wear for drink, a fact that was easily spotted due to:
- the stench on him, and
- the half empty wine bottle in his hand, and
- the fact that he was asking to be directed to The Dice Man, which is never a good sign.

Anyway Matthew was busy at the till, working hard, as we *always* did, and so I stepped in and asked the Dice Man Fan to kindly take the rest of his cheap Chardonnay outside. We were not a cheap Chardonnay kind of establishment. The drunk was resistant. I insisted. The drunk was resistant. I insisted... And then suddenly, one of the other customers who had been quietly browsing leapt in between me and the drunk and made it clear that he should really stop resisting and leave the shop right now.

I checked out my unexpected hero. He was a thirty-something man, shaven-headed, and compact in the same way that semtex is compact. Recently broken nose; Full Metal Jacket T-shirt. Blimey, I thought: I wasn't scared of the drunk, but I am certainly scared of you, mate. The drunk agreed with my prognosis and accelerated his progress towards the door, stopping only to annnounce to the shop at large that "It's people like me who write the books in this shop, you know, not people like you." Apparently mistaking himself for Dylan Thomas. "Actually," said my scary hero, "I think you'll find that they have at least one of my books on the shelves of this shop." Which shut the drunk up nicely and caused me no end of surprise, as if you'd asked me before that point, I would have guessed that he was a bouncer at a particularly nasty East End snooker hall, and not - as of course it was he - the Observer's resident expert on terrorism, Jason Burke.

Jason Burke! Who has had tea with the Taliban. (Milk no sugar.)
Jason Burke! Who has (probably) met Osama Bin Laden.
Jason Burke! Who has been threatened with death by Mujahedeen more often than I have spelt Mujahidin (um, any suggestions?) correctly.
Jason Burke! Who of course doesn't actually look like a bouncer but is in fact ruggedly sexy in a Bruce Willis in Die Hard sort of way, someone put that man in a vest.
and Jason Burke! Who subsequently told me he thought I was handling the nasty drunk incident quite well, actually. Yeah, that's me. Impressive, eh?

I think it goes without saying that if we can get Jason Burke - compact sex symbol! hero! political heavyweight! - into the shop to read from his new book, it will not be my day off.

Oh, and the broken nose? Walking into a door. Really.

shop @ Crockatt & Powell

Ok...

I have been very good about this, not wanting to lower the tone etc but I can't resist any longer...

Those of a footballing persuasion may have noticed that Fulham beat Chelsea for the first time in a VERY VERY long time last Sunday. That it meant something was clear from the pitch invasion afterwards - not me though - far too old for that sort of behaviour.

Anyway I could go on and on about how much I enjoyed the occasion but I won't. (I could also go on about football and what it means and how though pitch invasions etc are not great they do prove that the spirit of the game lives on despite the efforts of those who would rather everyone just watched it on pay TV - They used to get 50,000 into Craven Cottage in the days before Health and Safety took the fun out of life)

All I will say is that my sister is in India at the moment. It was big news in India. In fact the only story that mentioned Europe AT ALL was headlined Fulham Stun Chelsea in Local Derby...

Lovely stuff!

Second exciting thing is I'm reading Jason Burke's new book (out in May) called On The Road To Kandahar. Jason is a bit of a hero of mine. I thought his book Al-Qaeda was just about the only sensible book I've read on the subject. (He also saved Marie from a drunk in a bookshop once - but I'll let her tell you about that.) I mean this is a guy who has been to all these places. He has had tea with the Taliban. He really knows what he's talking about and if you want to understand the whole Al-Q thing then Jason is a great guide. On The Road is fantastic reading and we are hoping to persuade Jason to come and speak at the bookshop soon...

Watch this space...

PS For those who find neither of the above things remotely exciting or interesting I apologise - there may be something worth reading below.

A while back there was some postage about washing up in our dingy cellar.

To be more specific - Marie washing up in our dingy cellar.

