Father's Day

Fathers Day yesterday, so the Wee Guy took me on one of my favourite day trips; down to Greenwich on the DLR [he can pretend to drive it] and go to the Maritime Museum where he can pretend to be a deep-sea diver, a naval gunner or an ocean-going yachtsman.

We saw HMS Ark Royal drawn up right next to the ashen hulk of the Cutty Sark; the aircraft carrier looking stunningly beautiful, and not at all warlike. I explained to the Wee Guy about the lifts that bring up the fighter jets, folding out the wings, and the comic-looking ramp at the end of the flight deck, designed on the back of an envelope for the Falklands War. “They should have used a trampoline!” he said. “Matey, they tried, but the ramp was better...”

At the same time, Falklands War veterans paraded in Westminster; heroes to a very man. More of them have suicided out than died in combat; sadly, our country has chosen not to protect the ex-servicemen who, not counting the cost to themselves, defended us. It denigrates us all. I have often argued that a substantial part of the Task Force’s success derived from the brevity of it’s orders; advance to South Atlantic, expel Argentine forces with minimal casualties, assert lawful UK rule, home in time for tea. Our soldiers are at deadly risk in their current overseas adventures because they do not have a finite agenda; mission creep kills.

Drew Mishmash

The Coolest Thing In The World.

I'm a bloke; I like things. It's in my code.

Some of those things might have sentimental value; like my Grandfather's long service certificate from the The Working Mens Club and Institue Union, or the curls from the Wee Guy's first haircut.

But, like most blokes, the things I like best are Cool Things; things no-one else has got. A dinosaur bone. The first Philosophy Football shirt, the one with Albert Camus on the back. A Wittgenstein first edition. A denim iMac. A Philippe Starck juicer. The Scotsman edition reporting the first day of the Scottish Parliament. Et seq.

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Harrods Rocks guitar exhibition. The show was comprised of three main topics; the history of the electric guitar; design ideas for the Stratocaster from contemporary graphic artists; and Donal Gallagher's collection of rare, provenanced guitars used on famous [mostly Irish] recordings. Phil Lynnot's Danelectro, Van the Man's Gibson semi, The Undertones' woolies special.

Donal is Rory Gallagher's brother, and in memory of the sadly departed Boy from Ballyshannon, the exhibition included a large screen looping footage of his blistering live performances. While watching this screen I realised that over my right shoulder was a single glass case, apart from the main galleries. Rory Gallaghers infamously beaten up Strat. Bought for a hundred quid in Cork; doctored and modified by Rory; stolen, ransomed, and left in a peat bog for three days; and [jokingly] loaned to the roadies every night to nail the heavy duty amp gear together with.

The coolest thing in the World.

Drew Mishmash

Free Stuff!

A couple of weeks ago I joined a fantastic web-based group called Freecycle.

If you are like me then you no doubt have lots of stuff you will never use again, but don't want to chuck out because

a) it was expensiveat the time, or

b) your sister/mate/colleague/neighbour might need one sometime.

Freecycle links you with people who will take this clutter off your hands, and give it a grateful, recycled, home. You register for your local group, and choose between email alert or forum access. Then you get in touch with anyone offering what you want; or you can post a special request for something you need.

I've already picked a Rotel CD and amp, almost as good as my current set-up at home, that I'm keeping for a soon-to-be-announced community bookshop project. And you get to meet nice people too.

One of it's shortfalls is that you can't post photographs with your offers; so I'm trying a bit of an experiment here. The picture above is the baby buggy I want to give away. It's a MacLaren Volo, in good nick, doesn't have the sunroof but does have a rain cover. And like everything on Freecycle, it's free. I'm going to link the offer listing into here so that prospective recyclers can have a look at the buggy.

But mostly I'm encouraging you all to go out and subscribe to Freecycle today - especially those of you who live in London, you should join your boro' group and the main London group - and just have a look at the offers.

Drew Mishmash

A Break In Transmission.

I've been away for a while; unwell; wrathful. Feeling like Willard in the Saigon hotel room; getting lazy and out-of-shape, while all the time Charlie is in the jungle, getting stronger by the day.

