Routemaster Bus Sale!

As you know, Mishmash Bookshop's home is on the ground floor of Transport for London's headquarters building. Consequently we spend a fair amount of time chatting to the various boffins visiting 'from upstairs'. And what a nice bunch they are too, generally.

About two years ago rumours started circulating that the world-famous Routemaster buses were to be finally and irretrievably decommissioned. And when the noise of weepin' and wailin' settled, one of my friends at TfL gave me the contact details to buy one - "change out of three grand" he said. Sounds like a bargain!

Now, the cloakroom girl at my favourite style-bar, who used to be Hell's Angel Property in New Jersey [and you don't skimp on her tip], said all the patches used to buy decommissioned police Harley D's two at a time so you could cannibalise them. Or Frankenstein them. Dude, whatever.

So we thought about buying a pair, cut-and-shut them, kitting the result out as a rolling bookshop, and taking it round book-free bits of London on a huge grant from Bookstart, followed by a summer tour of the West of Scotland, Cliff Richard style. Sadly 'tho, we realised that, living in London, it would cost a king's ransom to stable them for January and February. I even suggested to my sister that she could have the grooviest greenhouse in all Falkirk, but she was having none of it. Too bad - we'll just have to stay static in St. James's Park Station.

But while we were researching the possible changeover to bookselling by bus, we discovered the following amazing facts;

1. Strictly speaking, Routemasters are only those buses entering service from summer 1959 - spring 1968.
2. All the windows are the same size, thereby effecting much speedier repairs.
3. You don't need a PSV licence to drive one [as a mobile bookshop]. Or for that matter an HGV licence.
4. The brakes were left over from RAF Halifax bombers from WW2. Which is why you used to get thrown forward every time the driver slowed down.
5. Routemasters don't have a chassis - an astonishing innovation in the 50's
6. The last Routemaster ran on 9th December 2005, on route 159 from Streatham Hill to Marble Arch via Westminster. I was on it and can report it was uncomfortably slow and stuffy, and everyone’s damp coats smelled of mothballs. Lovely.

You have my full permission to recycle these trivia jewels as your own; but beware any groups of associates who might feel the repetition thereof lowers you in their estimation. But for those of you genuinely interested in the history of London Buses [and not just the Routemaster] I should point out that we are down to our last few dozen copies of John Reed's classic book [see top], and it's still only £2. Once it's gone, as they say, rather tautologously, it's gone.

So get down to Mishmash Bookshop as soon as you can – “Hold tight please!”

Andrew Mishmash

...and no "Enter Sandman" either...

I’m sad to see the NMPA and the MPA have recently written to the lovely Olga to tell her to leave and desist from leading so many young men [and Dads] astray.

So what’s all the fuss about?

Essentially the music publishing biz [or the sorry bunch of lawyers who effectively run it] is moving to close down ‘tab’ sites in much the same way as they have tried to close mp3 sharing sites in the past. Olga is the biggest of these ‘tab’ sites. ‘Tab’ is short for tablature, which is a kind of comic-strip chord notation for the musically illiterate. By which I mean non-reading, as opposed to just lacking in taste….

This news comes hard on the heels of a recent report that sales of entry level guitars like Squire, second hand classics like Telecasters and Les Pauls, and costly investment items like Gretsch and older Fenders are all going through the roof.

To a large extent this is because the guitar is back in fashion for pop music and the kids are lovin’ it - Kaiser Chiefs, Artic Monkeys, Arcade Fire etc have seen to that. But a substantial part of the increase in guitar and amp sales is to the kind of middle aged dads [not using the word crisis here] who twenty years ago would have bought a gas guzzling sports car, hit the golf course, or joined the Masonic lodge. Now they get that Rickenbacker semi they always wanted and learn to play ‘Hey! Mr Tambourine Man’ from – you guessed it – a tab site.

Now there are arguments either way about the rights and wrongs of tab sharing sites; take a look at the comments on the BBC report and you’ll see what I mean. Essentially the publisher’s argument is that distributing free tabs decreases the potential income of the artist; which, on the surface, seems fair.

