You are allowed to enjoy this…

…you spend the time downloading and installing the Windows 7 Beta on your laptop using Virtual PC…

Whereas most of my thoughts about running a newsagents have written down but not published on this site, here’s an article about our recent troubles that have faced us. It’s a good read and will give the gossips something to talk about! 🙂
Disaster Diary Article
Don’t worry – I am hoping to write a book out of this too.

Woolworths at Lea Bridge Road, Leyton
So the very last Woolworths stores are closing today. My career began in the Woolworths at Bakers Arms in Leyton. Happy times. Due to my charm and dashing good looks (no really), I was put to work behind the record bar dishing out LPs, 45s and 12 inches left, right and centre. It was here that I met the Missus and we worked together for a while before she left for pastures new and then we continued our friendship.
I used to joke how we’d probably have been better off staying at Woolworths and that we’d probably have ended up managing our own store by now. Ooops…got that wrong. It is a shame because I used to go and spend money in that shop on a regular basis but cash-flow is a big fat horrible cow of a beast.
Instead of wasting our money on the war on terror and sending our own soldiers to be blown up in Iraq and Afghanistan, the government could have bailed out these retailers who are going to the wall. It could have prevented the rise of unemployment and honest, hard-working folks losing their livlihoods and eventually their homes.
Oh well. To better, more innocent and exciting times. Working at Woolworths all those years ago was one of the reasons I wanted my own shop because I loved dealing with the customers. But those times have changed and then you realise that Leyton is very different from Norfolk.

My article for the Retail Newsagent appeared in this week’s edition. I’ll PDF a version of it when I have the time. It is a good edit according to The Missus. This pleases me as I rarely ever read anything again that I’ve written (how poncey is that?). The article is entitled “Diary of a Disaster” and explains exactly what we’ve been through, though I have excluded a lot of the shitty, nasty, personal stuff.

Well a new year is upon us and I know it has to be better than the last one? Plans are drawn, the future is pretty much mapped out for the first quarter of the year. For the first time ever, we have a good idea of what we are trying to achieve in the coming year and my new year’s resolution should be easy (and a joy) to keep.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll even get around to recording some more music!!!

The idiots of the village continue to snicker and bicker and spread all manner of untruths about our situation. As our neighbour remarked to us: “It doesn’t matter if you have anything to do with these people, even if you keep yourselves to yourselves – they’ll still make things up about you.”
Ahh, the petty small-mindedness of village life. So the first rumour that emerged since the incident was that my mother had died of a heart attack as a result of it. This I find amusing as her condition as “unhurt” had been reported in the local press, so I put it down to the local kids’ wishful thinking.
Another good rumour was that my mother had stormed into the Co-Op store (which like every good unethical business has decided to profit on our misery by starting to stock newspapers for the first time, but claiming that they are helping us as we can’t keep our regular hours. Not true, you mealy-mouthed cunts, you are stealing my trade for ourselves. Kick a man while he’s down, why don’t ya?”) and thrown all their newspapers into the street.
The source of that rumour was my mother herself. She remarked, cheefully laughing, that if she had it in her she would go into the Co-Op and do the self-same thing: throw all their papers into the street, such was her consternation at our plight. It’s an off-the-cuff remark, but the drooling idiots that populate this place grab hold of it and spread it as truth. Morons.
So now the newest rumour was that in fact a body had been found in the rubble. A body had been buried in the walls. My mother heard this from a customer and a day later a different customer came in with a much more macabre variation of this: it was a baby’s body buried in the walls that had been discovered by the police. Whoever is spreading this shit is sick in the head.
No-one died, no newspapers have been thrown into the street and, more importantly, no baby’s remains have been found on site.
Twats…

In the past week I’ve finally “gotten my shit together” and gone about replacing the lost rear speakers and speaker stands from my home cinema system. They fell out of the window/disappeared after the recent incident and it is a good lesson to make sure you have all four walls attached to your home. Remember people, losing a wall isn’t cool or clever. You can go around saying that your property is “open plan” but losing a wall is dangerous as your worldly possession can fall out and worst of all, numpty little scrotes can stare in.
I like to say that our house is in “mint” condition – in that, it has a hole in it. (Of course, that joke won’t make sense to anyone who hasn’t come into contact with the humble Polo mint).
Anyway, speakers, stands and replacement cable were purchased and I set up my system again. At the beginning of this month, I’d purchased the Genesis 1970-1975 boxset, the final in the series that features the band’s first five albums all remixed and remastered in 5.1 surround sound. I had been looking forward to this for a long time and, in the case of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway album, nearly a decade since the first idea of a surround sound mix was mooted by the band. So forget about the near death experience, forget about the damage and the emotional turmoil – no, the thing that’s really pissed me off lately is not being able to hear these albums as I’d intended.
Today, I found myself working through the said boxset with baby Verity snuggled up against my incredible bulk and then I realised that this was bliss. My first moment of true serenity and stillness in the past month and do you know what? It felt good, my friend, it felt very good indeed.
Here’s a clip of the band talking about their first “proper” album, Trespass:

Anthony Phillips is my hero – swoon!