The Bedside Crow

For the attention any potential young, like, girl, like, shoplifters

It has been bought to my notice that a CURSE has been placed on each and every copy of Stephenie Meyer's Breaking Dawn and that if you attempt to STEAL one you will get these eyebrow hairs that will just grow and grow and also your breath starts to smell really badly and you'll never get a boyfriend, ever, and you will live a lonely unfulfilled life and die a spinster. Or so I've heard.

Sorry lady, but I had to go to the bank.

 

I swear

one of these days I'm going to carry on cycling right past the door and out into the hills of Kent.

Especially on a day like today when my first task of the morning is to scrape the dog shit from the pavement outside the shop. I'm betting smiley Jeff never starts his day like this.

I know, moaning again. Sorry. I promise, if I get a chance later, after I have written about The Crystal Palace Children's Book Festival for the new issue of The Transmitter magazine, (you can, should you so wish, read the whole blinking thing on-line) added up the button and the bone that were yesterday's takings and re-alphabetized the Travel section, I'll tell you about some of the books I've been reading. Bet you can't wait.

Meanwhile, speaking of smiley Jeff, if you are an independent bookseller, or otherwise, you may want to read this piece about eReaders n' shit by Patrick at the exemplary Vromans bookstore blog. Food for thought and then some.

Yesterday I made a pizza for each of my three children to take to school.

You know the sort of thing; freshly made dough allowed to sit in the fridge overnight, homemade tomato sauce, Tuscan olive oil, sun-dried olives, organic buffalo mozzarella and thinly sliced Wiltshire ham for the non-vegetarian boy, all dusted with generous sprinkling of oregano.

They loved it, but today the parents of their classmates are aiming to hunt me down and shoot me with a harpoon, or at the very least, paint a black cross on my forehead and drag me behind a horse to the outskirts of town.

Loving

the way my customer, before visiting, has clearly looked the book up on amaz*n and found that, not only is it out of print, but that second-hand copies are double the original asking price.

But you must be able to get it for me! It can't be out of print! That's ridiculous!

That's the spirit!

Customer hands me a copy of The Phoenix Suburb.

And I'll take one of those, I might as well blow all of my Jobseeker's in one day.

Today I'm gonna be practising my alphabet.

 

And then I might do some colouring in.

And maybe later do a floor puzzle.

That's right, I've just opened a box of lovely Charley Harper kid's stuff.

Somebody gobbed on our window again the other night.

I am trying to understand the drink addled thought processes behind it. You come out of the pub at past mid-night and wander across the road and look in a shop window. The new novel by Fred Vargas, or Jayne Anne Phillips, or the short stories of Jay Mcinerney, say, float into view and you break out in a sweat and think, Fuck books! I hate fucking books! And then hawk up a couple of good ones.

Nice.

Thank goodness for Stan.

High time we had some John Martyn on here.

May you never lose your temper

if you get in a bar room fight

May you never lose your woman overnight.

Wise words to one and all.

Dear Justine, this blog's for you.

This is a picture of your Valentine's present, a copy of Burnt Weenie Sandwich by Frank Zappa. All things being equal had the 'online retailer' I ordered it from not interpreted 'express delivery' as arriving sometime between 20th to 24th February you might now be holding it in your hand (the cd, not the burnt weenie, obviously).

Anyway, it's the thought that counts, right?