Did you order Pizza?

Er...no...

It was the students upstairs.

But now the smell is kind of lingering. Hmmm. Pizza.

Maybe I should have said yes? Do they pay in advance these days? By the time the kids found out the shop would be closed and I would be stuffed. But then the last time I had pizza from Pizza Hut I nearly died...

Do you sell paper serviettes?

Erm, no.

Bolano - why I love it - why it won't sell (or maybe it will)

Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives is still bloody brilliant, despite the fact I'm taking my time over it.

Having initially predicted massive sales I now have to step back slightly...I love it, but then it is about a bunch of madcap poets/writers. (I just read one of his short stories from Last Evenings on Earth - a collection just published by Harvill/Secker. It concerned two writers who corresponded. They would let each other know about provincial writing competitions they came across. They would enter in the hope of winning some prize money. Soon they were entering the same stories in several competitions, sometimes winning several prizes with the same story. There is obviously a theme emerging - Bolano writes about what he knows!) Just about everyone in the book is involved with books in some way. I obviously live in a little bubble where most of the folk I come into contact with are book fanatics - out there in the wider world there are other things that (quite rightly) concern people. I also think the Savage Detectives is a book that demands concentration and time - once again how many people really want to spend large slabs of time reading and concentrating hard. Having said all that it still could sell loads of copies and just sit around on coffee tables looking like it has been read, the fate of huge swathes of literary fiction I suspect...

David Peace's Tokyo Year Zero, the first in a trilogy, is another matter.

I love David Peace's writing and recently made the bold statement that he was among the finest writers working in the UK today. I have a proof of Tokyo at home. I was avoiding starting it 'cos I'm still immersed in Bolano but last night I thought I would take a peek.

OHMYGODIT'S BRILLIANT!

How many writers can grab you by the throat with such delicious savagery? This isn't prose we're talking about it's something new, somewhere between poetry and prose and pure, hearing voices, madness. Terrifying. Superb.

It will sell in massive quantities because folk just will not be able to resist it...

Escapism...

Friday afternoon we caught the train from Paddington down to Bodmin then rode in a taxi all the way to the edge of nowhere (I'm not going to say where because it was SO BEAUTIFUL and one of the best things about it was there was HARDLY ANYBODY THERE)

The journey there and back was long and draining but the complete day, the Saturday, was just perfect. It poured with rain either side but that Saturday was sunny and warm. We saw a gravestone in a churchyard with the legend:

It's a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds' cries;

a quote that says it all really. (Think it's a John Masefield poem that comes from)

A lovely day - Finn climbed his first stairs. He didn't use to be able to climb stairs but now he can. He fell down them on his first attempt while I was immersed in The Savage Detectives but thankfully he was unharmed. Otherwise I would be dead by now, torn to shreds by an angry woman...

Eurovisionaries

It's that time again. I shall be dipping in and out this evening as I carry on reading the excellent God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens.
One thing's for sure though. I bet whoever wins tonight will not go on to write one of the great breakup songs of all time.

For no particular reason

For reasons too convoluted to bore you with I've posted this short film by Czech animator Jan Svankmajer, The Ossuary. I saw it years ago and eventually got round to visiting the chapel it's set in a few years ago. My jaw never lifted from the floor...

Men are pathetic

So, the Actress was back in. The one Matthew didn't recognise. We've ended up ordering a second-hand book for her from Abe. Normally we charge a fiver 'handling fee' for such services. Are we going to charge her? What do you think? She really is just too damn pretty and we want her to come back. Every day. Oh god we're pathetic.

When I worked in Islington the actress Saffron Burrows used to come in to the Waterstone's quite a bit. My colleague Michael was truly smitten. He used to literally turn to jelly when she was around and never quite managed to get his words out. It was very funny to watch but I understood his pain. We really are useless in the presence of beautiful women and any man who pretends otherwise is a damn liar or, a sociopath.

Directions...

Hi Lia - here are details of how you can reach C & P from your home in Luebeck, Germany...(I could have put in your postcode and it would have given directions right to the door but I wasn't sure how you might feel about C & P pilgrims from Lambeth coming to visit!)