A short trip to Scotland was needed, to see family and friends. My neice Lexi, who cheerfully shouts "Hiya!" at every chance; my nephew Sammy exasperated at my poor [ie zero] score on Nintendo Sponge Bob Square Pants. A curry with Mr W, and a beer with Dave W.

Back to London with a slightly firmer resolve to get to work on the plans for the new bookselling idea! If the two cheerful chaps at Crockatt and Powell can get a whole page in the Guardian, it can't be all bad.

Watch this space.

Drew Mishmash

More Scary Stuff.

I read in the paper last week that fifteen of lovely modernising David Cameron's front bench were Old Etonians. I was shocked, to some extent because I mistook this to be the Shadow Cabinet, which numbers around twenty.

But Peter Hitchen's documentary last night quoted almost the same figure; on his reckoning it's thirteen.

Mrs Mishmash [who used to work in politics] put me right on my terminology. The front bench is the Cabinet [or in this case the Shadow Cabinet] and their junior Ministers; a total of about fifty.

So somewhere between a quarter and a third of the proposed Tory government went to one tiny school, and played one weird kind of football.

That's not modernisation; that's just scary.

Drew Mishmash

Scary Stuff.

I read something truly frightening in the newspaper over the weekend.

Sir Ronald Cohen, once Chairman of Apax, one of the largest private equity groups in the world, was sketching out his ideas for community development schemes in the UK.

A Social Investment Bank, created and funded from derelict bank accounts, insurance funds and premium bonds, would invest in voluntary groups and social enterprises not currently supported by the retail banks. Gordon Brown likes Mr Cohen; and reading his article, so do I.

But look at the opening premise;

“Governments are just not powerful enough to maintain social cohesion. The wealth chasm between rich and poor is widening and the result will be violent reactions from those left behind”.

Perhaps governments are not powerful enough; perhaps they are not creative enough; perhaps they do not care enough. Whatever the reason, it’s a scary proposition.

Drew Mishmash

Toot. But Not Sweet.

It’s coming to light that the Tutankhamun exhibition coming to London in November of this year will not include the precious funerary death mask. The show has attracted more that three million visitors on the American leg of the world tour; and the non-appearance of the golden mask is attracting rage from ticket holders.

Like many young children, I was fascinated with King Tut, the Pyramids, and the Pharaohs; but having no conception of travelling from Scotland, I made my parents life a nagging misery when the treasures visited London in 1972, culpa Blue Peter.

I have seen the death mask twice since then. Firstly, on its last excursion from Egypt, in a breathless Köln Messe in 1982; and then later in The Egyptian Museum in Cairo in 1992.

I chose my time to visit carefully in Cairo, toured the other galleries of the Museum the preceding day, and ascertained the location of the Tutankhamun mask without actually seeing it. I enjoyed a heated argument with an Egyptian historian about why, if the ancients could make steel as he claimed, they had chosen not to document this among the impressive records of their artisan building skills. Then I went out into the sun.

I returned a few minutes before the Museum opened the next day, went straight to the room in which the mask resided, and was rewarded with almost an hour alone with the dead King of Kings. He is shockingly beautiful; the opulence of the gold fades quickly and you find yourself just longing to kiss those lips. The serenity of his almond eyes mesmerise you, as the vulture and cobra in his crown wait to strike. His features are not those of any race, not identifiably Arabic, African, or Asian; and they are completely androgynous too. I very slowly began to feel, as his servants intended, that I was looking at the Face of God.

I left a changed man.

Drew Mishmash

Philosophy For Beginners.

A quote from the very readable Steerforth at The Age of Uncertainty…

A man has started teaching philosophy to children of nursery school age. What a brilliant idea. Small children are natural philosophers and it is sad to see their enquiring minds blunted by outside influences.

Primary school philosophy is a perennial ‘and finally’ story which pops up now and again, on quiet news days. And Steerforth is quite right, kids are extraordinarily adept at some kinds of philosophy, largely, I think, because they don’t think it’s inappropriate to ask “But, why?” more than three times in a row.

Nursery age children are at precisely the developmental stage where they are beginning to see themselves as one individual person among many; in a world over which they may not have causal control. This makes them ripe for enjoying the philosophy of responsibility, rights and duties. “That’s what big boys/girls do” is a pretty clear approximation of Spinoza’s instruction to behave as if one’s own actions were the universal law.

