A review of the Cornish Guardian.

I don’t know much about you, in fact I know just about nothing about you but the one thing that I do know is that you enjoy reading the Cornish Guardian. This Christmas I got the chance to actually sit down and read the whole thing cover to cover and really enjoyed myself.  It’s always a shame though that the property section of the Christmas edition is so light.  If there is one thing I love about the paper it’s flicking through the property pages and choosing my next dream house, in a sense I’m glad I’m not rich because I’d be spoilt for choice, how would I decide between 20 acres of moorland or beach frontage?

The Christmas paper is also unusual in that we get to read the writings of the other local columnists. I think the people of Bodmin, Lostwithiel and Looe are well served with their columnists and it’s nice to see the standard I have to try to keep up to, it’s also nice to see what is going on in the other areas beyond the standard news stories.  One place that is great to find out what is going on is the letters page.  This is the section that I always turn to first because it makes sense of the news stories and also has the bonus of some days making me laugh out loud. Last week we had the treat of a councillor getting in a huff because praise for some scheme hadn’t been duly allocated to him but to a fellow councillor. His letter was full of “me, me, me” and outraged indignation, this week was even better when the second councillor retaliated saying that the first councillor was misguided and that HE was the one who did all the work, in a rare case of one-upmanship the councillor backdated his claim of interest to when he was a “young lad”. I have never read two letters more full of their own self-importance. I’m looking forward to a letter in next week’s paper from a councillor claiming to be Spartacus.  It is funny but really guys you’re councillors. Is this seemly? Is it helpful? Does it matter?  Surely the bigger picture is that the event was a success? Like their letters, I often find that I’m at odds with the political columns none more so than Dick Cole.  He always writes eloquently and persuasively but I generally find myself disagreeing – not this week though – how could George Osborne suggest creating “low pay zones” for public service workers.  The only decent wages in Cornwall tend to be in the public service, we should be trying to raise everyone up to their pay and working conditions not pull them down.

Another letter that struck a chord was from Keeley Allen, who volunteers at a local animal shelter. They want to employ her but have no funding, she wants to work for them and stop claiming benefits so the pair of them have written in asking if anyone knows where they may get funding for £5K a year. I don’t know the ins and outs of this story but it comes across as one of those situations where you think the system just isn’t working.  By the same token Keeley is trying to fix it, so good luck to her and I’m also keeping my fingers crossed for Marna who is still waiting to have her furniture fumigated. Her letter was informative, polite and nicely ironic, I have no doubt that the people at Ocean who really do care about their residents will have sorted out the glitch by now.  So that’s my review of last week’s paper I hope you enjoyed it (the paper) as much as I did.

Minor niggles and petty minded ejits.

Well it’s been a week of little frustrations.   I ordered some books for a birthday present for one of my son’s friends. I ordered a special next day delivery so that they would arrive in time. Ordering books is something that I’m pretty good at. I’m used to it.  What I’m not used to is delivery companies failing to deliver. I would say that 98% of my deliveries arrive without fuss or fanfare but the 2% that don’t turn up when you want to? Well, you can guarantee that they are the ones that are time sensitive.  So of course these books failed to turn up on day one, day two or day three, the party came and went and there’s me, a bookseller, unable to provide books for a birthday present. Only mildly annoying then.

Talking about the shop our scaffolding is still up, not the end of the world and it does mean that the work is getting done.  Well our work is all done but our neighbour has bigger problems so we just have to wait.  Hardly his fault and it needs to be done properly but you know how it is.  It still irks. I want to show off my newly painted shop to everyone. Which leads me to my next frustration, my scaffolding is up but my Christmas decorations at home still aren’t.  A leak in the house has meant that our sitting room ceiling is sagging.  We got a plasterer to have a quick look, he took a quick look and then he left telling us that what I thought was a quick dot and dab job was actually going to involve taking down the coving as well as a good portion of the ceiling and to call our insurers.

So now I am waiting for the loss adjuster, talk about spirally out of control.  And whilst I wait we can’t put up the decorations, well what’s the point if we have to take it all down again. We can’t dress the tree or deck the hall and our fa la la la la is definitely out of tune. Little things really can grind you down and then in amongst all the stupid minor inconveniences comes an act of a utter pettiness  and you wonder why they bothered.

