Here we go then... After another long, back-breaking week, at 9pm on Thursday we stood back and realised we had made a bookshop! And then, 13 hours later the ribbon was cut and away we went into one of the craziest weekends I've had! Highlights included:
Helping to judge the Borders/Daily Echo Design A Bookmark Competition. Congratulations to the winner, 12-year old Sana Aleem. You can still get her bookmark in the shop for free.
Visiting the wonderful people at
Southampton Children's Hospital to tell them about our Giving Tree. This is up and running in the shop right now - all you do is pick a gift tag from the tree, find a suitable gift for the person on the tag and take it to the tills. We'll collect all these gifts and take them up to the hospital in time for Christmas. The folks at SCH work incredibly hard, with little time to raise extra funds so any support they get is received with immense gratitude.
Original 106 held an OB on Saturday, giving away gift vouchers, goodies, balloons and blasting out great tunes. We're really fortunate in Southampton to have a new radio station that thinks differently to everyone else - if you haven't heard them yet then turn that dial!
First weekend events: we've already had Simon Murray, Ben Fogle & James Cracknell, Ian Ogilvy, and The Levellers pass through our doors, and all of them enjoyed really responsive audiences. And still we have Peter Gluckman & Mark Hanson, Trinny & Susannah, and Ali Sparkes to come this week!
And of course... CUSTOMERS! It's been so nice to be able to get
real people into our store, hearing what you think of Borders Southampton, and what you'd like from us - already we have more participants for Stich 'n' Bitch, potential reading group memebers, request for some additional foreign newspapers and mags, and much, much more. If there's something you'd like from us, please let me know.
Reading
As a bookseller I'm always fascinated by people's book shelves. So, after reading GGMM's post on
cookbooks I thought I'd list my Top 5 food books (in no particular order):
Made In Italy by Giorgio Locatelli
The Silver Spoon by Various Authors
Real Food by Nigel Slater
Moro Cookbook by Sam & Sam Clarke
A World In My Kitchen by Peter Gordon
Agree? Disagree? Let me know!
Listening
One thing and one thing only: new Tom Waits triple album! I'm about to remove the shrink wrap and get stuck in - will let you know.
Watching
Saw the end of list programme about the greatest ever film stars (Al Pacino over De Niro - hmmm) and realised there are loads of classic films I haven't seen or haven't seen for years. So today (a day off!) is film day. And with that it's off to the on-demand feature on my telly and goodbye for now.