The map adam added to our website a few days ago is brilliant. It can tell you how to reach the shop from anywhere in the world...

Echos Drown the Conversation Out...

I had a lovely bank holiday weekend. I've been meaning to blog about it ever since but loads of things have prevented me...

What did I do? Very little. Having said that I was at the football on Saturday watching FFC beat the European Champions. Finn was given a free fanzine (There's Only One F In Fulham) for being the youngest fan the bloke had seen that day. The nipper has now seen us lose to Man City, draw with Blackburn and beat Liverpool. I am going to approach the fanzine and see if they want me to write a Knee High view of life at Craven Cottage, written by me but from the point of view of Finn.

Then on Sunday we did hardly anything. I sat in a chair in the kitchen and read every minute I was not needed for acts in aid of a happy family life.

On Monday we also did hardly anything. I sat in a chair in the kitchen and read for every minute I was not needed for acts in aid of a happy family life. But Finn went to sleep during the middle of the day for about three hours.

Bliss! Mary and I were looking at each other at one point during this unheard of period of infant sleep - this is what life used to be like! We did what we wanted to do! (I read books while Mary created Eden out the back door)

So there I am, there were three elements to my pleasure.

1: Alternate drinks of coffee and green tea. I have a new coffee system that involves grinding my own beans then producing the ultimate stove top espresso. Then I drink pots of green tea out of tiny glasses. The Tea is called Moon Palace (like the Paul Auster novel) Then more coffee, then more tea - eat a few dried apricots in between. Fucki*n great.

2: Music. Scott Pack bought an Internet radio ages ago and blogged about the joys of listening to Chinese radio etc. I now have one of these superb gadgets (thanks Mike Leigh!) and am loving listening to Moroccan radio.

3: Books. Three of them. The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano. When I got bored of Mexican poets I would switch to Streetwise by Mohamed Choukri for some Moroccan street life. When that stopped doing the trick it was back to Bolano - coffee for Bolano, tea for Choukri. At the end of the day, now with a glass of wine in hand, I had Platanov's The Fierce and Beautiful World to delight my mind.

Just a perfect weekend. Premiership survival (mid-table mediocrity again next season please!) family stuff and some fantastic reading...

The Potter buzz is building...

We've had a really good response to our Harry Potter 'Buy one get nothing free and no money off' offer. (But half the money is given away!) Lots of pre-orders already - to the extent that we've had to work out a system for collecting names and numbers. This may sound like a simple task but if you knew us...

We also had an e-mail from an author who visited the shop last week and wishes to remain anonymous. Here is an extract,

'...what I wanted to say was I LOVE your Harry Potter campaign, not least because I'm horrified about the lack of books in schools and try to do as much as possible for my own kids schools. I also believe my independent bookshop when I started buying books properly helped me become a writer because I trusted the choice of varied and particular books on offer, and so came across writers I would not normally have picked up.

However as I won't be buying a copy of Harry Potter, I wondered if your local primary school would accept a cheque for £60 which is my fee for a poem in the upcoming Virago Book of Shopping.'

Gives you the warm-fuzzies, doesn't it? I think I'm going to enjoy this...

And here's a link to the recipient of half the Potter money, Johanna. They're quite chuffed.

And here's our homepage with the offer...

You there. Yes you. I know what you're doing.

I just love it when a 'customer' blatently stands in the middle of the shop tapping the titles of books into his mobile so he can go home and get them on amazon.

more at twiigs.com...

Bond Girl? What Bond Girl?

Adam is still laughing at me...

I was wittering on to someone about Patrick Hamilton. We were agreeing about what a great writer he was an then moved on to discuss the coming production of Gaslight (Hamilton's most famous play) at the Old Vic.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a tall, slim woman browsing the fiction section.

I carried on waffling away and the person I was waffling at eventually paid and left the premesis. By this time the tall, slim woman was at the till and Adam was helping her with some research on Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey. I paid enough attention to notice she was rather good looking, but I'm a married man and a bit of a shy lad so I did my usual thing of NOT looking at her...

