Bay Tree Blog - a page of literary indulgence,

Author Event with Stephanie Calman  (23.06.10)

What a fabulous night! Stephanie was in her usual cracking form on Wednesday and had a packed cricket club giggling and nodding in empathy at her perceptive and hilarious views on the state of marital (dis)harmony. From remote control wars to map reading mayhem, we all recognised the more irritating aspects of our husband’s behaviour. Whilst Stephanie signed books and chatted – and chatted – themed refreshments were served, the exact nature of which we cannot reveal except to say that Roy Green (the Butcher) paled significantly when we outlined our plans and ordered two 5lb sausage coils for Bob-it-on-a-Bap. The evening wound up to a very amusing end when we shared some of our ladies reasons why they might want to murder their husband – bribery of a bar of Galaxy chocolate for the most amusing answers guaranteed a flood of entries. Favorites that we are able to print included “Because he really doesn’t look like David Beckham”, “Just because he breathes” and “Because he went back to his first wife” - marvellous!

SL

 Readers Digest More Extraordinary Uses for Ordinary Things

Featuring: Bubble Wrap, Vinegar, String, Baby Oil, Instant Coffee,

Banana Peel, Egg Boxes………..

This is the book that will actually make you look forward to getting home and scrubbing the grouting or cleaning your oven shelves – really! There are no motivational techniques employed here, this is no Feel the Grease and Do it Anyway or How to Win Friends and Disinfect People, this is simply an encyclopaedia of domestic alchemy.

There are so many uses for bicarbonate of soda, white vinegar, salt and lemon juice that I have already put industrial quantities of each onto my shopping list this week and no doubt every drain, appliance and skanky surface will be awash with the stuff. However, it is the more unusual applications that have caught my eye; potato deodorising, shaving cream glass clean, banana skin for cleaning silver. Whilst one can only imagine the feeling of satisfaction one would get buffing the family silver with a Ffyfe I will be able to enjoy the myriad uses for Aloe Vera. Pat very kindly acquired one of these marvellous plants for me and now I know that I can treat blisters, burns and a whole manner of ailments I will be able to snip a leaf and liberally anoint the whole family in the event of any medical emergency.

This really is a fascinating and practical book and whilst I probably wouldn’t go so far as to store my surplus wrapping paper in a cardboard tube or, my personal favourite - cutting the fingers off a pair of marigolds and putting them over the tips of a broom or mop handle to stop them sliding down the wall – this is a very useful reference for any domestic crisis.

SL

P.S. Did you know that human hair is a complete boon to your compost? Readers Digest does suggest taking a trip to your local barber or salon and asking for some hair – yuk! Personally, I can gather enough hair every day from the drain of my shower to boost the nitrogen cycle in anyone’s compost heap!

£12.99 Paperback

Readers Digest Association Ltd

ISBN: 9780276445897

It’s been a while but we have been somewhat distracted by a deluge of new stock following a very productive visit to the Birmingham Trade Fair at the beginning of February.  Traditionally we have made a bit of a “Thelma & Louise” out of our annual trip to the NEC, staying overnight at a hotel and taking two days to stalk the halls.  However, since having to share a double bed and the incident with the dead body, we decided that this year we would do it in a day.  Anybody who has ever graced a trade fair will know that it involves miles and miles of walking up and down the show stands,  being forced to graze continually upon the snacks and sweets proffered by the exhibitors, and collecting as many branded bags as you can fit in your flowery shopping trolley.  If you’re very lucky you might bump into Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen (bit corpulent) or James Martin (mmmm - very nice and tall) or you might bat your lashes at a soft toy salesman and get a free 8inch nylon hamster (not a euphemism!).  Anyway, we had a brilliant time this year and sourced some fantastic toys and gifts for Baytree, including some great traditional wooden toys from Melissa & Doug and the gorgeous Big Baby range of jewellery, which we are very excited about. 

Stock has been arriving continually since February and with the aid of our super Monarch Paxar pricing gun this would have been a cinch, however, since all of our re-fill rolls have mysteriously disappeared or the mice have a predilection for price-tags, we have had to hand write all our price stickers.  Therefore, that is our genuine excuse for blog absence – mice ate our price stickers!

Confession- had to look up “cinch” and “predilection” in the dictionary.

Will be back soon(ish) with some views on recently read books.

SL

I found out today that Meghan writes two blogs, providing fashion and media commentary with film and book reviews etc, and that she has garnered over 40,000 people who regularly read her blog – amazing!   Obviously doing plenty of research and staying up to the wee small hours updating one’s blog pays dividends.  How inspiring – note to selves - must work harder at being prolific! Obviously the snow has prevented us from blogging since October!