Their minds are a tabula rasa and consequently nursery children are good at epistemological thought experiments too. They are excitedly attracted to the suggestion that, in their absence, the room’s furniture will turn purple and fly around. Adults, sadly, can only see value in the Berkelian response, “Well, why would it?”

As I am writing this the same story pops up again on BBC Radio 4. A primary school teacher is using topical interest in the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery to start a discussion on freedom. Almost immediately the students question the nature of freedom; is it an absolute, as most people imagine, or conditional, which is nearer to the truth.

The one odd thing about reports of this kind is the revelation that students are repeatedly taught to respect the opinions of others, from the Cartesian principle of defending those others’ rights to say something with which one disagrees. While this is no doubt a good thing, it has virtually no provenance in the history of philosphy – in fact, if there is one at all, then rounding up and killing heretics is the historic tradition of longest standing.

Just don’t tell the kids.


Drew Mishmash

Top Ten Scottish Singles.

I discovered the fan-dabi-dozi Scottish pop website The Great Jock n Roll Single not so long ago, and they asked me to submit my top ten Scottish singles for general ridicule.

So, resisting the temptation to add spurious and trivial comments throughout, here it is.

Simple Minds – Changeling [1980]
APB – Danceability [1984]
The River Detectives – Chains [1989]
The Proclaimers – Throw The ‘R’ Away [1987] *
Travis – Why Does It Always Rain On Me? [1999]
Altered Images – Happy Birthday [1981]
Big Country – Fields Of Fire [1983] **
Primal Scream – Loaded [1990]
The Jesus and Mary Chain – Upside Down [1984]
Cocteau Twins – The Spangle Maker [1984]

Bubbling Under – Two Helens/Aztec Camera/Orange Juice/Bay City Rollers

Worst Song Ever – Andy Cameron – Ally’s Tartan Army [1978]

* I maintain that this is the best opening track of any album, ever.

** I was at Big Country’s last ever gig in England, and when Stuart said goodbye and thanked us for our support over the years, I shed a tear. I cried buckets when he died.

Drew Mishmash

Cash For Honours (ii).

Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin.

Told you so.

Andrew Mishmash

Cash For Honours.

The Government, allegedly, has been selling Honours to its dwindling number of wealthy supporters, in order to stave of bankruptcy of the Party. There is nothing new in such accusations; or in the actuality. Lloyd George sold peerages to businessmen, and to salve the consciences of husbands cuckolded by his intemperance. Wilson at least had the good manners [and sense] to wait until his last Honours list to hand out the goody bags. But in recent years we have lost the habit of expecting, or demanding, better.

What makes it so galling this time round is, as you might imagine, spin.

The police are conducting a lengthy, detailed, and extremely sensitive investigation into corruption that goes to the very top of the legislature; the Prime Minister has been interviewed twice, Lord Levy [responsible for party fund-raising!] arrested twice. If charges are eventually brought to court, it will shatter the remaining, frail faith in Britain’s democratic processes; it will be our Watergate.

And yet No. 10 has put forward an anonymous aide [and these things, we can be sure, don’t happen without detailed planning] to complain about the delays in the investigation, led by Assistant Commissioner John Yates. The investigation, says the spokesman, “is blight on all politics, not just on the Labour Party”. Consequently, No 10 says it has no credence in what the police say, because the investigation has taken some five months longer than anticipated, or desired.

Assistant Commissioner Yates is compared by the pro-government media to Kenneth Starr, the monomaniacal Special Prosecutor hounding Bill Clinton out of the White House, like a modern day Witchsmeller Pursuivant. This seems at best unlikely; at worst a deliberate attempt to pervert the course of justice by questioning the professional authority of the investigating detective.

Perhaps, we humbly suggest to you, the blight poisoning the democratic bloodstream of British politics is the politicians themselves. Things are bad enough if they can’t recognise that; they are totally lost if politicians are maliciously undermining the forces of law and order.

Power, they say, corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Andrew Mishmash

The World Will, Eventually, Be Your Oyster.

The rail companies serving [and that’s a word I use only through habit, not as an indicator of high-quality service] London have announced that they will start to accept Oyster pay-as-you-go cards on local train lines.

