Back in the Borders #2

Tucked away down the Mill Wynd off the attractive cobbled market square in Kelso is Latimer Books, one of the other recently opened Border bookshops (see last posting). If I knew how to use the word eponymous it might fit here as the shop is run by Jane and Norman Latimer. And the tucked away point is important, with Norman's blog on http://www.latimerbooks.co.uk/ noting that they are looking for more noticeable premises. But if you are within striking distance of Kelso it is worth a call. Again no Tartan tourist tat on offer, which does not mean the absence of local or Scottish history. Indeed, my purchase was the Spirit of Jura anthology published by Polygon, nestling close on its shelf to one of my favourite books, Findings by Kathleen Jamie (Sort of Books). The shop is well stocked and I noticed our local writer Eve Makis on the shelves. Like so many small shops Latimer offers a fast order service, with Jane Latimer mentioning that on Mondays people pour in with clippings from the weekend broadsheets. This is a busy weekend for them, with a big stall at the Borders Union Agricultural Show, such is the nature of rural bookselling. A good opportunity to buy a new combine harvester and the new Helen Dunmore.

Back in the Borders # 1

Probably not many publishers turn up on the bus to flog their wares at bookshops, after an hour and a half country walk in the rain, but that was the quickest way from where I am on holiday to reach the exquisite bookshop in St Boswells in the Scottish Borders. As I trudged along I was needing it be a good shop, and it was, with an excellent in store cafe. The shop was started a couple of years ago by Rosamund and Bill de la Hay. Rosamund used to work for Bloomsbury, but opening a very large shop in a very small town that is not even on a train line must have seemed like madness to some people. The name, The Mainstreet Trading Company, suggests more than a bookshop, which is the case, but books are at the heart of the business. The stock is excellent with no concessions to that dreadful Tartan tourism which so many small Scottish indies find so attractive. Lots of hardbacks, lots of the books currently under review in the broadsheets, lots of face out on tables, lots and lots of children's books. To use the jargon, Mainstreet is a "destination bookshop". In fact the shop publicity brochure uses the phrase in case we don't get it. And the shop has become, according to Rosamund, a destination for people from Northumberland to Edinburgh and from across the Borders. Mainstreet is one of four bookshops in the Scottish Borders, of which more anon, three opening in the last few years, the fourth had a recent change of management. Having grown up in the Borders, this leaves me in a state of shock. 100% recommended. My own purchase was The Bookman's Tale by Ronald Blythe (Canterbury Press), two scones and two coffees. You'll find a few Five Leaves' books there soon too. www.mainstreetbooks.co.uk.

Back in the USSR

Andy Croft, a Five Leaves' regular, is also a publisher. Over at Smokestack he publishes thin volumes of verse by lefties from this country, from Eastern Europe and "the other America". Now we have a thick volume, 312 pages of poetry and a 313th page listing leftie poets and the like who made it possible. The volume is Common Cause by Francis Combes, ably translated from French by Alan Dent of Penniless Press. Massive in size, massive in scope, a study of communism the idea, over two millennia, and Communism in practice. Among those listed on page 313 is the Northern Region of the Communist Party of Britain which is nice of them as the book does not hold back in criticising what went wrong. Just as Rabbi Hillel could shorten the Torah to something like don't do to others what you find hateful for people to do to you, Rabbi Bradshaw could shorten this book to the slogan painted on a statue of Marx in Berlin after the Wall came down "We'll do better next time". The slogan appears in the poem "Berlin '89". As a set of very short essays on ideas, people, places and events the book works wonderfully. Some purists might argue with the work as poetry, but some purists wouldn't know a trade union banner if it came up and bit them. Anyone who likes Bert Brecht (who makes a cameo appearance) will like this book. You can order copies from www.inpressbooks.co.uk/common_cause_francis_combes_i022000.aspx

Always the bridesmaid...

Our Big and Clever by Dan Tunstall did not manage to win the Banford Boase Award last night at Walker Books. It was one of seven on the shortlist for this important trade award for "the most outstanding work of fiction for children by a first time novelist", previously won by Meg Rosoff, Kevin Brooks and Mal Peet among others. But it was great to be on the shortlist and Dan, his wife Carey, agent Penny Luithlen and I had a great time at the event. It was Penny's wedding anniversary so she wins the gold star for putting work first. The winner was Stolen by Lucy Christopher, mostly set in the Australian Outback.

Being on the shortlist has already added some hundreds of copies to sales and was good for Five Leaves, the only small press with a book on the shortlist. And we got to talk to Jaqueline Wilson.We are currently working on the edit for Dan's next book, Out of Towners, due next May.

New John Lucas poetry collection

This is my 100th blog entry, the system tells me. And a good way to celebrate is by announcing John Lucas' new poetry collection. Copies are available now via the long website address at the bottom. Don't be confused about the different cover currently on the Inpress website, that was our first, draft cover, before we used the one you see here. John Lucas is a great friend of Five Leaves but this is his first solo collection with us. John is one of the few modern poets who combines politics, class, love and art in his work, combining them all with great technical skill. His fans will be pleased to know that his alter ego, Thorn Gruin, makes an appearance. Many of these poems reflect issues taken up at more length in his Next Year Will Be Better: a memoir of England in the 1950s, due later in the summer. http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/things_to_say_john_lucas_i020898.aspx

Don't put your daughter on the bookshop staff, Mrs Worthington...

...as Noel Coward almost said. Why not? Well in last week's trade paper, The Bookseller, Langton's Bookshop in Twickenham advertised for a bookseller with 2-5 years bookselling experience, with a relevant degree offering pay "to" £11,000. The last time I worked in bookselling - in 1995 - the radical bookshop I worked in paid around that sum, and we did not demand degrees, but rents were cheaper back then. So what would you get elsewhere? Statistics vary but it appears that employers of freshly qualified graduates offer on average £23,000, £25,ooo in London. Of course graduates going into investment banking can expect to earn about £38,000, but who wants to be universally loathed? Retail pays on average £22,000. In other words Langton's is paying half the going rate for graduate first jobbers, but wanting second jobbers. That's bookselling. Indeed Five Leaves will shortly be appointing a sales and marketing assistant at £14,000, pro-rata, and that is publishing. I'd rather spend my time doing something useful than getting rich, but even booksellers and publishers need to feed their hungry children. Still, our government tells us we are all in this together, so that's all right then.

Colin Ward again

The challenge to the right, mentioned in my last posting, is that while Colin Ward may have advocated slimming down the state's role in our lives this has no connection to that of the current coalition as they wish to hand life over to an unregulated market, putting profit at the centre of our lives rather than community. Colin described mutual aid as the central point in political change. Many of his points echo Richard Titmuss's social policy classic The Gift Relationship, which focuses on blood donors, the ultimate in people offering something of themselves ("an armful" as Tony Hancock pointed out) for no gain, and outside of any notion of trade or profit. I was reminded of this the day after the memorial meeting when, on the tube, having been hopelessly lost near Wembley we faced being hopelessly lost in Kilburn as our badly photocopied maps had all the relevant streets themselves lost on the overlap between pages. Someone elsewhere in the carriage, listening in, offered us her A-Z, not to borrow, but to have as she "had another one at home", and maybe we would do the same to some other lost stranger sometime. Random acts of kindness may never appear in a party political manifesto but it saved us an hour on a hot day, and linked neatly back to Colin Ward the day before.