The Bedside Crow

Take that to the bank.

Well, I would if I could, but there is a handwritten sign on the locked door indicating *unforeseen circumstances.*

It was there on Thursday too.

So I called up my bank to ask them when the branch might be open again, and they told me that due to staff shortages, they couldn't say.

Possibly be the end of the week. But they really couldn't say.

This is not good.

I need illumination

N.B. to self. How many booksellers does it take to change a light bulb?

In the neighbourhood: The Cheese Lady

Following my mention of St Anthony's happiness at the opening of our new bakery I thought it was about time that I also mentioned our fantastic cheese lady and her very cool van.

Wonderful British farmhouse cheese - the obvious accompaniment for that walnut and onion loaf- every Saturday around the corner from the shop in Haynes Lane ( just follow the signs for the market).

She was pretty much on her lonesome this week but tells me that she is hopeful of encouraging some other food stalls to join her soon. It would  be really great if they did.

Today was a good day for St Anthony

As regular readers might recall we have a shrine to St Anthony the breadgiver.

At one point, not long ago, the Booksellers Association was camped out for so long on this blog that I still half suspect that our methods will become part of their next training pack.

Sometimes we have attempted to influence things with a little more than bread.

And just yesterday he was seen nursing a date!

So, very good news then, for him, that we had a brand new bakery open almost opposite us today. And not just any old bakery either, but, so I'm told, a little bit of Martha's Vineyard, up here on the hill.

Currently we're recommending the Sourdough loaf and the blueberry muffin.

In the Neighbourhood#2

A little bit further down the street from Macdonald's and this is our local library. Up until a couple of years ago I used to sell them books in an arrangement whereby they got a whacking discount and I made pennies. But then they had a £1.1 million regeneration make-over and got consultants in who very quickly pressed the eject button on that little bit of mutual local enterprise.

I obviously wasn't the only one too expensive for their tastes though: come the last Harry Potter and people from the library could be seen queueing outside Woolworth's at 8 in the morning to buy their copies. Perhaps that was part of the consultant directive?

Oh. What was that? It will be now.

Or not as the case may be. For all the usual scummy council reasons our library is now under threat of closure. You can read all about it here.

In the Neighbourhood

Hmmm. So what does it say about our little part of the world that it can't even sustain a MacDonald's?

The Crystal Palace is on fire again

Despite the fact Fred gave Willa a wedgie and then Willa pulled Fred's pants down before they both started hacking lumps out of each other whilst waiting for the fireworks to begin, we all enjoyed the show.

As Fred said at the finale: Now that's what I call a firework.

To A Soundtrack by Sacha Distel

There are some days up here on the hill when the weather closes in around us, the clouds float barely above our heads and the whole thing is a lot like being up the top of a Welsh Mountain in February.

Today is one of those days. It has been pissing down for hours and I have a dilemma: My ceiling is dripping a puddle onto the carpet in the middle of the shop. About six weeks ago we got a new (corporate) landlord, the old (corporate) landlord having scarpered pretty sharpish once Sainsbury's moved in for 25 years and they knew with a finality that they would no longer be able to knock us all down and build executive housing in a couple of years time.

Thing is they were supposed to have fixed the flat roof. Men have been up there times. Come back down again and said; Well, that's all fixed then.

Only it isn't. But the trouble is, if I complain to the new landlord and ask him to fix it, well, then he might remember that I haven't paid him his rent yet and I'd have to confess that I've already spent it 3 times over on books.

Oh.

Thing is; the roof works fine when it's not raining.

Up on the Hill.

Now I am sure that there are some of you who have never visited our environs and who believe that we are some sleeping old hillock to the north of Croydon, that our monde is not demi, our bo, not ho and our society more kebab express, than cafe.

Well nothing, my friend, could be further from the truth and as an illustration I give you a perfectly genuine list of some of the people who visited the shop one afternoon, oh, about two weeks ago.

My friend Peter whose last book is currently being developed for both film and stage and who can lay claim to having been the friend and confident of some of the greatest names from the last 50 years of stage and screen.

A Hollywood actress and her Hollywood boyfriend. Some unfeasible hooters and a major thong problem - clearly they don't teach you how to dress at tits and bum school, but then why should they? Nevertheless, they did by a copy of Perfume.

(Confession, I had no idea who she, or indeed he, was, until I Googled the real name on her Gold Card after they had left.)

A very well known stand-up comedian (not Mark Steel).

Mark Steel's son, briefly, crouching as though on some sort of commando mission.

A nut-case in a pork-pie hat.

Another famous stand-up (not Mark Steel), who I embarrassed myself by not knowing that he appears on just the biggest programme in America.

- And this in a bookshop where once upon a time Charlie Drake was a customer.

A woman looking to buy a stapler and some confetti.

A prime time BBC1 television presenter.

Mark Thomas's mum.

And then, a woman looking for a copy of Eleven Minutes by Paolo Coelho, who by her nature and manner and the elfin figure of a well developed 12 year old could quite easily have been just as famous as the above, who asked, when I told her we didn't have one (ouch!) - Is there another bookshop on this street?

Yeah right. We may be trying hard, but we ain't quite Montmartre yet dear.

Oh, and lots of civilians.

And Mark Steel.

St Anthony the bread giver.

In a moment I am going to find some birds to feed.

On Saturday we were busy and then it went quiet and then we were busy again.

During the quiet period my friend K did her diligent tidying up act and found beneath the counter:

A plate that had once been host to a mozzarella di Buffalo and tomato salad, and a latte glass from my friend the Sicilian cage-fighter next door.

A half eaten tube of Pringles.

A coat-hanger.

A kaput telephone.

A large Tupperware tub of plums.

And a cucumber.

Somewhat despairingly and in plain view, she then began to consult a copy of The Element Encyclopaedia of 5000 Spells that I had put aside for a customer.

Moments later she had printed out a picture of St Anthony reading a book.

What are you doing? I asked her.

I'm making a shrine to St Anthony the bread giver. You put bread in front of his picture and then later feed it to the birds. It will bring you prosperity.

Oh, I said, humouring her.

I mean, she said, it can't be any more fanciful an idea than the return of the Net Book Agreement can it?

No, I suppose not, I said, as the shop began to fill up with people and we eventually had by a wide margin, our best days trading of the year.