My mother  went to catch the bus into town the day after her birthday.  Now it may shock you to discover my mother has a bus pass, well it does me as it means I’m not 18 anymore but that’s one of my other minor frustrations. Anyway, she got on the bus, handed over her bus pass and was told it had expired yesterday and had to be withheld. Furthermore if she wished to travel into town she had to pay. As she didn’t have her purse on her she had to step off.  Now I ask you?  What was the point in that?  It’s not as if her birthday made her a year younger and no longer eligible for a bus pass.  Why couldn’t the driver simply have told her that it had expired and that she needed to refresh it?  Why treat her like some sort of fare dodger?  My mother wasn’t bothered, she just brushed him off as a jumped up jobs worth but I got annoyed on her behalf.

So there we go a week of niggles and frustrations. Next week will be a doddle. Ho ho ho!

Killing each other over the Christmas Cake.

Once again cooking the Christmas cake led to family rows and it was all my fault.   For some reason I expect my family to all gather round as we chop the peel and tell jokes, Bing Crosby hands out the sherry and Clare College, Cambridge join in on the songs.  Snow gently falls against the window panes and we warm our hands by the fire. I know I’m raising my expectations too high and I have no issue with high standards, it’s just that when they unsurprisingly fail to deliver I’m disappointed.  I may be able, somehow, to get one of the most beautiful choirs in Britain to squeeze into my kitchen, I may even be able to raise crooners from the grave but snow? In November? In Cornwall?  Some miracles even I can’t perform.  The other miracle I can’t perform is to get my boys to stay in the same room for longer than 30 minutes without fighting, then I get crabby and then they get crabbier and Bing Crosby is grabbing his coat and high tailing it out into the rain.

Anyway, by the time the cake was ready to bake I had left it too late, of course that didn’t stop me and in the oven it went. A potentially huge mistake as 2 hours later I really needed to go to sleep and the cake still had a good hour to go.  In desperation, I turned the oven down to .5 and went to sleep wondering what I would come down to in the morning.    Sometimes though life is on your side, we all woke up to a house smelling of brandy and cloves, fruits and nuts and just the very essence of Christmas.

The reason I’m waffling on about the cake is how important cooking is in a family. My youngest son’s school had a baking day last week.  Virtually the whole day was set aside to make bread.  In the morning they looked at grains and considered the role of grain within an economy and looked at the historical development of different grains around the world.  Then they set to grinding some and then they started baking. Baking was treated as a science lesson, they experimented with chemical reactions and learnt about live cultures and how they work, they also experimented with the physical properties of an oven and temperature and they looked at the biological impact of bread as a food source upon the body.  All day long the top three year groups worked together, mixing, kneeding and baking and every child brought home their own loaf of bread.  It was so delicious that it barely lasted till tea time.  This was in a primary school where they have greater flexibility with how they run their school day or their curriculum.

Contrast it with my older son in secondary school. In the first year his cookery lessons seemed to be all about assemblage. Create a salad, create a fruit salad, design a sandwich. It was not edifying. This year he has been allowed to approach the ovens but not for long.  Every offering that the poor boy has brought home has been undercooked. You can see his frustration as he comes in and tells us not to bother eating it as he had to take it out before it was ready.  It’s maddening but the way I look at it is that at least he knows it’s undercooked. I’m not impressed with the current education system and the fact that my sons are currently having to go through it makes me even more unimpressed which is why I try to get them involved in as much cookery as possible at home.  The problem is I may end up killing them first.

Happy Birthday to Us!

It’s our birthday! Hurley Books first started trading formerly in November 2002. A website called Amazon had just opened up part of its site to second hand sales.  Steve and I knew all about books and about selling them, I was a librarian and he had supplemented his college years by selling books on market stalls and fairs.  Being a librarian I was pretty clued up on how important the internet would be and so I suggested that we gave it a go.  At eleven o’ clock that night Stephen dashed into the bedroom.  Now given that our two boys were 1 and 3 my sleep was precious to me and unless there was a problem with one of the children this had better be good.  In Steve’s eye it was better than good it was miraculous. We had just sold a Mary Jane Staples for £5.87, a book he would take ages to sell on the market stall.  I was less than impressed, I knew it would work, we see it all the time in libraries. People love their authors and are desperate to read everything by them, once a book goes out of print it becomes harder for them to read. Simple supply and demand.  At this point both our eyes glazed over, mine through exhaustion and Steve’s through amazement.

Since then Hurley Books has grown quietly and slowly. We were able to give up our jobs and we opened a little shop in St Austell.  People began to walk in through the front door. We began selling face to face as well as online. After a year the dentist needed to expand and we moved to Charlestown.  Now I have to say, hand on heart that I have never enjoyed my job so much as when I was perched on a wooden stool listening to Seth Lakeman and looking out over the tall ships and the sea beyond.  I could have happily sat there day in day out, the most contented person ever without seeing a single customers but once again (thankfully) they turned up.

