Konichiwa and Howdy

Lynne Featherstone, MP for us, came in this morning. Did you know it's National Storytelling Week this week, and Lynne came in to read stories to a class from Alexandra Primary School.
We had arranged for storytellers to come in on Tuesday and Wednesday as well, but the snow meant that the kids either weren't at school or it was too dicey to get to the shop.
Anyhow today went swimmingly, and Lynne read from Roald Dahl and Benjamin Zephaniah, among others. This picture has been taken by Omeed, who's doing work experience with us (!) for a couple of weeks.

Today is my work from home day, but I thought it would be good to go to the shop at about 8ish this morning just to make sure it looked pretty, and Tim with his dodgy legs can't go too quick in the snow. After that I retired to the flat, stopping once on the way home to photograph this
I deduce a one legged man was taking his pet parrot for a walk, Watson.

Anyway, the rest of the day has been spent pulling together a few of the events we've got lined up for the next few months. All quite exciting really.

If you were with us last May you might remember the vote we had to decide which author to try and get to the Big Green Bookshop. Haruki Murakami won by a landslide (Scott Pack might have voted for him on more than one computer).
I made some tentative enquiries last year, only to be told he had no plans to come to the UK.
Well now is a new year, and so we're going for him again. But this time, we're really going for it. On January 8th, I got a message from Toby, a facebook friend, with information about his agent in Japan, New York and the UK. I've sent an email today to 2 of these people. The message went something like this.

Hello xxxxxx

allow me to introduce myself. My name is Simon Key, and i'm the co-owner of the Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green, London, England. The shop has been open for almost a year now and we constantly strive to provide our customers with the most exciting and entertaining events and author signings.
We have a blog, called Open a Bookshop, What Could Possibly Go Wrong, which has charted our progress from having the idea to open a bookshop. The Blog has featured in the Guardian and Independent Newspapers and has a very strong following.
Last May we ran a poll to ask which author our customers would like to see at the shop. The list of possibles included such luminaries as Stephen King, Stan Lee, Don Delillo and Haruki Murakami. The good news is the Haruki won by a landslide.
I was told that he was busy last year and had no plans to visit the United Kingdom, but now i'm writing to discuss the possibility of a visit to our bookshop sometime this year. We have a fanatastic line-up of events already planned, but i'm sure that an audience with Haruki, or something similar would be a real highlight.

I look forward to hearing from you in the near future,

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Best Wishes,
Simon Key

So, stage 1 complete.
I'll let you know what replies I get.

FinallyThis is a Plantlock. It is situated right in the middle of the area next to our shop that we used to spend a lot of time and energy trying to stop people parking their stoopid cars. Now they can't. But you can lock your eco friendly bike to it, and also you can grow plants in it. The Front Yard Company produce them, and they're great. If anyone wants to advertise on the side of it, let us know.

Keep voting for what film you want us to show....