electrical mayhem

HI all,

Well if you have been in this week, which I know of course you will have been! then you will know that the week was totally disrupted by the comedy duo and all round great guys - Dennis & Brian - the electricians who had the delightful job of trying to sort out something like 10 years of messed up wiring! we are talking attack of the killer cables, light switch from hell and find the hidden live socket! Its been fun and noisy, dusty and generally crowded in the space usually dedicated to browsers and books! still at least I can sleep well now knowing that my bookshop will not be an electrical short short of a blazing inferno!

I took this time to sort out some older stock that was cluttering up the place and got moved to make space for ladders and electricians and am now having a buster of a sale - hardbacks are marked at 20p each or 10 for £1.00 and once those are gone there will be no more hardback fiction taken in as it just is a dying medium to a larger extent ( though personal complaint here - I wish the darn publishers would stop with this stupid US type large paperback format - again its functionally useless as it don't fit a bag so wrecks the concept of portability, everyone complains at the extra price, and it ruins the look & flow of a bookcase - so come on guys can we just have standard paperbacks please, and if you ahve to keep a larger format then go with a special edition hardback for collectors!).
So anyway hardbacks done, overstocks of paperbacks - well there's the secondhand ones at 50p each or 5 for £1.00, and then on the unread and never owned before stock we have a yellow sticker offer going - any 4 yellow stickered books for only £5.00 - again top authors and titles.

I also rejigged the Jigsaws! as we had a new batch of over 6 large box loads in - new fantasy and gothic jigsaws in, a great collection called 'Wanted" where hidden in the wonderfully manic pictures are wanted characters you have to find - these are great!
For the kids we have glow in the dark scooby doo! (did I ever tell you all that the worst nightmare I ever had involved Scooby Doo! he was behind me as we ran up a never ending staircase trying to get away from what I now know to be the demon hoards of minions incapable of alphabeticising and the customers whose favourite puzzle mags got misdirected to aberdeen! I mean how do you mistake aberdeen for lincoln??), so anyway along with Scooby and gang there are some fantastic Famous Five jigsaws, which include the story that you read, a jigsaw to do and in the jigsaw the clues and answers that allow you to solve the mystery - again great concept fun. Jigsaws just seem to get cleverer!

On the Christian Side, well ok the 2009 Church Diairies are in -out - and in again!!, The 2009 Lectionaries are in - and there's a shed load of new books in this week from SCM-Canterbury, Church House, SPCK and Alban, along with Jeff Lucas's new book - well worth a read though at the minute I am reading his 'Prodigal Friendly Church' (Zondervan - 97803102678249 - £8.99) which is an excellent read and really speaks volume I can agree with!
Lots more cards now in and all in all the shelves are pretty full - but luckily people are beginnning to come in more now, oh yeah and Book Agents are now being canvassed for, there is a cool new leaflet all about the schemes we are offering on this one, but we are offering the service not just to churches but to Schools and other community groups and ventures too!

News - SSG declared Bankruptcy in the US Courts under Chapter 11 protection, but then founded a new managment company called ENC Management and told all remaining staff there jobs were gone and they would have to apply to the US courts if they wanted redundancy or their currently owed wages, however they could apply for their jobs to ENC and this would not be covered by TUPE - there are questions as to the rights of this situation, and at last report they had recanted on the last part whilst they sort a legal opinion! http://www.thebookseller.com/news/61032-st-stephen-the-great-files-for-bankruptcy.html & http://www.thebookseller.com/news/61032-st-stephen-the-great-files-for-bankruptcy.html & http://www.chesterchronicle.co.uk/chester-news/local-chester-news/2008/06/13/jobs-worry-at-bookshop-59067-21065437/

cool or what - this raises a wonderful ethical question - how many ways can be found to hurt people and continue to try it on??
So anyway its an interesting proposition going on here - I tell you if this was fiction non of us would buy the book as it would be just way too unbelievable!
More details on all this can be found here:
http://christianbookshopsblog.org.uk/2008/06/04/new-name-for-ssg/#comments
and here:
http://www.cartoonchurch.com/blog/category/save-the-spck/

OHH and we want to say congrats to the minion no.2 also known as Snowflake (and Eunice to her mum!) as she just got a new full time job (though she assures me she will still be available for saturday cover - after all she is the only minion that doesn't sing the alphabet whilst tidying the shelves!!). As I am sure you will all remember she was one of the staff sacked by email without notice by the SSG bookshops directors based in Texas! well done Eunice and enjoy - we know without doubt that you will be an excellent edition to your new employers team and will excel at the job as thats just who and how you are!

So that leaves one of the four that were so wrongly treated by them still looking for a job - again I put out a plea to you all that if you know of a job for a hardworking dedicated member of staff that has excellent office based, and shop based, skills, that was in charge of SPCK Lincolns Goods Inwards operations, then please get in touch and I will pass the details on! I can personally vouch for this member of staff and can assure you she is well worth hiring and a committed team player but more than able to organise herself and others (yes even bookshop bosses! so that just shows you what amazing skills she has!).

Oh yeah and we now have our LGBT Fiction section up and running now - we are intending our shop to be one that really serves the needs of Lincoln's Communities and outreaches, networks and welcomes everyone - after all its through our actions that we build community and show the light! - especially now the electricians have put new fittings and tubes in.

Ok other news and worthy mentions -
i want to wish my cohort Pinky ( who is also of course the teams Childrens Section Advisor) a big hug and get well soon as she fell off her Scooter last week (probably practicing dangerous curby stunts as pinky knows no fear!) and has broke her leg in two places and is in plaster to her knee! As you can imagine this puts a bit of a damper on our regular schemes to take over the world during the next 6 weeks while she heals up - but we are sure we can find other things to do to amuse ourselves! ( the colouring books are incredibly good fun and amazingly therapeutic, but we are not sure what people mean when they keep telling us that there are other colours to use then red, black, purple & Pink and we are meant to colour inside the lines!)

Minion no. 1 might provide some enjoyment for us yet! though of course she is taking up her Counselling Placement in the next few weeks (don't panic this has been arranged as a day off thing, so she will still be in store three days a week for you all to torture!) - for which we wish her all the best - we are sure that she will find all the help she needs!
oops of course we mean we are sure that she will recieve lots of assistance as she continues to grow her own skills as a training counsellor! No really we are sure minion no.1 will rock at this and many people will benefit from her assistance and we wish her all the best and are proud of her.

Anyway so ok then thats about all the news from the bookshop for now and the bookshop boss seriously needs a rest after all the activity of the week - yay sunday!, so I shall see you all in the shop next week!

(This post has been edited as a safeguard - for the reasons as to why this may have been necessary visit http://www.cartoonchurch.com/blog/category/save-the-spck, Oops now wait you cant - I guess you better go here instead: http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/series/cease-and-desist-notice-on-dave-walker/ Should I be notified personally and directly by the concerned parties of anything then I will of course let you know and then take any further necessary actions as may be required)