Here goes:-

A friend revealed that her husband reads at the breakfast table.  I am sure he reads in other locations and at other times too but it seemed an unusual choice of time and place, but what is normal reading mode?  Reading a novel in bed?  How many of you only manage a couple of paragraphs when the words start to swim and you realise you’ve read the same bit three times before finally slumping into the duvet and losing the book over the side of the bed? If I only read in bed it would take me six years to finish a book.

My place of choice is in the bath. Half an hour’s solitary confinement in a warm, bubbly bath – not to be undertaken too early as noise pollution can be quite off-putting, nor too late as heat and tiredness make terrible book-mates.   One downside is that to stop me slipping too far under the water I have to use my feet as anchors – by having them outside of the water and on the bath ledge – I apologise if this image is causing any distress but this is what happens to people of small stature – and having to use a chair for the higher kitchen cupboards!  I digress.   Other casualties of bath-time reading are ruined books, paperbacks that start off slim and angular end up bloated and damp.  This is why I am loathe to borrow paperbacks – I bend the pages back too – what can I say!

Now I am jealous of those people who can read in the car.  How wonderful it would be to pass a long journey in the company of a great book without feeling green at the gills. 

The train is another good location, not only does reading make the journey less tedious but it also stops people talking to you.  I used this blatant anti-social tactic very successfully for about six years until Sarah Woolley started getting on my train!

So, where do you read?  Do we have any readers with unusual habits – let us know.  Clearly I will expect at least 39,000 reponses.

Having had possibly the worst Saturday ever (with several poor months before this), I’ve got over my initial wobble and have come out the other side with my fighting spirit raring to go. I love my shop and the people with whom I work, and so do lots of other people. There is no way that I’m going to sit back and see it join the numerous other businesses in Glossop that have bitten the dust. Let the fight back commence! First up, I’ve sent a letter to local papers. A copy of which I have attached.

Hopefully they’ll publish it which, in turn, might provoke responses from their readers, keeping us in the public eye.

Watch this space…

19 October 2009

Dear Editor

I know that some people have been ultra organised and have finished their Christmas shopping already but I would like to grab this opportunity to appeal to those shoppers who are yet to embark on their annual gift buying.

It used to be that Christmas trade would cushion small independent shops through the ups and downs of the year ahead but over the past few years we have noticed a decline in this. We are only too aware of the current economic climate and that people will want to shop around; I would like to call upon their good nature to include their local shops in the mix.

As an independent shopkeeper, I’m sure I’m not alone in recognising that our regular customers are invaluable to us but that Christmas shoppers also play an important part in our survival.

To be brutally honest, if we don’t manage to drum up Christmas custom, we simply won’t be here during the rest of the year.

I could continue this letter with a rant about supermarkets and shopping online being responsible for the decline of the high street but I’m all for choice and that isn’t the tone I want to adopt. The residents of Holmfirth recently made the headlines by campaigning against opening a Tescos on their doorsteps – and winning! Their story lends weight to the theory that people are increasingly reaching a point where they are no longer willing to trade community for convenience. In the same article it was quoted, “Progress isn’t a bad thing, but we are also losing a lot of things. And one of those things is the personal touch.”

Not in my shop! Here you’ll find progress and festive warmth and cheer all year round, for many years to come… hopefully.

Yours sincerely

Sarah Woolley

Bay Tree Books & Gifts, Glossop

TB or not TB?  That is the question.  Actually its going to be the answer! 

Our best intentions are to contribute to the blog on a daily basis but there are times when we are just TBTB - Too Busy To Blog.    So when you see TBTB in the blog space it doesn’t mean that we can’t think of anything to write,  it will merely indicate that we are actively engaged with customers or other pressing shop business.  Note:  If  there is nothing on the blog at all this doesn’t mean that we have expired by the local history section or  had a nasty incident in the stockroom - it really means we are TBTBTWATBTB - Too Busy To blog That We Are Too Busy To Blog.   Then again, it is the start of the summer holidays so it could also be a SWIM SLAG situation - Sarah Woolley Is Missing Sarah Lovell Also Gone.  Judging by the amount of books Sarah Woolley is taking on holiday there should be plenty to write about when she gets back! 

SL

This week we had an email from a lovely lady in New Zealand (Kate) and the correspondence that ensued was very fascinating so we thought we would share it with you.  Kate was enquiring about a particular book but had mistaken our shop for one in Kent:

             Hi Kate

Hi Kate

You’re right!   We’re not in Kent but are located in the Peak District in Derbyshire.  Still, it’s very nice to hear from someone so far away.   Just because we are extremely curious (we hate to say nosey) - what is the story behind a New Zealand resident and the Oxford Anthology of Indian Wildlife Volume 11?  This might be a nice piece for our blog.

Hope you manage to get the book sorted out.
Kind regards
Sarah

Dear Sarah – I approve wholeheartedly of nosiness – things are always more interesting that way!