Well today I took the glasses back to Oddbins. The bloke there was French (so is Marie - kind of). Now I am fond of the French - honest! - so excuse me if I indulge in a little xenophobic leg pulling...

First off I apologised for the fact we (er Marie actually) had broken a glass.

He shrugged (but it was that particular kind of gallic shrug - you know the one!)

Then he says:

I muss check zat zey are clean...

He then holds a few up to the light.

Ow deed you wash these? Weeth a machine or by and?

By hand I say, thinking of Marie in that dark cellar.

He sniffs.

Zey are not very clean are zey?

I disagree and say that I think they are in fact very clean and he relents and refunds the deposit.

Zut alors!

I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later. Following the Russian Tattoo rush and the Burlesque Bubble we now have a run on books about Japanese Joinery...

Where will it end?

At least the sun is finally out, though I had to act fast this morning to avoid the books in the window being zapped.

Bookselling: a life of endless struggle - discuss...

I love alphabetisation. Our non-fiction section is probably the only place on earth where you'll find Osama Bin Laden and the Dalai Lama sitting next to each other.

We had a brilliant time at the Roots and Shoots spring fair on Sunday. The sun shone brightly all day as crowds of people enjoyed a range of activities or shopped at stalls selling everything from automatic plant-watering devices to banana cakes...

It was good to see so many people who had heard about the event through our shop newsletter - thanks for coming - we hope you had as much fun as we did...

It looks as though there will be more Roots and Shoots fairs in future and we are thrilled to be associated with what is clearly a dynamic organisation run by great people.

Thanks Roots and Shoots - We had a lovely day!

To keep in touch with the shop and what is happening locally e-mail info@crockattpowell.com and we'll add you to our mailing list.

Poor old James Frey is now being sued by readers who, having discovered his book A Million Little Pieces was not *completely* true, claim he has wasted their time...

Blimey. Being a writer is hard enough without the fear of litigious readers going after you at a later date.

...that was how Tom was described in a reference from his previous employer when he applied for a job at the Pan Bookshop where both Adam and I worked in previous bookselling lives.

Not only a fine pie-maker but a producer of brilliantly quirky cartoons and books.

We are DEAD CHUFFED to be selling Three Very Small Comics Vol II, Robots, Monsters Etc (a book of postcards) and Guardians of the Kingdom.

Tom's work appears all over the place; billboards, the Guardian, Timeout and on the covers of books (Saramago's The Double was most recent)

The books are beautiful and far too cheap, very hard to find too. Rush in and buy them before they start appearing on e-bay people!

Also check www.cabanonpress.com if you have any brains...

Ok - regular readers will know about me and my relationship with science but this just takes the biscuit...

Heads swollen to three times normal size?

Six young men in intensive care?

"We tried it on monkeys and it seemed ok..."

Scientists! What are you like?

PS Spoke about this incident with my brother. He was like - "They must have been mad. I wouldn't take drugs nobody had ever tried before for a couple of hundred quid..."

When I told him it was more like two grand he was instantly interested...

We as a society need to value artists more.

We get a booktrade bulletin most days. These articles (Borders sales results and Barnes and Noble sales) came in today on sales results for two US bookselling giants. Before reading these it should be remembered that discounting in the US is nowhere near the ridiculous scale it is in the UK.

Both sets of results show healthy growth in the books sector. Great. However, how did the international arm of Borders (of which the UK makes up 3/4 of the market) manage to lose money on over 10% growth?

The answer is only the manic slashing of prices on bestselling titles. Waterstones are selling Richard & Judy at half price. This is a contained market. The punters are going to buy the books anyway. It's where you make your profit if you're a high street chain. The books aren't even that expensive to start with! They're cheaper than a movie ticket for god's sake. Tesco's and Asda can sell at cut price because they're more interested in selling tins of beans and olive oil where they make the real money. Waterstone's and Borders cannot compete with these people. They should concentrate on what they know.