Finally we took the plunge and in a high risk strategy (well for us anyway) we bought our own place in Mevagissey and took on a warehouse in Par. Suddenly we were shop owners and our home no longer looked like the British Library.  That was five years ago on December 2^nd.

Mevagissey has been a great success for us; it’s given us stability, income and a great sense of community.  Each year we have tried out new things to stay ahead of the game, book selling is not an easy business at the moment and last year, in December again, we launched The Cornish Bookshop, a website focusing on Cornish books and the like. I’m thrilled to say we have loads of support for this venture and I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops.

So we are 9 years old; we have been in Mevagissey for 5 years and the Cornish Bookshop has passed its first milestone.  Now, it goes without saying that we couldn’t have done it without you so we are most cordially inviting you to come and join us Staurday 3^rd, EV Thompson will be with us signing his new book and we’ll be serving mince pies and wine throughout the day. Call us on 01726 825245 to reserve a copy.  Fingers crossed the scaffolding will be down and you can admire our newly painted shop as we put on our best bib and tucker.  It’s also the Christmas Lights in Mevagissey that day so there’ll be loads of things going on.  Please come and join us, it wouldn’t be the same without you!

All huddled together around the bonfire.

What is it that makes our winter events seem more community focused than our summer ones?  In July and August, the banners are flying, everyone is in flippy skirts and pretty sandals, although I think Steve should shave his legs if he’s going to wear skirts that short! and everyone is looking their finest.  The sun shines down from a bright blue sky, well, not usually but you get the picture,  and the air is warm and beautifully fragranced with summer flowers.  Hundreds gather, crowds throng and maybe you pick out a few faces you recognise amongst the visitors but in winter it’s so very different.

Typically it’s dark so we can ignore the looming clouds, it doesn’t matter what we wear because no one can see us, so we are spared Steve’s  legs and we are all looking at the same thing - not usually Steve's legs.  In summer our eyes dart everywhere as there is so much to see. In winter we are all looking at the fireworks, or the bonfire, or the torchlight procession.  We are all doing the same things standing alongside our neighbours, or our team mates or our friends.

So far this year we have come together to watch a beautiful fireworks display at St Austell Brewery, every year they generously invite all their neighbours and employees to come along and ooh and ahh. The following evening we went to an even more fabulous display and bonfire at the Lankelly Fowey Rugby grounds.  Fund raising events like this one mean that we can add more bits of kit and start to save towards proper loos. Definitely something we mothers are looking forward to.

We have watched our children lead the Remembrance Day assembly as they struggle to come to terms with the fact that so many have died over the years only a few years older than themselves.  A week later we watch them again raising money for Children in Need as they understand that suffering is not just a thing of the past or something remote.  We were all a bit humbled when watching  one of the  videos, one of the children, let’s call him Jack, turned round and asked his teacher what the name of the boy in the film was.  No one could answer, we had all been focusing on the child’s problems whereas Jack had instantly focused on the child himself.  From time to time we may get “compassion fatigue” children never do.  They cut straight to the heart of it, they don’t care about the politics, the social situations, the blame game. They just see that a child like them, a child who could be their mate, is in trouble.

We have also been wowed by the lantern displays in Truro but thrilled to see just how great St. Austell’s was.  This is the rebirth of something very fresh and optimistic and long may it continue. Looking ahead we have the carol services and the Christmas lights to enjoy, when communities again come together in the darkness to celebrate.  It always seems a shame that January and February seem to be devoid of these occasions, by then the long months of darkness and rain have begun to take their toll and we need something to keep our flagging spirits going.  In the meantime though I’m going to make the most of all the up coming events and make merry with the wassail and the egg nog.

How much?????

It’s been a challenging week here at Hurley Towers.  We made the decision to close the shop for November whilst Mevagissey gets its streets dug up.  Trade is always weak in November so we thought this would be the perfect time to take a rest, get the scaffolding up, sort out the gutters or hanging gardens as they are more commonly known and get the shop painted.  A bit of a spring clean ready for the Christmas lights and the launch of EV Thompson’s new book.  We knew that it would mean that takings for November would slump a bit but it’s the best time of the year to do it.  And of course we always have the internet to rely on….

