Too cold for Easter bonnets.

ET at the Post Office has on his Easter bonnet. The rubber doll ET has been sitting there for a couple years now since BT used him for their promotional ads and he has a wardrobe of clothes the counter staff dress him in to suit the occasion, just like the Mannequin Pis in Brussel. He is the only one who is wearing straw bonnet trimmed with chicks though. The rest of us are wearing wooly hats pulled well over our ears. Sandy has another cold, poor child, and I feel a bit dodgy! Hey ho.

Music isn't a big part of my life, I am one who prefers Silence, but Karen and David lent me a very nice CD to put on the iMac. It's ideal for the shop, expecially the way I'm feeling today. 'Brindavan Odyssey,' a collection of ragas, 'Vedic hymns glorifying Krishna' played on a Krishna flute, guitar and I think, a sitar. Might be only sitar. The blurb isn't very helpful here. Anyways, it is very soothing and dreamy and mellow. It is also a change from the assortment of peices I have available that are suitable as shop music. So much isn't. Vivaldi does well; Mozart; some Greek music; Nick Drake; and when I'm feeing rebelious, Leonard Cohen. (Sophie is getting tickets to his concert in Manchester - I am envious.) I can count on one hand pieces of music that have stirred me over my lifetime: the Misa Luba in 'If' is one. Stravinsky's Firebird is another (but that really is not good for wallpaper music in the shop!!) Maybe I should get some of the theme tunes from films. They are usually soothing, soporific and self effacing enough, because they are created to give background mood rather than dominate a space I suppose.

Glen said some interesting things about the Book Fair, likening it to a ritual gathering of booksellers. These days I think that might be a reasonable comment. The Fairs started off as an opportunity for traders to try plying their wares in other places than their own, but that's hardly necessary any more. It is so easy to sell on the internet. Why go to all the trouble of lugging the things around? Having said that, it must still be viable because people like John Marin does fairs and doesn't trouble with the net. Horses for courses probably. Drif had some acid things to say about "bookfairies.'

Drif:

"Bookfairies are beings who strip secondhand bookshops of the most obvious fruit which they then attempt to sell to other locusts who swarm at bookfairs.

The good news is that they invariably fail, the bad news is that it does not stop them breeding.

Bookfairs are like the froth on a glass of beer. It is the most obvious feature and the first part that most people take any notice of, but it contains very little real liquidity and is only sustained by the action underneath - that is in secondhand bookshops.

And like locusts it is not so much the actual creatures as the number of them that is detrimental."