They will pick up Mayor Livingstone’s offer of a £20 million investment in the “complex” gate equipment in order to achieve this. In other words Ken has bribed them, with your money, to put in equipment to take even more of your money.

And we are especially pleased to hear that the train operators will “work to have it operational by January 2009”; so it might be ready in two years’ time.

My prediction is that it will ‘accidentally’ fall behind schedule; and then the Minister for the Olympics [and believe me, there will be one] will have to step in and hand over another pile of your cash to get it finished.

You heard it here first.

Andrew Mishmash

Mind The...

In November of last year, I had a meeting with TFL to discuss the downturn in trading at Broadway Shopping Mall, and more pertinently whether Mishmash Bookshop would survive into the New Year. And we all know what happened…

I cited what I considered to be the most malignant problems; poor signage, unclean and unwelcoming environment, departure of substantial customer demographic, competition from higher profile sites nearby. Not so, I was told; despite my experience as a retailer I was, apparently, reading the signals wrongly. It was the fault of the customers themselves; “Everyone wants branding nowadays, Andrew, and that includes us [TFL]”.

This stuck in my mind; and now that I am [technically] unemployed and at home, with time to trawl the Sunday business pages, I can see how ill-formed TFL's strategy is. Big branding is over – or at least it would be if they hadn’t bought up all the big, expensive, commercial sites. Gap is up for sale, down 8%. WH Smith is down 6% in the last quarter, and raids its workers’ pension fund. HMV is ‘going to the dogs’. Bloomsbury – who own Harry Potter, the strongest brand in books – delivers a profit warning. Radio phone-ins and blogs recount the public’s concern about Tesco’s fearsome buying power and acquisition strategies.

What the customer – the really important person in all of this – wants nowadays is quality of service. Reliable, high grade products delivered as and when required. Ten years ago the big brands fulfilled this, the independents largely failed. But those surviving smaller retailers have, by necessity, developed excellent marketing strategies; while the majors have got lazy and arrogant about their like-for-like and their segmentation. And consequently, the lazy, arrogant commercial property agents have got their strategy wrong too.

None, they say, is blinder than him who will not see.

Andrew Mishmash

...And The Winner Is...

A lot of coverage in the rags about the grandes dames of British cinema in this year’s nominations for the Oscars. And, to be sure, they don’t come much grander than Peter O’Toole. This is his eighth nomination, and although awarded a consolation prize Honorary Award in 2003, he has never had the Oscar for Best Actor. Essentially, the Academy has stabbed the greatest film actor of them all, in the back, seven times.

I met Peter O’Toole once. In the spring of 1991, I was despatched to the Booksellers Association annual conference, in Glasgow, with clear instructions from my employer to schmooze a lot [at his expense, too!] and generally to give a high-visibility impression of an influential manager in a successful company. So there I was in the cocktail bar of the conference venue, schmoozing with Eddie Shah [whatever happened to him?] and William Boyd, when in walks Peter O’Toole.

At the BA conference to promote the first volume of his autobiography, he did not look a well man. He was still recovering from long-term pancreatitis, an affliction that will make most doctors wince, and the resulting diabetes. Although recognisably tall, he was pallid, shuffled a little, and someone else carried his bags. We all fell silent and turned to look; I felt brave enough to go over when the bagman momentarily moved away.

I coughed slightly, held out my hand, and looked up at him. “Beg your pardon, Mr O’Toole”, I said. He turned slowly, raised an eyebrow, and looked down. “I thought I might just say ‘Hello’, shake your hand, and say how much I love all your films.”

His eyes met mine; he smiled, took my hand, and shook it firmly and deliberately. “Why, my dear boy, thank you so very much”, he replied, with warmth that suggested I was the first person ever to have complimented him. A broad smile grew upwards over his face. Almost immediately his minder re-appeared, and indicated with his own cough that my audience was over. I returned to my new, impressed, chums.

You will hear it said that, on meeting the great statesmen or artists, you can feel their charisma, their dignity, their holiness. I have to tell you that in the moment Peter O’Toole met my gaze with his, I immediately felt from his powerfully pale blue eyes a profound sense of mischief. As if, had I passed him directions to a little known shebeen, he would have shown up, with Harris and Burton in tow, for a craic. I stood silently at the bar, and looked down at my hand for a long time.

