Sorry there hasn't been much in the way of blog posting for
a while, my children gave me man flu, and although I am recovered now I have
had few days where my reality felt like a cold sauna.
In these circumstances like the gluttonous confectioner the
bookseller retires into reading his stock of books. In truth I have done little
else but read, the direction of my reading is something I have to blame the
Turner Contemporary for because the next exhibition there, starting on the 28th
of March is to be Atmosphere by the artist Edmund De Waal. On the face of it he
is a studio potter who makes expensive pots e.g. http://maaklondon.irostrum.com/AuctionIndex/10006?pageNumber=19
and I approached reading his biography
in a spirit of the sceptic and one who would be concerned about the proximity
of a very expensive pot.
I looked at pictures of him and his pots on the internet,
his pots are rather white and apart from his amber eyes so seems he, sort of
difficult to tell where he stops and the white clay begins.
A photo would infringe copyright so a quick sketch of my
impression of him.
Edmund De Waal: The Heir With Amber Eyes, ah yes the book
The Hare With Amber Eyes, which is about the history of a collection of
Japanese netsuke (bag toggles) he inherited.
Much of his book related to the conflicts of the first half
of the 1900s and antisemitism which then got me onto reading the Ken Folletts
“Fall of Giants” and “Winter of the World”
I think Ken may look a bit like this, I do a rough sketch of
the person I am reading, mainly because I am so bad at remembering names and
faces.
Anyway the direction of my reading took me on to Sebastian
Faulks “Birdsong” which is about the trenches in WW1 and then on to his book
about insanity in victorian times “Human Traces“ which I am reading at the
moment.
This raises the interesting question. Is insanity a
necessary component of humanity? i.e. can you get a level of consciousness above
animal consciousness without madness being a component.
On to Ramsgate issues. obviously the big one is the imminent
closure of Manston Airport, frankly I didn’t think it would be very long before
the new owners viewed the spokes of their transport hub, 75% of which is sea
and concluded that fish bought few airline tickets.
My take on Manston is that what was most damaging to the
local economy was the state of uncertainty. Obviously a thriving regional
airport would have involved some employment and local regeneration impact, on
the other hand no airport and the end of uncertainty about the amount of future
aircraft noise disturbance has its benefits too.
To a greater or lesser extent from the time civil aircraft
have flown from Manston, around fifty years ago, Ramsgate has been under the
cloud of uncertainty over the potential future aircraft noise. Don’t misunderstand
this, I am not talking here about a successful regional airport with a quantifiable
future, but the uncertainty that we could easily have say thirty flights an
hour.
I would be expecting a considerable rise in Ramsgate
property prices based on this news.
On the shop front things are still very much food focused
with another butchers opening in Harbour Street
and an Italian restaurant opening in King Street
In my own bookshop I am reviewing the repricing of the books that I did last year, I have started again on the paperback fiction and although I doubt I will need to do the whole shop again for a while, taking the books of this fairly large section and looking them up on Amazon and Ebay is a very useful way of determining secondhand book pricing trends.
As you see it is a fairly large section about 5,000
paperback fiction titles, the average price being about £1.50.
I am mostly using the cheapest end of "sold listings" on
Ebay for price comparison and would say that most secondhand paperbacks can be obtained that way for less than £2.50, the main exception being very new titles and classics in translation, i.e. more Plato with your potato.
The real disaster area being fairly recent paperbacks where the author isn't well known or only seems to sell in the supermarket, which we put out for 50p the photo is an example of 50p paperbacks on the shelf at the moment. A lot of these don't sell at 50p and make their way onto the 5p shelves and then to paper pulp.
There appears to be one new non-food shop imminent in Harbour Street.
In my own bookshop I am reviewing the repricing of the books that I did last year, I have started again on the paperback fiction and although I doubt I will need to do the whole shop again for a while, taking the books of this fairly large section and looking them up on Amazon and Ebay is a very useful way of determining secondhand book pricing trends.
My main competition Amazon and Ebay have had some changes
which I have to respond to, I guess the main one being the Amazon Prime £10
minimum spend which seems to have shifted the under £2.81 (the post inclusive
price of a book listed on Amazon for 1p on to Ebay.
The real disaster area being fairly recent paperbacks where the author isn't well known or only seems to sell in the supermarket, which we put out for 50p the photo is an example of 50p paperbacks on the shelf at the moment. A lot of these don't sell at 50p and make their way onto the 5p shelves and then to paper pulp.
There appears to be one new non-food shop imminent in Harbour Street.
The Kitchen in King Street is going in the
auction with a guide price of £140k see http://www.cliveemson.co.uk/listing_view.asp?Lot=62&Auc=168
which would assume a rent of about £14k pa, around £300 per week and rates of
around £150 rates. £20,000 per year rent and rates seems a tad high to me
I will ramble on here
