Thursday night bash

We've finally recovered from our opening do on Thursday evening - although there are still a number of hard-to-shift wine stains to be dealt with, and the biography section might never recover. By which I mean nothing more sinister than the fact that biography buying seemed to be the popular choice of the evening. Although mysteriously we are still left with Jeremy Clarkson. He's proving harder to shift than the wine stains. It was a tremendous evening and - as usual - Nicki and I were a bit bowled over the nice people who continue to support our shop. Our fears about there only being the Mayor, his wife, Nicki, myself, a couple of nervous tummies and the wine stash were realised on the stroke of six, when Peter Green and his wife Hilary arrived - he in full 'mayoral bling' (his words - see photo) were first through the door. But from then on more and more people turned up until the shop was buzzing. It was simply fantastic to see it so packed full, although it got worryingly difficult to get to the wine table until people started drifting into the courtyard garden. It was just a great atmosphere and heralded (we hope) the start of lots of fantastic evening events. We are busily trying to put together a programme from the large number of incredibly generous authors who have already contacted us and offered to do talks. (More info soon.). Kudos to Alison Hoblyn and Ben Jeapes who both came along. The evening was really helped to get into full swing by Jill Carver of Added Ingredients (at the other end of our street, who provides our cookware for our "cooks and books" section and the delicious coffee we serve). She had chosen an inspired range of organic wines for the evening, and a big thank you is due because she spent the evening pretty much serving wine, running up and down the street to fetch more of it, and recycling glasses. Thanks very much Jill. And just in case we did get busy we had hedged our bets and did a quick till training for Nicki's Dad, Maurice, who deserves special thanks as in the end he performed sterling service not moving from the till all evening. I don't think he even had a glass of wine (sorry Maurice). But, as ever, what made it so special was the number of people who, having never met a month ago, turned out in such large numbers to share a glass of wine with us and toast our venture. Now all we are missing is a customer who likes Jeremy Clarkson. Any takers?