a view through my own eyes

Well the new and final Harry Potter book is due for release on Saturday.

Over here many bookshops will be open from 12:01 so they can shift loads of copies at the witching hour and people will go and queue. I expect that this latest installment in the series will be heralded as the fastest selling book at time of release ever.

Anyway I spotted a couple of items on the news over the last few days:

1. Bloomsbury the publishers of HP were threatening not to supply ASDA (Walmart for the yankee readers) on the grounds that bills have not been paid. ASDA on the other hand have been saying that Bloomsbury have the hump because ASDA criticised the the pricing saying that £17.99 (about average for a hardback book over here) was too much for what is a commodity. Since this came to light Bloomsbury and ASDA have made up and stocks will be supplied.

2. Small independent bookstores are refusing to stock the new HP book, because they cannot afford to do so. Why? ASDA and Tesco have announced that they will be selling the book at £8.87 – this is less than the small booksellers can buy the book for from the publishers. One bookseller has commented that he is going to buy stock from the supermarket and then sell it with a couple of pounds markup – he makes some money and the supermarket makes money.

On the grounds that umpteen millions of copies of the book will sell from Saturday just because it is HP, why on earth are the publishers doing cut price deals with the supermarkets? If anything they are going to lose out because lets face it if they flog them to ASDA/whoever at £8 or £10 they will still sell pretty much the same number of copies, so half a million copies to ASDA at two pounds a copy less than they would to the independent sellers means that they have done themselves out of a million quid.

Are they deliberately trying to put small bookshops out of business?

Do the supermarkets have that much purchasing control? – “Sell us HP for next to nothing or we will never buy anything else you produce….”. TBH If I were Bloomsbury knowing that the book will sell in the millions, I would have waved two fingers at the supermarkets and made them pay – flogged millions anyway, sold up and retired.

Will I and mrspao be out and about at midnight joining the hordes at a bookshop in town?

I do not honestly know, we will certainly buy a copy anyway.

Will we be buying the book from a small independent bookseller in Canterbury?

No, because there isn’t one anymore. The last real bookshop in Canterbury closed down last Christmas, they cleared their shelves with everything half price – ironically this is roughly the amount that supermarkets sell books for anyway.

The dastardly French have invaded England. Not content with foisting baguettes, cheese, garlic and onions upon us; this weekend we have played host to the Prolog and Stage 1 of the Tour de France.

The scale of the operation in Canterbury alone was huge. Last night barriers were being put up along the roadsides, this morning we witnessed the arrival of masses of Police officers and roads were closed off.

At lunchtime the crowds started to gather roadside. Eventually the caravan appeared and over an hour or so hundreds of vans, trucks, and official looking vehicles streamed into Canterbury – all escorted by Police outriders.

Where we stood initially a Policeman was continually asked “Where can I cross the road?”, his reply inevitably was “You can’t, sorry.” and so the city was divided into two. The only place I could work out where you could cross was the footbridge from the city wall to the East station, but the Policeman was not a local lad and did not know that. I wonder if anyone went out late this morning to get a news paper in their slippers and dressing gown.

Anyway, around three thirty nearly two hundred cyclists streamed past, most of them in one huge pack. When I say streamed past I mean the came down the Old Dover Rd to the Cross Keys where we were stood and were gone in around twenty seconds. A few stragglers came a minute or so later on. In the course of around a minute, in bursts I took fifty one photographs.

The better pictures can be found over here as I really don’t want to upload them to the same server twice as that would be silly.

Mrspao please note, that when we are in the States later in the year, with the exchange rate being as it is investing in a Canon 70-200mm f4 IS L USM, or a Sigma 70-200 f2.8 EX lens could be good, as it would be much easier to control the depth of field better and so produce a more pleasing background. Also the focussing motors in the above are much superior to the one in the lens I used today and so would be able to rattle off more shots as the lens would be able to keep up with the AI servo focussing mode and if anything would then fill the the buffer sooner. So perhaps a 1D Mk III is a possibility as well?

A few years ago inspired by Rick Stein (credit where it is due), I made some fish pasties. Mrspao likes fish pasties, mrspao likes fish pasties a lot.

Consequently to make them a treat I only make them occasionally. Since today is our thirtieth^Wsixth wedding anniversary and mrspao is preoccupied with Mrs B until nineish this evening, it seemed an appropriate time to make the pasties as it will be too late to go out and eat.

So to make six largish pasties you will need:
900g of puff pastry
250g of thinly sliced leeks
25g of melted butter
450g of fish – I use a combination of smoked salmon, crab meat and king prawns (all roughly chopped)
juice of half a lemon
10 twists of black pepper
a large dash of salt

Combine the above well and divide into six portions.

With the pastry make six rounds around 7″ across, put a portion of the mix on each, fold over and crimp the edges together with your fingers. Brush with milk or beaten egg. Place on a greased baking tray in a preheated oven at 200C for around 30 minutes or until golden brown.

I think these are best eaten cold rather than warm. Mrspao does not care as she is a cat and loves fish.