A few handshakes like that in Hollywood, and this time the Oscar should be his.

Andrew Mishmash

Welcome Back, Miss Lombard!

We appreciative types at Mishmash Bookshop thought she had retired, but I am very pleased to report that the charming British actress Louise Lombard is in the current series of CSI, the one set in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas CSI is by far the best, with it's zen-consciousness forensic investigator Gil Grissom [obviously named after the astronaut] who is nobbing his assistant, played by Jorja Fox [a made-for-TV name I suspect]. Gritty realism throughout, and in the usual Jerry Bruckheimer style, everyone is gorgeous.

Unfortunately, the producers have not allowed Miss Lombard to use her icy-posh english accent [or perhaps it's on permanent loan to Kirsten Scott Thomas]; the same one she used in her role as the petulant Evie in The House Of Eliott fifteen years ago. Saturday night historical drama has never been the same since; not even with Alex Kingston.

Andrew Mishmash

Zero Tolerance

I am heart-sick of hearing politicians bandying the term "zero tolerance" about; Tony Blair on the radio again today in a sad attempt to look tough with something called 'hoodies'.

Zero Tolerance is the Edinburgh-based campaign for awareness of domestic violence, sexual violence, and the surrounding legal issues.

I remember the start of their bus campaign in the Scottish capital in 1995; shocking, brave, and impressive. Not everyone was supportive at the time, and many thought it painted an insulting picture of Scottish men.

But even though it's clarity has been diluted by over-use, I am very pleased to remind you that it was Scottish women who originated the term.

Andrew Mishmash

Pulp Fictions

The Guardian’s Notes and Queries posted a question last week asking why American books, both hardback and paperback, are better produced than in the UK, and often cheaper too. There were three responses; it’s about economies of scale; the US publishers design tends to be better too; the UK has some excellent printers and binders, so stop worrying. I thought I might take a look at the first – since the other two haven’t read the question – and offer a fourth reason.

The American book-buying public is about five times the size of the UK’s, and this does indeed result in savings on the fixed costs of production; research, editing, design, rights, lunch and so on. These savings are more pronounced in areas where initial costs are higher [say in reference quality pictorial art books] as they can be more viably passed on to the individual customer.

Once the book gets to the actual manufacturing part of the process, there are fewer economies of scale to be had; it pretty much costs twice as much to print, bind, transport, store and distribute 20,00 copies as it does 10,000. So when paper and storage are cheap, publishers can order huge print runs of lavish titles by authors on lucrative advances, because the major costs are all “front ended”. When manufacturing and distribution costs go up, the publisher reins in the print runs, and subsidises the jacket price from the front end savings. It’s about taking a firm attitude on product quality and building a strong market among the reading public.

The reason book production in the UK is so poor has, I’m afraid to say, got nothing to do with this. In the 1940’s and 1950’s, publishing was severely hampered by paper rationing, and a lengthy period of general financial austerity. Costs had to be cut, and since the most pressing shortages were paper, and industrial capacity, that’s where the cuts were made. The production quality of the average mass market book plummeted; you will find most second hand bookshops have surprisingly good supplies of volumes from the 1930’s and earlier, signature bound hardbacks from the 1960’s onwards, and then piles of current paperback titles. Paperback books from post war years will simply have turned to dust.

Some publishers took these financial obstacles as an opportunity to become editorially more innovative. Penguin spring most obviously to mind, with their Pelican handbook, King Penguin, and crime and biography series. But most UK houses just adapted their lists to the new budgetary regimen, and then having got into the practice of selling poor quality books to the public, simply continued to do so. When paper costs fell again and labour could be had almost for free in the Far East, printing pulp quality books became a licence to print real quality money. And if you keep up the fibbing about American economies of scale for fifty years, people stop complaining.

Andrew Mishmash

Get Up Offa That Thing!

I’ve been editing and burning my voluminous VHS collection onto DVD, and in my case it’s a myriad collection of arts documentaries from the 1980’s. Late night re-enactment of the 'foetus earrings' trial anyone? Watch the KLF burn a million quid? We got’em!