No other country in the world slashes book prices like we do. What does that say about how our corporate culture values books and what they stand for? And consequently what does that say about how they view book lovers? They will tell you that they are giving the loyal book buyer great deals. The truth is the real market for books - the person who buys more than 30 a year - don't want the books that are on offer. And because slashing prices puts pressure on the publishers back list and on the ability for small publishers to get their stock into the chains the real book buyer is finding it harder and harder to get to all the great stuff that does exist but isn't getting a chance to live.

The American market has grown without discount - crazy, huh? Imagine it. People who like reading are buying more books. And at full price! In the states, as ever taking the lead for the rest of us, the number of small presses has risen even with the concentration of the bestsellers centred on 5 major publishers based in New York. Even the CEO of HarperCollins realises the importance of the 'long tail'. Small presses are relying on local markets and guerilla marketing and not trying to out perform the market leader. There seems to be a shrinking away from the macho corporateness of my discounts bigger than years (or should that be the corporate cowardice of oh my god his discounts bigger)

The uk market seems to be still chasing the mythic customer - the one who currently buys one book a year - at christmas. These people keep the book trade afloat. There's nothing wrong with Jordan's new book or Rooney's 5 book autobiography, they're entertainment and when they sell thousands at christmas they help publishers support new writers and experimental stuff. The thinking is that if these people bought 2 books a year then we'd all make twice as much! It hasn't worked and they've been trying for years now. It especially doesn't work when you sell these bestsellers at cost price! Jamie Oliver for a tenner - nobody makes any money at all except for the chirpy, tory chappie and when nobody makes money the first things to go are the slightly edgy, quirky, interesting things that the 30 book a year person actually wants. Also, given the increasing amount of stuff available for people to distract themselves why would they buy 2 books a year. Hell, I own a bookshop and most nights these days its the movie channel and early to bed. It also doesn't work when every store in the country has the same stuff. Local markets are so important and the Americans have realised this already. How long do we have to wait?

Luckily at C&P we're flying the flag for books you won't find at the front of waterkers, smiths, or borderlines. We have locals and interesting one offs. Come and have a peruse. And when I get over my small business exhaustion I'll be back reading all our great stuff!

7pm last night...just about to close...chap strides in...

"Is this Crockatt & Powell?"

"Yes..."

"Oh good I'm doing a reading here tonight."

"Are you?"

At this point I am thinking something along the lines of oh sh*t oh sh*t oh sh*t how did we forget an author reading?

"Yes - I'm with Brittle Star"

"Er...that was on Tuesday..."

"Was it? Oh @@%$&!!)*& - Anna is going to kill me..."

Poets! What are you like?

Very interesting...

www.humument.com

...so that must mean that the shop is being used as a film set again. Yes that's "again". Second time. And always on my day off. Between you and me, I reckon the boys make these things up because they feel so insecure about the absence of glamour when I'm not behind the counter.

Looks as though the HMV shareholders are still peering through the wool they have pulled across their eyes...

Why can't they see the duck is dead?

Never mind...At least we indies can relax for a while, safe in the knowledge that the golden W will remain as shite as ever and may still drag the O club down with them into a Wottakers sized mess of a company. That leaves the field clear for those of sound and independent mind to do what we always do and always will do - sell great books to great people!

It really isn't rocket science you know...

PS Bookseller to the stars I apologise for ANOTHER anti Windybums post but remember - I too used to work for the big W. I think it's tragic in life in general that so much fine talent and so many intelligent people find themselves under the greasy thumbs of the class known as MANAGEMENT. Where would we be without all those self-important tossers telling us what to do eh?

As Morrisey sang to anyone who was listening in Waterstones Trafalgar Square t'other day -

In my life
Why do I give valuable time
To people who don’t care if I live or die ?

It's a good question with the usual depressingly economical answer...

