Just found out:

Apparently Neil Young used to work in a bookshop in Canada. Only for two weeks, though!

Sorry, by the way, not the best version of Sugar Mountain, but you take what you can get…

Busy after Christmas, but today:

Thanks!

99.9% of our customers were fantastic, thank you.

Even the 0.1% that were a bit stressy, not to worry, it’s a stressy time of year.

Tetbury has supported us wonderfully, thank you. We tried really, really hard to do a good job.

And after Christmas, we’ll keep on trying.

But, just for a couple of days, I’m doing stuff with the family. And reading a book or two.

Merry Christmas one and all.

A nice place to take your sandwiches:

If, as is not the case at this time of year, you get a chance to get out of the shop.

But I can’t say I mind being there all the hours at the moment.

Thank goodness for customers!

In fact, hooray for customers!

Sorry about this:

But I can’t see us getting to announce a winner for the competition before the New Year.

Just too much to do. But, I think, all entries safe and sound, and some absolutely fantastic ones, really, really good.

Bear with us, we will get there

And sorry again, we’ll be better organised next time around…

Some tired booksellers:

Christmas Shopping Hell in Cirencester

Off for most of the day, and headed for the bright lights of the nearest biggish town to Tetbury for some Christmas shopping. Not exactly Oxford St or Bluewater, but plenty of shops, most of the chains, and still a nice town. And it probably could be almost any town of that sort of size in the country.

But after weeks of more or less staying in a little world consisting of our village, Tetbury, the odd supermarket and Nailsworth, it was a horrible horrible shock.

Like being shouted at for no good reason.

All the shops were shouting their ‘value message’, which was uniformly ‘money off’, sad staff stood behind their tills in cheap uniforms, some wearing plastic reindeer hats or Rudolf noses, tinny Christmas music, and desperate looking shoppers sifting the tat looking for bargains in the rain. Even the shops selling quality products (like books, for example), were just cheapening their products – not celebrating them!

I had two three year olds with me and I felt that I was letting them down, exposing them to this late capitalist venality. They are lovely, genuine, beautiful little things, and this was just dirty and sordid.

So we bustled back to Tetbury. Where it’s not just about money, sales and earning a dividend for the shareholders. Sure, we all need to make money. But not like that.

If you buy something cheap, you’ll get something cheap – and give something cheap, too. Not only to the person who gets your present, but the (generally) underpaid staff in the shop, the (generally) underpaid people who make and distribute pretty much everything, and to society as a whole.

Bah! Humbug!

Be genuine. Pay what things are worth. Buy local. Keep the money away from the bankers, investors, marketeers, rip off merchants and assorted hangers on. It can’t be any worse than the system we’ve got now.

Systematic bloomin’ exploitation, as Father Christmas might put it!

Shoes in Iraq:

Four movies about shoes in Iraq, discuss.

Firstly:

And secondly (sorry, this is a bit nauseating):

Thirdly:

And finally, apparently, in the barracks in Tikrit:

No, nothing at all about books or bookshops.

Just shoes as religious, political, social and ideological capital. Shoes as site of ideological and repressive contest.

Makes you think.

Reading Boyishly:

I bet that we are the only bookshop in the Cotswolds to have this is stock, which is a huge shame as it’s a great book, recommended by the artist Grayson Perry as his book of the year. And we’ve sold two in the last week.

Which is more than all our celebrity autobiographies added together.

Who says that bookshops need to sell rubbish to thrive?

And, for fun, and because I love him lots, here’s a boy, not reading, but playing on the Mac in the back room…

And a little movie:

Dreams, we’ve all got ‘em:

There aren’t many great films about bookshops and selling books (and a few really really awful ones). The sitcom ‘Black Books’ was, I guess, probably as good as it got. But now there’s something a bit more serious:

No car chases, no great special effects, not even Jack Nicholson or Nicole Kidman. But if you’re into books and bookshops, it’ll live with you for ever.

There’s a website at http://paperbackdreams.com/ and there are links through to Filmbaby if you want to buy it (it works out at round about £20 from the UK).

A great Christmas present for the bookseller in your life!