One of the most fascinating was a sixtieth birthday retrospective of James Brown, who sadly died in December of last year, leaving a big, in fact a monumental, Godfather shaped hole in music. The programme was full of extraordinary clips of the original funkster writing, rehearsing, and performing; always in the most horrendously fashionable threads.

I don’t yet have the skills to post direct from my own video collection [just you wait!] but while trawling YouTube last night I found this stunning clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq1w0syylZI

Need to get that uploading thing sorted too!

Get Up Offa That Thing was written in 1976, by which time James Brown was in his mid-forties. He invented soul; now he’s inventing disco. He’s back, he’s working hard, and he’s taking you to the bridge. To paraphrase Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now – I did it when I was half his age and it nearly killed me. Curiously this cut is shot largely from the band’s point of view; so you get to see the tiny hand movements and hear the vocal ticks that Brown used to keep his musicians in line. Hup means one thing; Goo’god means another. It is without doubt the tightest two minutes of funky soul I have ever seen.

Can I count it off?

Andrew Mishmash

Rich, Thick, Galaxy.

A couple of weeks ago in a post on the sad death of Ahmet Ertegun, I happened to mention that in the 1970's he had essentially brought football to the USA by inviting the best players in the world to spend a relaxing pre-retirement season at New York Cosmos.

I wonder if David Beckham read it and decided the time was ripe to 'Go West'? It was only a few short days later that he signed to play for LA Galaxy, in a deal that will pay him $250 million over four years. That's over a million dollars a week.

It's not about the money, says Becks, it's about "making a difference to soccer in the US, to improve the standards, and be part of history, really". And of course David, Posh , and the kids will be able to move in next door to their new best friends Tom and Katie Cruise, and their sprog.

I just don't see it working; the biggest footballing demographic in the USA is pre-teen girls, which I'm sure is great for the physical fitness of the population, but can't be enough to develop into a new national sport. I think poor David faces the prospect of ten minutes on the pitch every home game; a constant round of daytime chat shows; and embarrassing walk-ons in Will Ferrell movies. He'll be out of his depth, which hasn't been good for him in the past; prey to all the novelty weirdness that infects Californian celebrity life.

So I suggest you keep reading Mishmash Bookshop, David. We'll let you know when it's safe to come home.

Andrew Mishmash

[Almost] Zero Degrees of Separation.

Off to Camden’s famous Roundhouse last night, with Dave, to see the eagerly anticipated folkie collective Zero Degrees of Separation. There’s always been a lot of collaborative work in folk music, and in this case it’s the combined talents of American nu-folk band Vetiver; Adem Ilhan of Fridge; and two well-known soloists, Argentina’s Juana Molina and the spellbinding Vashti Bunyan.

It’s hard to tie down quite what it is that makes Vashti Bunyan so mesmerising. She never raises her voice above a whisper; when she does sing she doesn’t have a great range, although she has a dreamy, breathy vocal quality not unlike Nick Drake’s. And to be honest neither her guitar playing nor her songwriting have any notable virtuosity; three or four picked chords, with rhyming quatrains or couplets about housework and children. But when she sang, usually accompanied by either Adem or one of the Vetiver team, she drew her audience within fingertip reach of her heart – an organ she invokes quite a bit – and gave us an all too brief glimpse of the pure and simple emotions within.

Vetiver didn’t grab me; “Long Beach!” shouted someone in the cheap seats, which summed them up really. Adem Ilhan took the vocal duties on what seemed to be the Zero’s jointly originated pieces and I was pleasantly surprised by his upbeat and ‘rockist’ style. He very nearly put his foot on the monitor, and I liked him a lot. They had enjoyed the pressures of arranging one another’s work for a group of twelve, he said, “even if that means eleven of us ringing bells”. Which in turn led to quite a bit of objet-trouve percussion as accompaniment.

Juana Molina seemed to have fallen out with her colleagues at some point; certainly she kept her back to most of them for their time on stage together, and while front apron stints taken by Adem and Vashti tended to use other band members to fill, she performed hers solo. She plays Spanish guitar through a digital sequencer, looping the samples, and singing over the top; it’s impressive, sure, but is it the electronic skill, the folk music, or the novelty that impresses? I couldn’t work it out, and went to the bar.