But tab sheets are almost useless without a recording of the original as a reference, so it should go without saying that any would-be Jimmy Page will have that in his walkman or iPod. And the tab user would never have bought the sheet music anyway; tabs, remember, are for people who can’t read music. So it looks like the lost income argument is flawed, at best.

Like many businesses, the music publishers clients [the artists] are distinct from their customers [you and me], and therefore have different agenda. But in these days when in practice there are really only three or four entertainment companies, it strikes me that the publishers should see themselves as part of a bigger picture. Pearson Media or Bertelsmann surely know that if I download the tabs for Stairway to Heaven then it’s likely I’ve already got the guitar and t-shirt to match; where their music publishing loses out, their guitar sales and online service provider stands to gain, perhaps by a healthy margin.

Meanwhile, those of you out there with teenage guitar heroes [even middle aged teenage guitar heroes] living in the loft, you might find yourself hearing a lot more amateurish racket than you have been!

Andrew "Blackmore" Mishmash

Blogger's Special Discount Offer!

Just a quick post today to say how astonished we have been at the response to the blog. It's been fantastic when our regulars come in to say they've been dropping in on it and making helpful comments.

As a big "THANK YOU!" to all of you who are following the blog [i.e. you!] we are offering a further 10% discount on all paperbacks, childrens titles, and hardbacks too - in fact everything in the shop.

Just come in, choose your books, and say to the handsome bloke behind the till that you've "been blogging" and claim your extra discount!

[A small favour tho - please do ask before we ring them through or my accountant gets huffy!]

So come one, come all, and bring all your friends too. Mishmash Bookshop is big enough for all of us - I hope!

Andrew Mishmash

Spectacular Childrens Illustrated Book Sale!

As any parent can tell you, the quality of children’s publishing has improved immeasurably in the past few years. This is not only true of older childrens books like Harry Potter, Alex Rider, and the Northern Lights trilogy; the change is even more remarkable in illustrated titles for the under-fives. So no more Janet and John and the Blue Peter annual - we here at Mishmash Bookshop prefer to spend our time catching up on the latest adventures of the Nutbrown Hares, Maisy Mouse, or Chimp and Zee.

We’ve just taken delivery of a load of fantastic young children’s illustrated titles; mostly from our favourite kids’ publisher Walker Books, and also some from Myriad, Bloomsbury, and others.

We tend to stick to Walker for our children’s section as no-one else has their consistent high standards both in terms of their appeal to young readers, and also in terms of their production quality. They seem to have a real skill for matching writers to illustrators, resulting in beautifully balanced books that will give continued reading pleasure for years.

So we now have dozens of full colour titles in stock by Kim Lewes, Joyce Dunbar, Charlotte Voake, Anita Jeram, Shirley Hughes, Martin Wadell, Debi Gliori, and the Wee Guy’s personal favourite Jez Alborough.

And at this point of course we should remind you that [as you know from reading our last post] our Successful Summer Sale has been extended for a further two weeks [or so] and all the new children’s stock is flying off the shelves at a smile-inducing £2!

And so with no more ado I should say to you its time to get on down to Mishmash. The Bookshop. In St. James’s Park station.

We look forward to welcoming you [and your cheeky ankle-biters] soon!

In The Future Everything Will Be Smaller. And Digital!

It has been drawn to our attention that there have been a number of complaints about the Mishmash Bookshop Weblog; specifically that it has largely been about topics other than bookselling. And we admit that it has up until now been little more than a convenient outlet for witless half-baked opinions on brutalist architecture and kids telly. But this will change!

Our long-term plan for the blog - [and its still anyone’s guess what the long term is in IT] - is to have twice weekly posts delivering news about the shop, review some new titles we have in, let you know about upcoming promotions, some charts, leak rumours from the trade rags, maybe an online book club..... Always spiced up with our immoderate opinions on life in London, what’s wrong in the world, and 80's culture. Ambitious? Yes, but first, as 'Laughing' Lenny Cohen said, we take Manhattan.

And with this plan clearly at the front of our tiny but fecund minds, we will make the next post about the huge delivery of illustrated children’s titles that have just arrived in the shop. That’s Mishmash Bookshop. In St. James’s Park Station.