The Bedside Crow

Stand up if you love Crystal Palace

A month ago when Fred and I watched Crystal Palace beat Scunthorpe 2 -0 there were not many more than 15000 in the crowd. It has been like that for most of the year. Last week for the final game of the season there was a full house of almost 24000 to watch then put 5 past Burnley to reach the play-off semi-finals. We got there with only a couple of minutes to spare and couldn't even get a program. This afternoon will be another full-house. Fred's going to watch it on Sky.

Last night when Justine went to pick Fred up from the posh school where he does *Samba Skills* football training, she overheard a little lad ask his, no-doubt, banker father, Daddy who are Crystal Palace playing tomorrow?

To which he replied, I have no idea, no idea at all. Ask you mother, she's the one who got the tickets.

She almost kicked him.

Perhaps he was the same chap who last week told his daughter that he had voted for Boris Johnson, and then said, when she asked why, because he is going to get rid of the congestion charge.

All together now,

South Lon don is won der ful.

South Lon don is won der ful.

It's full of tits, fanny, and Palace.

Oh, south Lon don is won der fulllll!!!

Especially as we couldn't afford, Wandsworth, or Barnes Common, or Islington, or Chelsea.

My sister

has just texted Justine to ask her if she has any idea what I might want for my birthday. Perhaps I should tell her to go to Waterstone's and buy me a copy of The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter in the new Virago classics hardback edition, as it looks like that's the only way I'm going to get a copy.

When I first started to read Angela Carter in the early 1980s most of her books were out of print. I wrote to her around that time to tell her I had written a film script based on her short story Elegy for a Freelance, thinking at the time, I'm sure, that she might be intrigued by the idea and invite me round for tea. A week later I received a curt typewritten message from her telling me to contact her agent; clearly she hadn't understood that I was a young chap just down from Pork Pie country and quite new to London and that kind of thing. I was working in Foyles, in the art department, at the time.

Later, when I was working in Chelsea, we held a signing session for Nights at the Circus and afterwards I was invited along to a posh Chinese restaurant for supper. I don't remember much about the evening to be honest, except for the petulant behaviour of her publisher and the deliciousness of the steamed sea bass.

Later still, when I was running a bookshop in Clapham, she was, for all too short a time, a customer of mine.

When she was nineteen Angela Carter went to work at the Croydon Advertiser and The Magic Toyshop is, in large part, set in Crystal Palace. It is bloody annoying then, that I am not allowed to stock it in this lovely new edition.

My back tyre

I put a new back tyre on my bike the other day and what a difference it made to my journey to work and back! Really, I hadn't realised that it would do that.

So now I have put on my Seth Godin hat and I'm going round the shop looking for my retail back tyre. I think I know what it is, but given that it took three months and a spare half hour on a bank holiday weekend to change the threadbare one on the back of my bike, I may be some time.

I have my hand inside my customer's trouser pocket, feeling around for cash

and I am wondering to myself; just how desperate do I have to be to make a sale.

I hope this doesn't embarrass you, he says, but I woke up this morning and my right arm wouldn't work, so if you want to be paid you will have to work for it.

His arm hangs down floppily by his side.

He is a very good customer and, word has it, the richest man on the hill, but even though the last three hours have not exactly troubled the till-roll - the last three years, if I'm honest - I doubt that this is a level of customer service that even Tim Waterstone, especially Tim Waterstone, has ever entertained.

Luckily there is plenty of money in his pocket and so I retrieve a £20 note and make the sale, handing back £7.01 in change to his good hand, whilst at the same time cursing my luck that it is this *silver fox* of a chap who has been so afflicted, and not, for instance, Velma the eastern European girl who sells me her lovely hand-made cards and who has eyes as big as saucers and legs that go on for ever and ever and ever.

Thanks for that, my customer says with a smile.

Behave...

Can't take him anywhere, not even to the New Titles section.

The day,

has not started well.

[If you live in London use this space to insert your own expletive laden exclamation at the turn of current events.]

In addition: Four boxes, £1100 worth of books for the weekend - Well, there is a possibility that you might get the delivery, but I have to say it's not very likely...

Thanks for that.

And now I am going to bang on the wall to remind the Sicilian cage-fighter next door that, an hour later, I still haven't had my coffee.

You know me, right?

An American voice on the other end of the telephone says.

I'm the guy who keeps cracking lame jokes to stop himself from going postal, right?

Right...I say.

So, now you're thinking, shit, he's the guy who keeps cracking lame jokes to stop himself from going postal, Right?

Err...Right...I say.

So, anyway, what time do you close this evening?

Early, I say. Very early, in fact we've already closed.

Justine's latest Families South East review: May 2008

BIRTH SKILLSby Juju Sundin - Vermillion rrp £14.99.

Now any book that claims it aims to alleviate the pain of labour, using visualisation, breathing etc has got to be good news for us mums but appallingly bad news for the planet. I mean, isn’t the fact that it hurts like hell crucial to population control?

Read the rest of her review here.

Alors! Vladimir et Estragon retournez pour les livre des Erroll Flynns!

Previously.

Vladimir strides manfully through the door. He is wearing a smart sports-coat. Estragon is someway behind him, scratching his head.

Vladimir: 'ello mate did you get my book?

I did, I say. The only trouble is, the only book that is available is his autobiography, My Wicked Wicked Ways, and so I ordered you the English edition but it doesn't have any photographs in it. So then I ordered you the American edition which is advertised as having eight pages of photographs, and it does have eight pages of photographs but they are a bit small and grainy and some of them are of his grandchildren...

Vladimir: (raises a big hand) I'll take it.

Estragon: He'll take it.

Vladimir: (Takes out his wallet and picks a ten pound note from a thick wedge of banknotes) Seven ninety nine?

Estragon: Seven ninety nine.

That's right, I say.

I take the note and ring up the sale.

Vladimir: What's this music?

It's The Beatles, I say.

Vladimir: What's it called?

Revolution Number 9, I say (I had meant to delete it from the playlist).

Vladimir: It's catchy. They new?

No, no, I say. You know, The Beatles, from the sixties, She loves you, yeah, yeah ,yeah.

Vladimir: Does she?

Estragon:(Takes a postcard of Robbie Williams from the card spinner by the door and looks at it.) I like Beethoven.

I hand over the book.

Vladimir: Good business, fella.

Estragon: Beethoven.

Thanks, I say.

Light and Shade

Light and shade, as the tit Jon Gaunt was fond of saying when he still cluttered up the airwaves of London. And what the younger man could learn from the older man, and then some. Band-leading skills possibly. Possibly connected to Humph's 37 year habit of morning yogic breathing - I kid you not.