The Roundhouse is an impressive venue [despite being in Camden, yuk!] and at one point Vashti wondered what had been going on there during the sixties; psychedelia, mostly, it turns out, lots of innovative theatre, then of course it was the birthplace of the NWOBHM. “Bet they didn’t have seats then”, opined Dave; “Too right”, I answered, “you just parked up your Norton Commando and stood on the dirt floor drinking snakebite ‘til your ears started bleeding”.

“You might think this is about mobile phones” said the beautiful Vashti as an introduction to her tiny, frail, short Diamond Day, “but it’s not, we didn’t have them then”. Nor intrusive ad campaigns neither, I thought…

Andrew Mishmash

A Perkier Mood.

I read a very funny article in the Guardian last week about the changing demands in the breast sizes of fashion shop dummies.

Contemporary boutiques, it seems, want mannequins with a larger embonpoint. I can only imagine this is to better display clothes made for a demographically larger lady. Models are available up to a size DDDD, and have hand painted nipples.

Now I don't spend much time at all in clothes shops [although in my new leisure centred lifestyle this may change!] but my first guess is that, like all fashion, it's about aspiration. Buy our shirt and you'll be happier, because your boobies will look bigger.

Having said that, something that has always amazed me about shop mannequins is the permanently erect nipples. Has it not occured to designers that, for a device largely used to promote the sales of wooly jumpers, the models should at least give the impression the jumpers would keep your chest warm?

Or is that not what's required here?

Andrew Mishmash

The Cult Of The Moron.

We are very sorry to announce the sudden closure of Mishmash Bookshop. We were locked out earlier this morning by the landlord’s bailiffs. We had offered the landlord, Transport for London, a reasonable amount in rent to run a January Sale for a couple of weeks; they refused to negotiate and have shut us down.

We have enjoyed our five years of bookselling in St. James’s Park; we have sold books to MPs, Most Excellent Ambassadors, mums with kids, yuppies, tourists, writers, the accomplished, the novice, and many more thousands of London’s readers. Our philosophy was just this; sell good books, have fun doing it. We have deflated pomp; we have made good friends; we have given piles of books to charities; we are rightly proud of the work we have done.

Retailing in Britain is changing; and not for the better. The ideological greed at the centre of the commercial property business is killing the small independent shops we all love. The greed that replaces your local family butcher with a third betting shop is the same one that kills anonymous chinese cockle pickers on shallow beaches; it takes away the shopkeeper who genuinely cares what you read, wear, eat, or drink, and replaces him with a ‘developer’ who sees you only as a ‘client’, someone to be fleeced as speedily as possible. Dr Jonathan Miller calls this the Cult of the Moron; others the Unacceptable Face of Capitalism. I say it is rank, it is philistine, it is Mammon.

To paraphrase John Lennon, there are only two businesses; the war business and the peace business; you make the choice. I know which one I work in.

Andrew Mishmash

Addawanna Hallidayah Inna Sunnah!

Steerforth has recently written a piece on his excellent site Age of Uncertainty about the imminent celebrations for the fortieth anniversary of the release of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. In it he predicts [with uncharacteristic certainty too, I bet] that comparisons will be made to the Sex Pistols thirty year old milestone, Never Mind The Bollocks.

I go back and listen to this astonishing album again and again. It's about hate; it's about dystopia; despite it's "No Future" slogan, it predicted the course of British society with an acerbic accuracy. The writing, musicianship, and production are astounding.

But still it has a reputation for foul-mouthed, scattershot invective against a jubilee Queen who was usually described as "unable to answer".

So I offer you two numbers and two quotes in an attempt to heave Messrs. Rotten and Co back onto the podium;

The entire musical oeuvre of the Sex Pistols lasts, in reality, little more than one hour. Thats how long it took to change everything...

This iconoclastic masterpiece was released just seven years after Woodstock.

The opening line is "Cheap holidays are other people's misery".

The closing lyric is "Blind acceptance is a sign of stupid fools who stand in line".

Excuse me while I take an hour to marvel at 1977 London's greatest cultural legacy once again...

Andrew Mishmash

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you all!

May 2007 bring you all your heart desires, and more besides.

Andrew Mishmash