Of course it was only Rosamund Pike.

Not only is she STARRING in Patrick Halilton's Gaslight at the Old Vic she was a BOND GIRL. A bad one (as in Evil) but still HOT.

Who will I fail to recognise next? Watch this space...I am becomming a running joke!

Little amuses the innocent

Google have let us have a little map so you can find out where we are. If you head here, then click on Find on the left, click on the old map and a new fangly map should pop up.

The cool thing is you can zoom in and out of it and scroll around like a normal google maps thing.

Goddamn if that wasn't the best hour I ever spent fiddling with the site.

(And for more Bank Holiday boredom here is a map of the cycle ride I went on yesterday morning)

Update! If, say, my uncle in Ballymena wanted to find his way to us, from the map page he could type in 'Ballymena' into the search bar at the bottom, he could then click on the 'directions' link on the result and he would get something like this. Just how cool is that, I ask you. Go on, try your own home town and find out how to get to Crockatt & Powell!

This is if you happen to live in Vienna.

How about Malaga?

Or, New York City! (Scroll down to no.38 in the directions)

Pottermania comes to SE1 (Thanks to Marie)

So, here's the deal.

The last Harry Potter book is £17.99. WaterstonesTescoAmazonAsda are selling it for £8.99 or thereabouts - pretty much what they pay the publisher.

Here's our offer (as discussed on the 'Lunacy' post below)

Buy HP7 from us at £17.99, we'll pay the publisher and then give £9 to the primary school at the end of Lower Marsh to spend on books for their library.

What an offer!

C'mon folks, cancel you pre-orders at the giants and help us give a little back.

Crockatt & Powell Go Bananas

BREAKING NEWS

Tiny bookshop Crockatt & Powell today announced they would be selling bananas for 2p each, making a bunch of five a staggering 10p.

Shares in Tesco plunged 40% at the news.

"If we sell bananas that cheap we will never make any money" moaned the chief exec. I wish we'd never tried selling books...

STUPID FOLK / THOSE WITHOUT A SENSE OF HUMOUR ALERT!

THIS POST IS A JOKE - ANY TESCO EMPLOYEES WHO ARE UPSET AT THE PROSPECT OF LOSING THEIR JOBS DON'T WORRY

Event Horizon (and are those really what his nipples look like?)

My sister was up in Liverpool the other weekend. She obviously had a great time as she has been attempting to convince me that I and all my family are Scousers ever since. (The idea seems to be that since my dad lived near Liverpool for a few years when he was a teenager and my auntie hung out at the Cavern club that the whole bunch of us Crockatts are therefore Scousers - Sis I'm a London boy, no doubt about it!)

While she was up there she went to the beach and saw Another Place, Antony Gormley's haunting installation on Crosby Beach. (My mum and dad in their courting days once went for a walk on the beach near there. My mum said to my dad "What are those things that look like sandy turds?" My dad replied "Erm, sandy turds...") But Crosby Beach has clearly gone up in the world and instead of raw sewage they have lovely art.

Anyway she came back to London and arranged to meet Finn and I on the South Bank. Crossing Waterloo Bridge who should she meet but Antony Gormley - or rather a bronze cast of the man, naked of course. Having just encountered the Crosby Beach installation she was a little surprised. Was he following her? (Quite a looker my sis!)

Well we sat down on a bench by the river and Finn proceeded to WOW her with a display of standing up, clapping and falling over. Whaddayouknow but next thing we start seeing Antony all over the place. The river, London skyline and all these Antony Gormley statues staring out over the city...

...brilliant stuff Antony! But are your nipples really that shape?

Lunacy

Sheer bloody lunacy.

more at twiigs.com...

I've got a bike, you can ride it if you like, it's a present from mike

It's carbon fibre and it's really, really fast.

Bills? What bills?

Web 2.0 an' stuff

Can anyone explain to me what essentially is the difference between Second Life and Dungeons and Dragons?

Maybe this will help.

I'm trying to write a newsletter...

...but too many people want to chat about books!