Unicorn Tree Books Nominated Charity

First off we would like to say thank you to everyone that has contributed in the last year to our Nominated Charity - The Alder Hay Imagine Appeal. Together we have raised £367.

That's not bad going at all considering the economy, So thanks.

As you probably know we nominate a new charity each year on the anniversary fo the start of the business, and this year we have decided to go with Listening Books.

Listening Books is the only audiobook charity in the UK providing a streaming audiobook internet service, as well as a comprehensive postal service, to anyone who has a disability which makes it impossible or difficult to hold a book, turn its pages, or read in the usual way. Charity registration number. 264221

We figure this is a worthy cause as we love books and we want everyone to be able to enjoy them - this one is close to our hearts as well due to the fact that in our family we have people who suffer from both degenerative eye issues and physical issues that can contribute to causing our families favourite past-time to becoming something deeply missed. So we want to help make sure that everyone with similair issues gets to continue enjoyig the treasures that books are.
We hope this is a Charity that again you will all be able to get behind with us and that this year we can raise as much, if not more!, for this worthy charity too.
You can donate in shop giving your pennies as so many of you already do - or of course you can dontate directly through our JustGiving Page too. Thanks :0)

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)

Bookcase Shuffle Completed and light has come to the dim!

Those of you that visited before the manic Christmas Market weekend, and indeed even in the week before will have noticed that the bookcase shifting boogie had been an ongoing process of near completion!

That is to say Secondhand was shuffled and has come out straight and bay like with no nasty walls and hidden hiding places, instead the bookshop is now light and airy and tidy and easily viewable from all places, and it looks good!

Alright so for a few days it looked like a bombsite, but now it is beautiful and it is alphabetical again! We also have wonderful flat tables for display purposes and its just nice, nice, nice - you will all have to come in and visit.

It got done last week when I had to forfeit my day off - even though I was very sick with nasty minion germs - and come in, well it was quiet ( until I started moving things of course that is!), I was feeling ill so I thought I would re-arrange all the furniture again to make the minion germs sweat it out and leave (works on real minions, give them lots of hard work to do and they often seem to make like invisible, all the while saying it is not so but they have other tasks I have tasked them with! so it might have worked with minion germs!) but they germs did not leave, but the job did get done! then on the following day once all the hard labour was done minion one returned to work just in time to alphabetacise (thats a bit like aerobacizing but slower!). And so it was done in time for Christmas Market.

Christmas Market time was as ever fun and filled with strange people wearing santa and elf hats ( bah humbug we repeat!) however we did also on the sunday have a visit from Darth Vader - lightsabre included! that caused a little stir for a while and was good fun too - shame the minions were absent that day as I am sure they could have swapped some awesome tales of the darkside with the darklord!

So anyway come visit the new look shop - it looks good, and other customers have said so too, the number of customers who have said they didn't realise we were so big is quite good (though quite concerning too in a strange way) and the number who now just wander in to secondhand without saying 'is it ok to come in' is also very good! - many favourable comments, though it seems some people can't help but to also say 'oh no where are the books now'!! like we have hidden them! when in point of fact they are now much easier to see - when what they really mean is where is the one author I am reading/collecting at the minute, however as today minion one put up posters with arrows and diagrams, and as I can now stand at the till or computer and go , THERE just to the LEFT, turn slightly RIGHT bend down 27degrees perpendicular to the FLOOR and YES, THERE is that Kathy Reichs you wanted! all whilst still serving the queueing customers ( I multi-task you know), means it all seems to be working out to the good.

Anyway if you are after calenders or diaries you better get in fast as they are ripping out at a wicked rate and all we have left is what is out on the shelves now!

Same goes with Nativity Sets, Boxed Book Sets, DVD's on warplanes and steam trains, and believe it or not Communion Wafers! all that prepping up for that Christmas Eve/Day lark.

I mean come on top christmas topics and gift stories - no Nintendo DS in stock, You can't get a Wii and the GPS Sat Navs keep getting people lost - one would almost think there was a religious meaning to this season, no room in an in, surrounded by donkeys and asses in a stable with no indoor plumbing to speak off and the supposedly wise men being guided by a star in the end after ending up in the wrong kings palace! Cool Yule thats what I say.

So anyway drop by and see the new look shop, and feel free to bring me some festive cheer - I quite like Hot Chocolate laced with baileys or brandy for my cheer and as a cure to a red nose!

See you in the shop tomorrow!

The time to be giving!

Ha! Tis the season to be giving! 

That did not mean for the minions to be giving me the snuffley nose and sore throats they have been suffering with this last week!

Anyway winter aches and frosty fevers aside - though minion one remains out on sickly leave with no voice (ahh bliss I hear the voices echo inside my head! peace at last after tumultous days of orders to be more minion like and less boss like!) - all is still well with the shop and tomorrow we have smiley minion in to share the day with - perhaps I can share the snuffle and scratch along, pass it on as it were, after all a trouble shared and all that lark!

Today we pretty much sold out of Advent Candles, though we still have Advent Calenders in. We also had a delivery of Christmas Colouring books and indeed general Colouring books, large print wordsearch came in at last as well and lots of secondhand books were returned - but then they would be as I was alone and trying to rearrange the shelves again! 

Military history, Historical fiction (of the not boddice romance ripping kind) and Spy books got shifted out the flipside of the wall by science fiction and True Crime got a centre court place where the spy fiction used to be.

Lots more calenders got put out and I just generally tried to fill in and tidy up displays.

I put an order in for lots more books which should arrive early next week, as were getting a tad low on James Patterson, Colin Forbes, Maureen Lee and Meg Hutchinson. So by mid week we should be chocker block full again.

I am hoping to send in an order for some more Revell and Airfix model kits this week, along with Doctor Who stuff, as we have had a made run on both of those this last few weeks, but then they do make good presents! As do the Jigsaws and Jigrolls to store the Jigsaws on!

So anyway life is sniffley but all good fun, just lots of work to be done and do. 

Come by and visit and don't forget to bring the sympathy and I will then think about providing the Tea! Though if you really care about a poor beleagured bookshopboss, make mine a starbucks latte with a shot of almond syrup, or if you are going into Nero's then it's a caramelatte!

See you in the shop tomorrow.