The Pantomime Season

The whole house has been smelling like Widow Twankie's laundry this morning since 6.30am. Very Christmassy. Two on the boil and two in waiting.

A day of gothic weather - dark skies, lashing sleet and snow, a wild, haunted moon - so it was nice to be putting together the ingredients for the great ritual feast to bring back the light.

Bordering on the scary side.

I wasn't amazed by the fall of the banks - didn't need a crystal ball to see THAT coming - but I was shocked to hear that Borders is in receivership. We were in the Inverness branch Saturday on an unusual day out and there I was gazing down on browsers, drinking my coffee laced with hazelnut and thinking how much I like being able to browse 'new' bookshops occasionally when pouff! There they are, nearly gone. I hope they get a reprieve of some sort.

The good thing is, according to the Independant today, the pendulum is swinging and a variety of independent bookshops are opening. The bad news is that they are all, so far, in London and Oxford. We do have one in Elgin, so raising a flag here, but only thanks to a wealthy patron who rescued it. Hopefully more wealthy patrons will come out of the woodwork. I really wouldn't like it if the supermarkets and airports were going to be dictating literary taste!!

Can't help thinking it's Amazon's fault. No matter how much my customers bemoan the fact I'm closing they all admit to buying from Amazon when they know what it is they want. Who can blame them? (I do too.) And they buy from the four book-selling charity shops we have in the space of 150 yards of course.

Hard Times for bookshops.

There has been a rash of shop-lifting in town. Sadly one victim was a nice young woman who has a brilliant knick-knack shop, but less sadly (sorry, I know it's not PC to say so but hey...) from the charity shops who are in righteous uproar.

I was glad to close last Christmas and shall be glad to shut the door this year too when Positively My Last Appearance is over. I'm fed up with the folk who assume I'm given the books for free. I'm fed up with the ones who carp about the price of a book when it's both rare and half the price it was last week and therefore probably less than I paid for it. I had both sorts in yesterday. They make me very sour. I nearly refused to sell the 'too expensive' book but bit my tongue in time. Was mopping blood for ages after.

I've also got a heavy cold which may have something to do with the grumps.

All is drear dread dark here in the North. Cold, cloudy, gloomy. No bright shiny fabrics and no beautiful new living rooms to cheer me up. Ah well! I made discreetly globular 'Sale' signs with holly for the window and they look quite Christmassy, not at all closing-down-sad, and I'll put a baubly-sparkly tree with them this weekend. The nice woman who wants to buy my books would like me to pack them all away now until she has sold her house but quite understands that I have to try to raise some of the ready to pay for presents etc. so we will re-negiotiate when she's got some money together herself. It's nice to think that the books will all, one day, find their way onto shelves in new shop even if they aren't sold here. In the meantime I have had some good sales, noteably a very large book of erotic paintings and drawings with a huge breast fondled by a very white hand on the cover that has embarrassed almost everyone who has ever picked it up. It was sold to an embarrassed bloke who put all his other novels on top of the breast to bring it to the counter. I whipped the books off - sadistic bitch that I am!

G'son (transient synovitis again: 'he'll grow out of it') is hirpling about on crutches, not making a very good fist of resting his hip. He's either in such pain he has to have knock-out pain relief or he is fidgetting about praticing going up and down stairs fast. At least we have him home and don't need to sit in a ward trying to think of something to do or say. Sewing would come in handy at that point. Maybe I could teach him to knit.

For a whole day I didn't switch on the iMac - I think it felt neglected.

OK - some joker upstairs was listening when I crowed about everything familywise and Sandywise being so much better than this time last year. A day after his rugby match he started up with the same hip pain that put him in hospital last March. Poor child finally couldn't cope with the pain so spent Sat-Sun night on a trolley in a hospital corridor then got a drug-induced sleep from 5.30 Sunday morning until the specialist came round to say - 'Oh, yeah, well, looks like the same thing... no point in X-raying.. bed rest until Thursday..' His mum was hopping mad (being an osteopath she knows a thing or two and there are some true nasties that could be happening in the body of an eleven year old and she would like to know for sure they aren't happening in her sons' body.. and what the hell do they get paid for anyway...? ) Eventually she sprung him, against advice. He is home, will go to school, be propelled around in a wheel chair and thus spared the mind-numbing boredom of life on the Children's Ward.

At least this time it isn't all clouded over with emotional stuff... but maybe I should shut up right there...

It's tough staying atheist sometimes. I'm a superstitious athiest.

Daughter and I had nice time filling a trolley at wholesale prices at the wholesale health food store on Saturday before the worst of this kicked off. I think I might enjoy presiding part-time over her new shop.

Picked the g'son up last night after an away match in Perth (two hour drive away, luckily in a luxury coach with films) When we got home there was the ritualistic counting of bruises and recounting of injuries suffered by others (the worst this time was a dislocated thumb - ouch!!) I got out the arnica, ran a bath, fed soup and sandwiches and fell into bed as exhausted as the warrior. All teams lost yesterday to a fiendishly good school but as they won their last match we weren't feeling too downcast...

My last thought as I slid into oblivion was 'Thank whoever and whatever should be thanked that this child is now a normal boy again who can take a few knocks and still come up cheerful.' Such a difference to this time last year.