Reading one of my favourite blogs today, I came across this rather depressing though amusing post. In order to mark World Book Day, the blogger in question's children were told to come to school dressed as a character from a book; and while his kids were in their best Narnia etc outfits, many of their schoolmates came as Spiderman, Batman, Star Wars characters... This, the post's author puts down to the laziness or ignorance of the parents. Terrifying to think that some of these children may not be reading at home at all. Quite aside from anything else, what on earth are these parents doing with their kids if they are not reading with them - given the constant attention and stimulation that kids demand? You'd think you would read to them just to get them to shut up for a few minutes, if nothing else. But I suppose they are plonking them in front of the TV instead. I watch a lot of TV so I can't entirely complain about this, but it really is no replacement for the joy of exploring a book by yourself, in your own time, fueled by your own imagination... It's appalling that some children are being deprived of this gift - presumably because their parents were never encouraged to read either. And it's not a class thing. I've been round to plenty of posh houses only to discover that there is not a single book on display anywhere. It's astonishing / shocking - kind of like if they answered the door in the nude.

Meanwhile I am now wondering who I would have dressed as if C&P had held a similar event in honour of World Book Day*. The mad woman in Rochester's attic, perhaps. That would really frighten the boys - and the guy who keeps coming to our shop to talk about fire safety...

*what C&P actually did to mark World Book Day: nothing. Oops.

One of the very first posts on this blog was about bloody stickers and the tendency of the trade to slap them all over the carefully designed covers of books.

Today I tried to take the sticker off the front of John Burnside's moving memoir A Lie About My Father. The sticker was very plain and simple - white with a black £12.99 in the middle. It obscured part of the word Father and a portion of the face of the child on the cover, presumably a young Burnside. There was no sophisticated message along the lines of Richard & Judy Bookclub or If You Like The Lovely Bones You Will Love This Bollox just a simple financial fact - this book is £12.99.

Why?

Why?

Why?

What the sticker is really saying I suppose is This Book Is Not As Expensive As You Might Have Thought, Given That This Book Is Not In A Promotion.

IE Most Hardback Books Are Over Priced And Not Worth Paying Full Whack For.

This is true in many of the cases you will find stacked to the rafters like cheap crud at the front of Bored Etc Stones. A new thriller of the James Patterson variety usually has a cover price of approx £17,99. This is a ridiculous price nobody would want to pay for a novel that is going to take an hour to read. The publishers know nobody is going to pay that money. The price is there so that it can be compared to the stickered price on the front. Punter thinks "OOOH A Bargain!" when ten years ago the book would have been sensibly priced in the first place.

But the John Burnside is CERTAINLY worth £12.99. In fact Sarah Water's new book The Night Watch is worth at least £16.99 (though we only sold 80 copies by selling it for £12.99 like all the chains) I would argue that a really good book is worth £50 - £100...If it changes you as a person how do you put a value on it?

The book trade has lost sight, in my humble opinion, of the value of the product. Books are VERY CHEAP! Why make them cheaper? Why create a book culture where if it doesn't have a yellow sticker on the front a book is seen as Expensive?

What about the argument that people should buy less but better books? Why buy three for two if you're only going to read two of the books anyway? Why not just buy one great book, a classic, something that has stood the test of time? Surely that is a better way of obtaining value?

Ok...I'm losing it here...

Way back in the dark days I worked for the Golden W. We were forever putting stickers on books then taking them off again. (Even the staff were forced to wear kind of stickers except they called them badges) The whole while I was there they never found that elusive glue that didn't pull half the cover off or that was so stuck on you couldn't remove it without damaging the cover.

Today I spent 15 minutes removing the sticker from John's face. It was a tough bastard. Once you've started trying to get it off you have to finish or the book looks even worse than it does with the sticker on it.

STOP PUTTING STICKERS ON BOOKS PUBLISHERS!!!

Let the crazy people cover the books with glue if they HAVE to...Please let the rest of us appreciate a book for what it is.

Books are great. They don't need money off stickers to succeed. If we don't believe this ourselves why should the punters?

BTW One day I will get around to telling you about all the bad things I did when I worked at the Golden W, but I think I'll wait until their inevitable collapse before spilling the beans...I might even tell you about the time when I did XXX at the bookshop that shall forever remain nameless in these hallowed pages. Involved ME getting in lots of trouble and having to write letters etc grovelling to evil beasties but that really is another (long) story!

