There's always one more trip to IKEA
Getting on first name terms with BILLY
Yesterday’s stall bestsellers
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe - Backstory book club (meeting #1 - 17th October)
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman
Lessons by Ian McEwan
The Unadoptables by Hana Tooke
Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction longlist
Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire by Caroline Elkins
Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City by Andrea Elliott
The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland
Otherlands: A World in the Making by Thomas Halliday
Dinner with Joseph Johnson: Books and Friendship in a Revolutionary Age by Daisy Hay
My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World’s Deadliest Migration Route by Sally Hayden (I told you it was good!)
Original Sins: A Memoir by Matt Rowland Hill
The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown by Anna Keay
A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story by Polly Morland
The Barefoot Woman by Scholastique Mukasonga
Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell
Kingdom of Characters: A Tale of Language, Obsession and Genius in Modern China by Jing Tsu
I think I could drive to IKEA in my sleep. Which, come to think of it, might be preferable to going there conscious. Apart from the prices (and, of course, the meatballs), there is not a lot to commend the experience. Flatpack frustration boiling over in the car park; the impossibility of “popping in” for a specific item without fighting your way past hordes of browsers pushing their yellow trolleys through dozens of improbably tidy showrooms; how, no matter what you came in for, you always leave with some lurid-coloured “organisation solutions”.
Aziz, who is masterminding the team of contractors at the shop, told me knowingly at the outset of the project that the problem with using IKEA is that, because all of its bits and bobs are compatible with other IKEA bits and bobs, you can never just make one trip there. And, having just returned from my fourth trip to Croydon in recent weeks, I can now confirm his wisdom. Last time it was missing drawers; today it was cupboard handles. In theory it was, but I’m loath to say that this was my last trip there.
Still, that we’re noticing missing door handles does give you a sense of the progress that’s been made on site. The bookshelves are up, the bar is in, the dishwasher is plumbed in, the walls are painted. It might not yet resemble a bookshop (given the total absence of books, since they don’t tend to do very well with dust or paint), but it is definitely looking like a shop.
Here’s the very talented Alice Kim from our architects, A Small Studio, hand-painting icons designed by my colleague Rory on to the wall behind the bar today:
So we are probably 90% of the way there, yet the last 10% seems an enormous gulf to cross. There is The Great Alphabetisation, for one thing. That starts tomorrow. Doing the window and displays. Getting the till up and running. Then installing and being trained on the coffee machine and lots of things to do with running a bar. And finalising orders for other things like stationery and cards.
But I am once again trying to remind myself not to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Our website was pretty rubbish to begin with, but it sold lots of books. And it soon got much better. I will try to take the same approach to the shop, throwing the doors open as soon as I can and learning quickly on the job, rather than waiting for everything to be just so. My instinct is to do the latter, hiding everything away until we are ready for one big reveal; but I know the former is better business, and the stall has taught me that the best way of picking things up is doing them and then doing them again a bit differently.
So, with any luck, it won’t be too long now before I can welcome you inside. Watch this space. And if we’re missing something? Well, I’ll just have to pop back to IKEA.
Tom
Cannot wait!