As you can probably tell things haven’t quite gone according to plan.  Our neighbour discovered two hidden fireplaces in his walls and a rubbed out chimney – we had a day’s panic whilst we thought we may have the same issue on our side but that seems to be a bill we have sidestepped.  Just good old regular gutter damp.  So there we were relying on the internet when I woke up to an odd e-mail.  The customer asked if I removed the free shipping would I be able to reduce the overall price?  That was odd?  I left in it my to do pile and then opened another e-mail.  This one just said “Are you kidding?”  The next customer explained that they were short of funds this month but would I accept a round £5million pounds for the Jack Higgins paperback? A sense of awful foreboding settled around me.  Quickly I flicked to my online accounts and was astounded and then horrified to discover that I was pricing over half of my online inventory at over £1 million an item.  So far the most I was asking for was £7.5 million for a Danielle Steel second hand paperback.

I had a quick laugh, replied to all queries and shouted to Steve that we had a mild hitch and that we were going to have to close all online sales whilst I tried to find out what was going on.  About 3 hours should do it.  It’s now two weeks later and our software provider are tearing out their hair whilst trying to sort out the problem.  We have no hair left to pull out as we have gone bald through the stress of it all.

We are making some sales but our prices are in a complicated mess. We have been joking that all we need to do is sell one of those multi million pound books and all our problems would be solved.  After day two that joke began to pale.  So now we are looking at each other and asking how this could happen in the run up to Christmas? January and February is when we pull our belts in,  not November. November is when I buy presents, plan Christmas menus and sort out who will be sleeping where when the family arrives.  At this rate we’ll be telling the children that Christmas Lunch is their present and yes Christmas Lunch this year will consist of fish and chips! If they’re good we’ll throw in the ketchup.

Hey ho.  I know we’ll get things fixed but isn’t it frustrating when you think you have every thing all worked out and then all of a sudden, it’s all out of your control and you’re spiralling rapidly towards a nightmare  and wondering what possessed you to buy a new sofa.  Oh and my cold has come back so I really am not impressed with my lot at the moment. Roll on next week, surely things will be better then?

OK - maybe we aren't so uncivilised after all.

The other day a gentleman came into the shop and raised his cap to me.  It was a really nice moment and made me wish that hat wearing wasn’t in decline; it’s such a nice gesture.  I, of course, nodded my head back, in fact more or less everyone who comes in the shop gets a nod, a smile or a “hello” and more or less everyone responds.  It also doesn’t matter which member of staff is on, they are all friendly and greet all our customers.  It’s not as though I even have to tell them, it’s a natural to them as it is to me.  So it came as a bit of a surprise to read that in a recent poll, that said Britons’ were no ruder than they were 20 years ago, that the vast majority of people disagreed with the poll’s findings.  Apparently we think we’re getting ruder.  I do think we are getting more familiar.  Nowadays it’s kisses all round when friends meet up and I have to confess to wishing we were a little less Continental in this regard.  What’s wrong with a good handshake or a nod of the head, all this kissing and hugging is a bit much, but no harm is meant by it so I’ll learn to live with it.  But extra kissing isn’t rudeness, well it might be a bit offensive if you don’t know them but really it’s not generally considered offensive.

And of course it’s not just hugs and kisses where we’ve become more familiar, there’s more of a breakdown between age gaps, children aren't silent until spoken too, men and women mix in pubs and terraces far more.  All over society we mix in ways that we never used to which can sometimes lead to confusions and minor embarrassments but I still don’t see that as rude.  If a child interrupts me when I’m speaking I’ll let them know that that they have to wait.  I don’t necessarily think the child is being rude, they’re just learning.  If the parent allows the child to interrupt then I think it is the parent that is being rude.

But I don’t see rudeness as an issue of the younger generation any more than it is of the older one.  I’ve lost count of the times when my boys and I go single file for an elderly pair of women – and I’m afraid it’s always women – and they don’t say thank you or smile or do anything.  I don’t expect them to go single file, they’re older and slower but they are not blind or dumb.  I should imagine that it is this sort of person that complains the loudest about rudeness in others.  I heard a nice story once about a man who was mending a hedge beside a road.  A stranger came up to him and asked what the people in the next village were like.  The labourer  asked if he had been to the previous village down the road and when the man said he had, the labourer asked what he made of them there.  “Oh they were among the nicest people I’ve ever met” said the stranger.  “Ah well, you’ll find the people in the next village just as friendly.”  A week later another stranger passed the labourer and asked the same question.  Again the labourer asked the stranger what he thought of the people in the previous village. “Well they were awful, a bunch of thieves and villains.”  “Hmm,” said the labourer, ”in that case I’d avoid the next village if I were you.”

 

Where ever you go you always take you with you.