The Bedside Crow

To be sung in the manner of Morrissey.

There is a posh boy standing at the counter.

There is a posh boy standing at the counter.

Looking at the cookbook by Rachel Khoo.

Have you seen her...he asks.

Have you seen her.

She's so lovely...

Rachel Khooooooo...

Little Paris Kitchen.

Little Paris Kitchen......Khooooo...

He is drooling.

He is drooling and it isn't at the food.

There is a posh boy standing at he counter...

He has a sweat on, he is panting, he is licking his fingers. He is a banker.

Little French Khoooooo...

I like your dumplings...

 

 

Depressing message from a friend in Melbourne.

News here is that Am*zon are scouting locations for megawarehouses (sorry, "fulfillment centres") around Melbourne. They have no physical presence here in Australia and independent bookshops still survive and thrive (is there a correlation do you think?). That deadly virus will thin out their ranks soon enough. I'm sure the comments sections of newspapers will be delighted (the tone of hostility against indie bookshops is staggering on those forums).

We were discussing Peter Temple in the comments of this post. If you like a crime novel and you haven't read him you really should.

My inbox is full of praise for The Sea on Fire, too. (Over there on the left.)

All that and reading too.

Over 3oo expert hints and tips. No shit. The whole damn Thing.

How did we ever put two words in front of each other and understand them before?

*Takes down copy of Jane Eyre from bookshelf. Turns page. Repeat until it all ends happily ever after.'

Ma b*tch will be well pleased.

Sorry about that, for a moment there I thought I was still talking to our twelve year old son who is currently making his way through a state school in south east London.

Anyway, Alison Uttley, The Little Grey Rabbit books, long out of print, now gloriously republished by templar and one of Justine's childhood favourites.

A man stands before me at the counter holding a manuscript in an envelope in his hand.

He begins his speech and then pauses.

I know you, he says. Did you ever work at Waterstone's in Greenwich?

Never did, I say. Never been in the employ of Waterstone's.

He narrows his eyes.

I did run a bookshop in Clapham, though, I say.

That's it, he says. That's where I know you from.

I nod.

I used to be a regular customer, he says.

I know, I say.

I remember, he says, I was in the shop one day and it was empty except for a little girl who was talking to you. She was playing with one of those cut out dolls and nattering away to you. And I just listened to the conversation. It was magical. Later of course I used the scene in a film script. The film script never got made but it did get me an agent.

Did you, I say.

It turned out that the agent was useless and I spent the best part of two years on the dole.

You did? I say.

But then, he says, I got another agent who was brilliant. That was fifteen years ago and I made so much money writing screenplays that I've now retired. I bought my house for cash, I've got some invetsments and I never need to work again.

Really, I say. Congratulations.

I'm rich, he says.

That's great, I say.

And you, he says, I see you're still selling books. Well done. It must be hard.

I look up to the ceiling and consider using my hidden net; the one that will fall from above to capture him and hoist him away.

I see you're still wearing lifts in your shoes, I say.

Outside the weekly ambulance pulls up outside the pub.

Anyway, he says, I've written this children's book.

Jubilee Hitchhiker the life and times of Richard Brautigan

Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can.

Epigraph quoted from a fortune cookie at the front of the book.

Twenty years in the writing and 850 pages fat.

With some great photographs.

Tom McGuane, Jim Harrison Philip Caputo, Tim Cahill, Peter Fonda, Jeff Bridges, Michael McClure, Don Carpenter, Jimmy Buffett, not to mention the author himself, the gang's all here.

 

 

The English Monster - Lloyd Shepherd. Signed Copies available now.

The English Monster is a stonking good read, and Shepherd truly knows how to hook you into his tale. The storyline weaves through the centuries but is largely set in the docklands of old London. You can expect pirates and ghosts and all manner of colourful characters, and the pages are imbued with a restless creepiness which I had hitherto thought that only Peter Ackroyd could conjure.

Reviewed by Sally Butcher author of Veggiestan, proprietor of Persepolis and our guest for a great evening of Middle Eastern vegetarian food last Friday. I don't know what Lloyd's cooking skills are like but I feel he really should return the favour.

Signed copies of The English Monster.

A few signed copies of Veggiestan left too.

South London,as they sing down at Selhurst Park, it's wonderful isn't it?

Itchy and scratchy. The Little Book of Nits.

If you have school-age children then the chances are you will have come across this little fella. And If you tell me that you haven't, then you're a liar. The little buggers are everywhere, whilst advice on how to deal with them is both erratic and often downright eccentric - put your child's head in a bucket of vinegar anyone?

Help, however, is at hand.

Justine, the Crow of this very parish, and her co-author Richard 'Bugman' Jones have been hard at work these past many months at what will surely come to be recognised as the vade mecum par excellence of head louse wrangling. I shit you not.

Justine does the funny, as anyone who has ever read her FamiliesSE book reviews will know, while the 'Bugman' brings on the cold hard science. It is a marriage made in heaven.

The book is published by A and C Black on May 15th and costs £4.99.

Why not pre-order a signed copy.

 

What I read. #fridayreads

The Sea on Fire by Howard Cunnell. Howard is an old friend who at one time when we ran wild and free was my almost brother-in-law, and his book is a beauty. Imagine if you will, a cross between The Long Good Friday and Point Break both thrilling and original in its portrayal of a diving trip gone wrong. With echoes of early Richard Ford, Tim Winton and particularly the surfer noir novels of Kem Nunn. It probably won't sit too well with the pale boys worrying over Thomas Bernhard, but that's no bad thing.

It's published by Picador March 15th and you can order a signed copy from us here.

I also comfort-read for the nth time the first two chapters of Couples by John Updike on a Knidle with the font ramped up for my ailing eyes, which in turn buggered the kerning so that it became the visual equivalent of radio interference, but no matter, it was nice to be home again. Not enough Updike is being read at the moment and this must change.

Lastly I am reading Alys, Always by Harriet Lane a particularly breathless novel of literary north London that I have so far found nothing to disagree with Jilly Cooper's assertion that it is 'utterly brilliant.' I'm pretty sure that the main character Frances is going to shag someone soon and I think I know who. I have written their name on a piece of paper and sealed the envelope. We will see if I am right. Not, I grant you, the kind of service you get from the TLS.

Buy Alys,Always and see if I'm right.

The Believer magazine issue eighty-six.

Brilliant cover for the latest edition of The Believer containing an article on A History of Literature Created by Erasure, Collage, Omission, and White Out rightly beginning in 1966 with Tom Philips' Humument in which the artist makes art from a Victorian novel bought on Peckham Rye.

 

 

 

 

 

We have a copy of the limited edition 1998 hardback for sale, still sealed and never opened, including a hand-coloured signed print. A snip at £125.00