Wha'ppen

Simon;

Katie and I went out on Thursday evening to meet my very good friends Alister (kronenbourg) and Heather(kronenbourg). I've known Alister since I moved to london in'95 and he was the first person I worked with at Waterstone's in Charing Cross Road. He looked after me, and made sure I knew where all the local boozers were, and generally made me feel welcome. He works at Waterstone's Head Office now, and despite this he's still as lovely as he's always been.
Also, we had the pleasure of meeting David(magners) and his wife Rosalchen(red wine/soda & lime). David had sent us a message of support and mentioned that he lived nearby (above the pub we went to, actually), so I told him we'd be there and that if he wanted to meet up, then great. Well we did meet up and what a thoroughly good time we had. David works for the publishers McGraw-Hill and also spent around 6 years at Foyle's Bookshop. They said how sad it was that the Waterstone's had closed in Wood Green, and offered help (knocking down walls, painting etc) when needed. This was another one of those feelgood moments, and I hope we've now made two new friends.

On Friday Tim and I went to meet our Small Business adviser at the bank and finalised the bank account details. We'll be getting Big Green Bookshop chequebooks and Big Green Bookshop credit cards next week, and can soon set up accounts with distibutors. We've arranged to meet up with a couple of distributors next week to thrash out terms etc.

Thanks to all of you who've sent bestseller reports (keep 'em coming). They're going to be really useful when the task of getting the opening stock sorted starts.

We're still hoping to get the keys to the shop in the next fortnight, despite, not because of, the solicitors. I wish we could just talk to the people we need to, but the procedure seems to be
1 talk to our solicitor
2 our solcitor send a letter to their solicitor
3 We wait
4 Their solicitor sends a letter back
one week goes by.......
I'm sure there's lots more going on, but when you get something marked 'urgent' sent to you with a second class stamp on it, you wonder if everyone else realises just how urgent it is.

Finally (for now) CONGRATULATIONS to Vanessa at the Fidra Bookshop who opened their doors to the public for the first time yesterday. Both the launch party on Thursday and the first day were 'brilliant' according to Vanessa and we both wish you all the luck in the world for the future.