The White Horse Bookshop

I had planned to return with News, but this is far too wonderful to let it go by.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the refurbishment of our lovely independent bookshop. Well, last Saturday was the official reopening.

I don't know about your town - but ours can do 'stuffy' when it comes to celebrations. We call them respectable, of course, but often they're stuffy. Sparkling wine in sparkling glasses. Canapés. Men and women greet each other with air-kisses and agree that this is wonderful darling. Maybe a local worthy to do the opening honours. Such celebrations have their place, of course - but sometimes I think my town needs a bit of a kick up the bum.

And then came the reopening of the White Horse Bookshop. With Jacqueline Wilson. Whose fab idea was it to invite her? For the great and the good of the town were shoved to the margins as the shop filled with children. You could barely hear yourself speak above the hubbub of children's voices - subdued briefly when she walked by them and then resuming forte proportions once she'd gone by.

The official ribbon-cutting done, she sat on a low sofa - low enough to look children in the eye and talk with them. A queue (of sorts) snaked through the shop - she had time and a smile for them all.

Oh how truly wonderful. Nobody could move in the shop for children, and parents, and grandparents. For what can be more important than bringing books and children together?

(Far more important than my News, anyway!!)

Thinking-soup

Don't get me wrong. I am enjoying working with two huge projects (beginning the MA and getting the book-show on the road) at the same time. It's just that sometimes I feel a bit disintegrative.

The MA head needs to read, reflect, re-read, make a note or two and carry on reading. It is a quiet, creative process and takes time. And I love it - though it isn't always easy. My mind seems to find new ideas in quiet spaces; I notice things between the lines in a way I don't when I'm simply reading for fun.

Meanwhile, the book is at the typeset stage. It needs reading for mistakes. My head is looking, not for ideas (please not ideas - this book is, basically, finished!), but for sentences that don't scan. Or the confused 'thats' and 'thans' and 'ifs' and 'its' and 'it's'. The lonely lines at the top and bottom of pages. It needs a logical, more detached, clinical approach. I cannot let it get under my skin - not now. This is a mechanical process and I am trying to approach it as such.

Which means I am asking my head to switch from clinical to reflective mode, like brain-skipping. And, though it's rare that I move directly from one task to another, they may be separated in time by nothing more divisive than a cup of coffee. I am aware that my thinking is beginning to feel like a sort of cognitive soup - a soup with bits in coalesce in an almost unidentifiable way. (Surely we've all tasted soups like that - they might have begun life as vegetables, but who knows what they are now?) When I wake in the morning one or other book is at the top of my thinking agenda, but in a floaty way. It will neither make itself knows as an identifiable problem, nor sink to the bottom so something recognisable can appear.

I will, I tell myself, get used to this. And my book will, before long, be on its way, with a real cover and read pages and (gulp) real readers? Which will clear the decks a little.

But in the meanwhile, I'm drowning in thinking-soup. Anyone have any ideas how to start swimming?