I will start with the children’s books, it is a very good
idea if children have a books to read during the school holidays. The pictures
are of the books in the children’s section of my bookshop, if you click on the
photos so they get bigger and click on them again, once they have got bigger,
they should get big enough to let you read most of the titles. If they don’t I
will try to take some better photos and replace them.
I am having a jinxed day, I could say my decent
camera has gone wrong, the truth is that I have lost the charger, so I took the
pictures with my mobile phone which isn’t so good indoors.
There are several reasons why it is best for children to
have a real book to read, rather than a kindle, or some other device, the main
one being that technology has just too many distractions.
Another one is to do with what some people call “lose toys
in the attic” which is a euphemism (another way of saying) “mental” “mad” and
so on, which can be hurtful if the person you’re talking about has really got a
mental illness.
However people who are reasonably sane, in fact everyone, has
stuff in their minds that works strangely for one reason or another. I think
that if someone uses a screen a lot to read things that hardly go in to their
memory and they will never need a few seconds after reading them, then their
minds get used to junking stuff they read on screens.
A very good example on this blog is when the adults start to
insult each other, they skim up and down the comments looking only for. What?
Someone they don’t like so they can be rude to them. Someone who has been rude to them. can
you think of any more? But the point here is it soon becomes obvious that they
are not interested in the topic of the post, so their mind is junking that
information.
If you read a book on a screen and your mind has gone even a
little bit like that when you read from screens, you may find you’ve “lost the
plot” sorry couldn’t resist that one, wait until I get to the sea, it will get
worse.
This can be a problem with serious study, my children have
been saying, “print it out dad” for years.
This part of my bookshop has children’s books
for children, the books are priced accordingly, there are lots of books priced
under £1 and if you look carefully some are priced at 10p. This is partly books
that are nearly worn out, but also my low cunning which I hope will make
children look at the books carefully.
I should also point out the we offer exchange vouchers for
books we want, and either money or more value in book exchange vouchers for
books we want a lot. So if you have books you have already read you may not need
money at all.
There is always not paying for books at all and we have a
library with a children’s book section which all children can join for free.
What’s the snag? Library fines. Are you a well organised person? Do you loose
things? Do strange marks appear on books when you read them? Do the pages often
fall out when you read books? If the answer to any these questions is yes, then
either change your ways or pay.
Of course if you have bought a book and the book has some
sort of accident, then this can be less of a problem and it can make for more
relaxed reading.
The big question is. Why would you want to read a book at
all? If you didn’t ask it even a little bit, somewhere in your head's attic then
you can skip the next bit.
Otherwise there are two questions. Do you like money? And do
you like life.
People who read books do better with their
education. People with a better education earn more money. People who earn more
money usually have a greater life expectancy (live longer).
So think of the poor total stranger who is you in a few
years time.
I have started expanding the children’s section, this is a
long job and a bit like a puzzle, for instance I have to move all of
dictionaries in order to make space some books about crime, so I can move the
humour books, so there is more space for children’s books next to the rest of the children's books.
On to the don’t swim in the sea business, the council has
issued a warning not to swim in the sea on the beaches between Walpole Bay and
Dumpton Gap, this includes: Walpole Bay, Palm Bay, Botany Bay, Kingsgate Bay,
Joss Bay, Stone Bay, Viking Bay, Louisa Bay and Dumpton Gap.
The Australians often have signs by their swimming pools
saying. “Don’t pee in our swimming pool and we won’t swim in your toilet.” What
seems to have happened here is we peed in our toilets and it has arrived in our
sea.
In some ways this is good news, because up until recently
when things went wrong they didn’t tell anyone, now they put up warning signs
and I think if something like this happens it is better to tell people.
I will write a bit more about this later, I know
you really know this is because I want to see how much it takes to fill the
spaces, but I am pretending I have something interesting to say.
It means that if you read a lot you may have some unexpected
information up your sleeve, even the water company's engineer's notes.
The downside here is that the council may not like you
very much, so you may wind up trying to run a business opposite the biggest
shop in the street and find that on the one hand it belongs to the council. While
on the other hand it’s empty and they never ever intend to let it as a shop again.
Now I am going to be politically incorrect here, in fact I
am going to be sexist, I am going to suggest first that women do most of the
shopping and I am going on to suggest that most women won’t park in the multi
story car park.
Now three of my children and my wife are of the female
persuasion and most of the blog readers will be familiar with the pictures that
I paint, and put on this blog, while waiting for shopping to occur. I know this sexism
may lead to adverse comment so I am covering my back here the best I can.
However I think I may have the reason why nearly all of the
shops in King Street between mine and the town centre are still trading as
shops and I think this reason is that it is right next the open air car park
which is where most of the women park when they come to Ramsgate.
Now in most of the other towns in this country the councils
are doing everything they can to keep shops open, so it may be purely
coincidental that they are trying very hard to keep this one closed.
Of course it may be that the reason that nearly all of the
shops between mine and the town centre are open is because of the people going
past them on the way to buy their books, ok I concede it may be a bit of each.
Oh no I’ve just realised that I have done something else
that will very probably annoy the council, perhaps they will buy another shop
in the street and make sure that it is never going to be a shop again.
There isn’t much else they can do, we already have had
pretty much every possible on street parking space removed, the wobbly
pavements the blocked drains and have been excluded from the town centre
policing.
The bottom line here is.
We'll let you swim in our toilet if you don't pee on our council.