I am a historian who has just finished writing a book on the history of hunting in New Zealand (shameless self-promotion I know, but it’s called Hunting, a New Zealand History and is coming out with Random House NZ next month).  While none of the people I wrote about hunted in India, some did go on safari to Africa in the 1920s, and of course every middle class household had a piano, so were tied into the imperial ivory trade.  (In another quirk of the imperial world, one North Island sheep baron hired Thurso Castle in Scotland for the grouse season in 1927!)  The explosion in juvenile fiction from the 1890s, much of which had a hunting theme, reached New Zealand very quickly, and many NZ children grew up with tales of white hunters in India & Africa, and they themselves had deer & quail galore on their doorstep (all introduced of course – NZ has no native mammals except 2 species of bat).

I also teach a course at Victoria University of Wellington (bottom of the North Island) called “People in their Place: Perspectives on People and Land” and we do a few weeks that relate to India, including India as part of the ‘hunting empire’. There are also connections between British foresters who worked in India and then moved on to Australia and NZ in the later part of the 19C.

So, perhaps not so surprising that I was looking for Rangarajan’s book – his others are very interesting!

I hope you are enjoying your summer – we are in the depths of the winter gloom here and longing for crocuses… The Peak District sounds lovely!  I hope one day to get there.
Best wishes,
Kate

Now that is fascinating - glad I asked, nosiness does pay off! 

Your mention of Thurso brings to mind a visit to Dunrobin Castle in the Highlands.  They have a museum in the gardens, which the website describes as…..

Originally built as a summer house by William, Earl of Sutherland, it was extended by the 3rd Duke. The museum displays the heads of numerous animals shot by the family on safari, ethnographic items collected from around the world (particularly Africa), and an important collection of archaeological relics. The museum retains its Victorian-early 20th century arrangement, making it one of the most remarkable private collections in the British Isles.

…  heads, torsos and myriad body parts sticking out of the floors, walls and ceilings.  It is literally crammed with the Duke’s trophies.  Amazing that a collection once so admired can now draw gasps of disbelief at the sheer weight of animal souveniers, although I suppose its preservation now stands as an important piece of natural and anthropological history.    

Spookily - talking of the Empire and Indian Wildlife, I have ordered a beautiful copy of the Jungle Book for a customer this week.  Also, I am reading “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle“, an American set novel, in which there is a quote from the Jungle Book:  “Then the first of the tigers said, “What have I done that this comes to me?”  Tha said, ” Thou hast killed the buick, and thou has let Death loose in the June, and with Death has come Fear, so that the People of the Jungle are afraid one of the other as thou art afraid of the Hairless One”.   Kiplings words are as prophetic now as they were then.

Thank you so much for your illuminating email, I hadn’t appreciated how much influence that period of the white hunter had  on literature, especially that for children.

I wish you well with your book - which I will put on our blog - and I hope the crocus show themselves soon. 

Best wishes

Sarah

The beautiful version of the Jungle Book is published by Walker Childrens books and is exquisitely illustrated by Nicola Bayley- not remotely Disneyesque!  £9.99  ISBN: 9781406304787 

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski  £7.99 ISBN: 9780007265077  “A great, big, mesmerising read.  Pick up this book and expect to feel very, very reluctant to put it down.”  New York Times

SL

 

 

No news yesterday. Not because there wasn’t any, but due to the great Glossop black-out, which wasn’t a disturbing High Peak wicca festival, but a power cut.  Sometime during the great rains yesterday there was a single lightning strike so dramatic it caused grown women to scream - the shop door was shut so, hopefully, not witnesses.  Shortly afterwards all the electricity on this side of the High Street went off and we were left in semi darkness with no till, no computers and, most harrowing, no kettle!!  But this is where being a local, independent shop comes into its own - we were able to operate a “buy now, pay when the electric is back on” policy, because we know and trust our lovely customers.

Reminder:  We are selling tickets for THE LIFT WEEKEND SPECIAL

Sat 11th July 8pm - late          Etran Finatawa + Hut People  £10

Sun 12th July 2pm-6pm        Celloman + Hut People                £5

Weekend Ticket:  Special Price £12!

Further information:  www.liftglobal.com

James Draper at the Writing School (Manchester Metropolitan University) has sent us details of this new competition.

First Prize:    £10,000

Deadline for Entries:  7th August 2009

The Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University is launching The Manchester Fiction Prize, a new literary competition celebrating excellence in creative writing.  The prize is open internationally and will award £10,000 to the writer of the best short story submitted.  The competition is open to writers aged 16 or over; there is no upper age limit.  In addition to the main prize, a bursary for study at MMU will be awarded to one entrant aged 18-25 as part of the Manchester Young Writer of the Year Award. 

Details can be found on the Manchester Writing Competition website:

www.manchesterwritingcompetition.co.uk

Just checked the chocolate - the humidity is causing some kind of chemical imbalance and it’s on the tipping point of liquidity.  Remarkably its not stuck to the paper so have been able to eat some with no wastage whatsoever - result!    SL