Poetry has caused me problems throughout my life. At times I think it is the ultimate form of communication possible with words. At others I feel it makes communication with words impossible and threatens the very purpose of language.

The trouble about poetry is it draws attention to a fact James Meek brought up during our discussion on Thursday night. In response to a very good question about journalism VS fiction and the role of the imagination in writing both he made the following remark (I'm obviously paraphrasing from memory here!)

"If I write the man walked along the road beneath the hill we all have an idea in mind of the man, the hill, the road etc in our imagination - and all of these mental effects differ from person to person. The writer of fiction can take advantage of this fact and play games with the reader, encouraging them toward a particular type of man, hill etc."

So there it is. If we are all imaginintion different men, hills, roads etc how can we communicate effectively?

Wittgenstein came to the same conclusion (though in a deliberately whimsical way that has been much misunderstood ever since) when at the end of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus he announced that because of the slippery nature of words and their relation to meaning "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."

Er...so yes: Poetry draws attention to the limits of language...

Or does it simply reveal that there are no limits? All the poetry I love I would find hard to tell you exactly what it is about it that works for me - like all great art the effects remain mysterious.

All I can say is that when I read something like:

"Spring is like a perhaps hand" by EE Cummings it just works. That is spring - "changing everything carefully".

Or when I discovered Robert Frost at my grandmother's funeral when my uncle read "Never again would birds song be the same" he was right, as was Frost, as were and are all the other people who have ever read those beautiful words and responded in any way...

The point of this post? I am looking forward to Tuesday and our new poetry parlour.

Here I should confess to a lifelong attempt to write poetry! Yes - not only have I failed to write a novel three times I have failed to write poetry on countless occasions. Sad but true. I am in love with words and their effects. If only I could write something I felt expressed some kind of emotional truth, that touched me and others in the way I feel the words of others affecting me...

If only...

All we are trying to do at C & P is share a little of this (crazed) passion for words and their mysterious effects. A simple quest of some nobility I feel, especially when you compare it to the "OH BUY FROM US OUR BOOKS ARE REALLY CHEAP" philosophy of much of the trade. There has to be more to it than that...doesn't there?

Saw flashing helmet on my day off...he was freewheeling down Camberwell Grove. I too have done this - great fun as it's quite a steep hill with lots of sleeping policemen to jump over.

Oh bummer...just sold out of Suite Francaise right on the cut off point before we could order more and have them in for tomorrow! Arse! The lady was like - it's 5:30 - I was like - my watch says 5:28 but of course that cut no mustard. Bloody computers.

James Meek was quite taken with our book on Russian criminal tattoo art.

Harbor is selling fast which is good to see. Very good news that it is on the orange longlist though I can't wait until it is shortlisted - what is the point of a longlist again? Reminds me of my schooldaze in Brent where we were only allowed to play non-comptetitive sports like bean bag throwing (yes) and learned nothing about stuff like spelling meaning I now spend half the time writing this blog looking up words in my little dictionary!

er

Charlie from the Scooterworks has just been in for a chat. He is an artist and keen to work with us. Really lovely bloke...

This evening I am going to eat a large curry...

And finally my wife Mary (aka the Maz) and I went to hospital today to peek at our new baby using one of the wonders of modern technology - an ultrasound scanner. Now have some really cute pics of he/she/it - either Rocky is going to be a real pretty boy or - he's a girl. We didn't want to know the sex. I like surprises...

Good hospital story I heard from a lady in the shop who broke her thumb really badly. Before the operation (needed several pins - ouch!) she noticed it said Left on her notes. "It's my right thumb" she said to the doctor. "Oh yeah sorry" he says. Then she sees Left posted up on a chart on the wall too. Ended up making her boyfriend wright IT IS THE OTHER THUMB on her left one just in case. They really should let doctors sleep more.

Speaking of which oh how I am tired. It has been a busy week.

Good weekend to all - bye now...

