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
4 comments:
Sorry to hear this Drew...
Hope you and yours are fine.
Hello Neil
We are pretty well; but going bust is a bitter and life-denying experience. Closing bookshops is a crime that hurts whole communities; landlords are allowed to get away with it in a way that would never be allowed say, with bakers in France, or apotheke in Germany. The public do care, but they are as powerless as the tenants.
We'll be back in some form - hack we're still here now on the blogosphere - as we know I'm too good a man to allow Mammon to hold me down.
talk soon - love to the crew!
Drew
A plague upon your landlord! This is a depressing trend in our high streets. I used to envisage a time when every town would be identical, but I can sense the beginnings of a rebellion. Two decades of conspicuous consumption have made people realise that:
a. They're no happier
b. Their homes are full of crap
I think that a lot of chains will disappear during the next few years and what we'll be left with is a mixture of the internet, supermarkets and small, independent traders.
Mishmash Redux!
Watch Op, opposite Mish Mash, has closed too. My poor health, no customers, rental etc. But you can't keep a good man down!
No doubt you'll be bouncing back, as will I. I've decided to follow my dream and (once I've done a tour of duty in South Africa's medical suites) i'll be back, not as a retialer, but as an author - watch this space!
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