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.

Summer Sale Extended!

Usually the August Bank Holiday bookends [see what I just did there?] the summer season and each of us will have personal touchstones that we use to celebrate it; The Charity Sheild match, oysters to start every meal, Notting Hill Carnival... And of course all retailers' heads turn towards the run-up to Christmas. But we don't care about any of that!

Mishmash Bookshop are very pleased to announce that we will be continuing our hugely successful Summer Sale for another two weeks!

We just feel that there may be lots of you out there in Westminster who [despite my twice-a-day leafletting and three months to call in!] havent yet taken the opportunity to drop in and get yourself something for only £2 from our huge selection of paperbacks and childrens illustrated titles. And indeed it might be just the right time to start squirrelling stuff away for Christmas. Piles of it in fact....

So spread the word; don't keep such good news to yourselves. We look forward to welcoming you soon.

Andrew Mishmash

Apart from books ....there's always beer!

Japanese Animated Movies

So I took the Wee Guy to see Howl's Moving Castle at the weekend - remember he is three and a half and it's two hours long - and he enjoyed it immensely. He really loved Spirtited Away too, when we watched it at home on DVD awhile back.

But I'm afraid I just don't get japanese animated films. They seem to be entirely made up of middle, and the opening scenes and denouement are really just there to bookend the random linear narrative structure. So I just think "Is that it?" Or is it supposed to be simply about the skill and beauty of the drawings?

I know there are films that very famously only have a middle - Reservoir Dogs for instance - and I'm not saying I like them any the less for it, but I find it hard to take that kind of spin on animation. Give me Belleville Rendezvous anyday - and it's about cycling too.

I'm also struck that both Howls Moving Castle and Spirited Away are concerned with the central character struggling to regain something that has been stolen from them - youth or their name - and so seem to me to be about situations and our reactions to them. Whereas we in the west are much more likely to see dramatic resolution in terms of the moral learning of the characters - Finding Nemo anyone?

Or maybe - like science fiction literature- its about these very ideas. I really enjoyed the play on the four parallel universes in Howls Moving Castle, the hero physically melting with depressive angst, the continuous interspecietal shapeshifting in both movies. But I felt let down by the almost Pythonesque denouements; the momentary realisation that one character was the same person who rescued another from drowning ten years ago, or is a long disappeared prince from a country that hasn't made a prior appearance in the movie. It just seemed trite, and Thomas Hardy, frankly, did it better.

Somehow I come to the conclusion that it's not about anything other than what the Wee Guy gets from it - some popcorn and two hours of superhero shenanigans; so I feel almost guilty that I have been looking too hard. I can't deny that I enjoyed both films a lot.

By the way the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton is one of the best picture houses in London, and regularly wins awards confirming this, but don't ask for a latte before lunchtime - unless you want it for lunch, in which case you'll be well sorted. How hard can it be? And when I asked if I would be quicker going across the road the girl said "yes probably". Try "yes definitely" honey!

Andrew Mishmash

This is the Station!

This is St. James's Park Station at 55 Broadway. MishMash Bookshop is on the ground floor of the mall inside.

This view is from Tothill Street, and is essentially the view of the approach from Westminster Abbey. Just out of shot on the left is New Scotland Yard, the police station that isn't; and I'm sorry to say that in shot on the extreme right is Basil Spence's horrific brutalist monstrosity 50 Queen Anne's Gate, that was until recently the home of The Home Office. Basil Spence died [of shame no doubt] shortly after it was completed in 1976; and it was that building which prompted Norman St. John Stevas to complain that Spence had now ruined two London parks, having designed the new Buckingham Barracks opposite Hyde Park. Which is probably the one thing I can agree with Lord NStJS about.

By the way you should note how filthy the otherwise stunning 55 Broadway building is. That's because Transport for London are too lazy, mean, stupid and philistine to keep it clean. These headquarters, and the astonishing clarity of their design, once reflected the optimism and pride that the railway pioneers quite rightly had in their project to modernise the very nature of working and living in urban London. And Transport for London have done more to brutalise the legacy of their predecessors than Basil Spence ever did. Thats what I think.....

Andrew Mishmash

Here's where we are...

We are located in the Broadway Shopping Mall, which is a “compact and bijoux” collection of coffee bars and independent businesses on the ground floor above St. James’s Park Underground Station in Westminster.

The building itself is rightly famous as the headquarters of Transport for London, designed by Charles Holden in the 1920’s [I promise a further opinionated blog at some point on the fascinating history of the building and its friezes]. It looks not unlike the monolithic hub edifice in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and was the tallest structure in London when it was built.

This means we are across the road from New Scotland Yard, the most famous police station in the world; we are round the corner from Buckingham Palace, home of the most famous lady in the world; and one minutes walk away from Westminster Abbey, which thanks to The Da Vinci Code is probably the most famous church in the world.

At lunchtime we can set our watches by the chimes of Big Ben, the clock on the Houses of Parliament; we are surrounded by the minor government departments that keep Britain ticking; and we are a stones throw [although I would not advise an empirical test] from St James’s Park, which used to be London’s leper colony.

And so here we are, three hundred square feet of bookselling empire, in possibly the most prestigious and powerful few hundred square yards on the planet. So now all you have to do is come and buy some books…

chirpy but technologically outdated bookseller attempts to engage with contemporary electronic superhighway

Today i have been working out how to have a myspace... space. It all looks like jolly fun and I find I am already getting things called "friends". No matter that I didn't spend eight years in scotlands coldest and most violent boarding school with them, or four drunken years in academia; they are counted in with those longstanding soul-mates. Come one come all.

Myspace say I have to insert a photograph [but cant find the slot in the back of the typewriter boom boom] and now find that I really don't look like the svelte debonair model of my daydreams. Yes, chaps, you know the one that starts with Susan Sontag calling to ask for theatrical design tips and ends with Peter O Toole teaching you how to mix a margerita. In fact i look a cheerfully opinionated bookseller who is carrying just a couple of pounds too much, in his early thirties......

Anyway this is all part of a general upgrading of our IT presence as I understand it to be called [in my time it was a slightly disappointing Led Zep album] so that we look more like a professional company. Perhaps the fact that you are reading this means you can scoff; but please dont. Drawing attention to the faults of others is almost as bad as drawing attention to oneself you know.

We look forward to astonishing you in due course

Have a pleasant day

Andrew MishMash

colds

hello. today andrew has a cold. yuk. someone on the train gave it to me yesterday. yukkky yuk. so i'm drinking lemsip - the one without the aspartame - which hopefully will work at low dosages as i haven't taken any paracetamol for over a year. zoom zoom. and its raining here in london, england as my american chums say. be happy and safe people, chant inwardly and breathe outwardly. and remember to buy a book if you are in st james's park station.