News this morning leads us to believe that we were right all along and that some big shake-ups and downs are coming to a friendly high street bookshop near you. The new owners don't appear they would be content with the status quo if you were listening to the radio this morning...

I did it! I did it! I got all the way through the James Meek event without saying a single mangled, embarrassing, idiotic thing or mentioning anybody's breasts, short or otherwise! He even described my interview style as "elegant" afterwards, which I mention because (a) it's so damn flattering and I'm a bit of a show-off like that, and (b) it's just a little bit ironic, all things considered. Anyway he was *fantastic* - you never know with authors, being a good writer does not mean that you will automatically be able to read well or even talk about your work, but with James Meek, he was so accomplished a reader and speaker I rather felt as if I needn't have been there at all. And delightfully, as with Pete Hobbs, we had another full house in the shop. That's two out of two for C&P. (I went to see Capote the other day and there is a great scene where he is giving a reading to an enormous theatre, packed full of people who give him a rousing standing ovation, when in fact most author readings consist of three illiterate old ladies who have wondered in from the cold, and a semi-functional alcoholic sniffing out free booze. Sometimes it's the author who's the semi-functional alcoholic.) Anyway our next events are a launch for Brittle Star poetry magazine next Tuesday, and Isabel Losada the Tuesday after, both at 7pm, both free. You know where to find us...

Oh dear...I'm well on the way to upsetting Marie (who is already wondering what she will call The People's Act of Love when the time comes to utter the phrase in front of our an audience) by asking her to do some washing up in - I admit - terrible conditions.

As I write she is down in the cellar!

It's cold and dark!

The water is cold!

She has back trouble!

Oh shit - I had better go and do the gentlemanly thing (for a change) and offer to do it myself.

Isn't it always the washing up?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - -- - Time passes...

She wouldn't let me help! All my experience with women tells me I am now in serious trouble. She's saying things like "I know you guys don't care...but sometimes it's just so SQUALID."

...I have just been reading over my intro to tonight's reading. And yes! I made an awful, hideous mistake.

"James Meeks is an award-winning journalist and author. He has recently written on Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, and in the nineties he reported from the former Soviet Union for several years. This formed part of his inspiration for his recent novel The Short Day Dying..."

Which would of course be Peter Hobbs's recent novel. James Meek's is The People's Act of Love. Thank god that was just on paper and I haven't actually said it. [Yet?]

Please, please, please let me not screw this up tonight.

An excited bookgroupie has just claimed to have seen the Meekster lurking about the Marsh...

Either he has the same disease my mother suffers from - the symptoms of which involve turning up Really Early to Everything.

Or he is just a good chap who knows where the best Bookshops, coffee-serving scooter shops, heavy-metal playing sandwich places etc can be found.

As you know - James Meek will be reading in the bookshop tonight at 7pm.

Free - All Welcome

Among the great pleasures of running yer own ting is that moment when you stumble across a great book, something you just know is going to work, that none of the big boys will have noticed because it isn't new, shiny, by Jordan or the sort of book you will love if you loved the Lovely Bones...

Chap wandered in the other day and introduced us to Serif, a small publisher based in East London.

Not only do we now have gems such as EH Carr's The Romantic Exiles (about Alexander Herzen and the circle of liberal propogandists, anarchists and dissident aristocrats who revolved around him in 19th century London) but things that are completely new to me such as Travels in Wicklow, West Kerry and Connemara by JM Synge.

This charming account of wanderings through Eire captures a lost world within its pages - seek it out and the rain might begin to seem more appealing somehow!

They also produce some excellent quirky cookery titles such as Roman Cookery (Ancient recipes for modern kitchens - Carthaginian Porridge anyone?) and traditional Moroccan Cooking.

The Crow on the Hill bookshop also sent an interesting American dude to see us (even had a kind of cowboy hat!)

He sold us a book called Dersu The Trapper...There is a Kurasawa film based on it and the cover (a still from the film) was astonishing! Anyone who has read The People's Act of Love recently will love it...