Down Boy

He’s a scrawny small man with thin, round glasses and long hair that’s styled into a tuff. He enjoys the outdoor life and is always dressed for the weather. He previously stayed in a run-down house but now has a partner so that may not be the current case. He enjoys real things rather than products that are massed produced and will choose home-grown over convenience every time to help reduce his carbon footprint. He has some respect for people but he also has an ego and can often throw his toys out of the pram if he doesn’t get his way. I wonder if he was like that during childhood and if he always had the courage to do this. He’s always after knowledge to pass onto others, and loves acting mischievous in front of children; especially when he gets to put on a show; even if it involves dressing up as a giant apple and toppling over as he’s chased around the village green.    

Staffing the Shop

So what do I look for when recruiting shop volunteers? Ironically, it can be one of the easiest roles of the festival so long as you know what you’re selling; what you are doing and have some basic common knowledge math sense. Apart from that it’s quite easy and you can make fair progress on a book in quiet times, maybe even one that you’re selling so long as you don’t mind the odd interruption to answer a query. Just sit at the counter and everything you need is in easy reach. To encourage people to visit, we do exchange cash into beer tokens to encourage people to look at what we’re selling while they wait. Occasionally you may have to function as a point of knowledge as people approach for advice on various topics, but some might just want to stop and chat in passing. But as long as you know your stuff, you’ll be fine.

Black History Month

It’s that time of the month where we learn about oppression two centuries ago and how people today are still working to overcome it because of prejudice. It makes you think what would happen if we hadn’t advanced industrialisation through globalisation, and it might have made a real difference to how we operate our society today. There would be so much more skilled trade available as we wouldn’t rely on cheaper imports all the time. The only downside is that things would be a bit bland and there wouldn’t be enough choice, and a lot has changed to make that happen. But what’s really annoying is the focus for the rest of the year. What about industrial heritage, or cultural history? Where’s the focus on these subjects and why don’t they get attention? It’s fine to focus on a group that’s been neglected so much but there’s so many positives to history as well so that people can learn just how far they’ve advanced, and also what we’ve lost. 

When orders go Wrong

The books arrived from HQ alongside the festival equipment that we’d ordered. There was a bit of excitement as there were quite a few boxes to open and check off. Because some of the less popular titles wouldn’t sell so much, they sent them in a box mixed with others rather than sending whole complete boxes. But we still had way too much stock than what we’d ordered. At one point we had more books than beer. I was very much tempted to keep what we’d got and sneak in some extra sales for ourselves but the t-shirts that I’d ordered hadn’t arrived and these would also be chargeable to us. After taking an inventory, I discovered that the warehouse had picked our book order twice and they hadn’t had any records of sending out the t-shirts to us. I then had to declare to them what we had received so that they could adjust their stock accordingly.

 

Loki

This series felt a bit drab. I liked the interchanging font in the series logo portraying mischief, but other than that Loki doesn’t really get to be that mischievous which leaves the show to be a bit dark and dull. I was very disappointed with the futuristic time agency and I’d expect something better than a run-down library containing files from the seventies and computers that wouldn’t look out of place at a shuttle launch. It even stars Owen Wilson as a senior cowboy-styled detective. The whole series just felt dragged out with lots of awkward pauses. I was hoping for more moments where Loki could travel through time and wreak havoc with his powers while the time agency followed his wake. There were a few random chuckles such as the military-style hunters arriving at a renaissance fair in 1985 and an alligator claiming to be a Loki but the characters lacked the energy that we’ve seen in the other Marvel spin-offs. Hopefully the next season will be a bit faster.

Death of a Gentle Lady by M. C. Beaton

Death of a Gentle Lady by M.C. Beaton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s a bit difficult to like a protagonist when they decide to go rogue for their own interests rather than for the greater good. But it seems to be a done thing in the Highlands where everyone’s partial to a drop of hospitality and doesn’t want to face change themselves, but are happy to help others. Still, could it be that every murder is linked to the newest resident of Lochdubh? It seems to be that way which gives Macbeth an easy job of defending the long-term locals. All he’s got to do is get the evidence, and sometimes most of the time it’s achieved by foul means rather than fair. It’s lucky that he can trust his fellow residents to back him up and it’s good to see that modern-day technology has finally reached the Highlands. And you can always rely on Beaton’s regular cast of characters to provide a few laughs.

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Death of a Tweet

I originally wanted to check out a canal picture which I’m told was beautiful in the Autumn. It was odd that it wasn’t displayed in the e-mail. After trying to find the tweet in my feed in my app, I discovered that it was deleted, so I decided to check out the app that they were trying to sell instead. It turned out to be a collective of independent businesses selling their wares and offering discounts provided that you subscribed to the app. I looked at the bar ones which mainly offered discounts off the bill on certain days. I suppose it’s handy enough if you live in the area or frequent these premises often and could be a moneysaver, but for a casual visitor it’s not worth it unless you’re specifically heading to these venues and there’s a saving to be made. If there’s any events on, I’m sure the app’s Twitter feed will tell me. But I wonder why the tweet got dropped. Maybe a copyright infringement was involved. It’s a shame, I bet it was a nice gesture originally.