The Bedside Crow

We are sent a pumpkin in the post.

I love my customers, especially when they want to play. One of my favourites has just sent me this with the following message.

I carved a pumpkin with a picture of a crow on a telegraph pole for Halloween and thought you might find it vaguely amusing!

It is, I am sure you will agree, a work of bloody genius.

Happy Halloween.

 

Waterstone's open new branch in China?

[Thanks to Stephen E and various other friends and customers who have forwarded this over the last few days.]
 

So, give or take the odd 102 years and Walter de la Mare and I are now neighbours.

At midsummer 1907 the family was thankfully able to leave what de la Mare could now admit was 'the horrible little flat' in Samos Road for a home not a great deal bigger, but much more pleasant in Worbeck Road, Anerley, a few streets off.

From The Life of Walter de la Mare by Theresa Whistler.

Conversation with a French lady.

My uncle died today.

Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, I say.

So, your holiday is a long way in the past now?

Yes, I say.

And now you need another one?

One day, I say.

When the Christmas madness is over. Get the Christmas madness out of the way first and then have a good holiday.

I think I will, I say.

I think you should, she says, otherwise you will end up like my uncle.

We completed on the sale of our house yesterday morning.

As a consequence a lot of money went into our bank account (don't worry, most of it will shortly go out of it again).

A quarter of an hour later I went to the bank to pay in Monday's takings.

Mr Main, have you considered an ISA? I was asked, the minute the banking was completed, by the smiling cashier.

I hesitated to answer, reflecting that it was the first time in thirteen years that I had been asked this question, and then out of sympathy with the woman who had been handed the bum task of asking it, and even though I had every good reason too, I resisted the temptation to tell Lloyds Tsb to go fuck itself.

[A customer emailed me yesterday to ask if this was a genuine offer. It is, and there will be more.]

More spam: I receive an email from my technical support.

Dear user of the booksellercrow.com mailing service!

We are informing you that because of the security upgrade of the mailing service your mailbox (info@booksellercrow.com) settings were changed. In order to apply the new set of settings click on the following link:

[Long bogus link]

Best regards, booksellercrow.com Technical Support.

I have Technical Support!

Who knew? I wonder if they are tax deductable?

 

Still packing, still moving. We sold our house so that we could sell more books.

 

No kidding. So leave the knives at home, eh. And Justine's dropped with box fatigue. 

My question is this:

How long before the UK's highstreet booksellers, in their ever more futile quest for *market share*, start employing Christmas staff to stand by their open doorways chucking a free Clarkson, or Peter Kay or Dan Brown at their *passing trade*?

Not long now, I wouldn't wonder.

Raymond Carver Collected Stories.

The Library of America definitive edition of Raymond Carver's stories including Beginners - the never before published, original version of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

As featured in today's Times.

More than 1000 pages.

£25.00

Or listen to him read some poems, just over there on the right under podcasts.

New Transmitter magazine. October

Affectionately know around these parts as the Chicks with Guns and Fags issue.