We are Re-Jigging and eek it’s never ending!

Yep yep – the pictures you see below this post are not now how we look in some part and by the end of the month will not be how we look at all!
yes indeed it’s true we are having a major overhaul and face lift – and yes no more would be comics out there with the ‘well boss you need’ it comments!
So anyway as you can well imagine the place is a bit of a mess as we move all the old stuff out and the new stuff in, rearrange units and change till points and displays, but by the end of the month it will be fantastic!
So far we have relocated all the New Fiction onto nice new units, and a tidy amount of the Secondhand fiction has also been rehomed as well.
We have the sale to end all sales going on at the minute as we have seriously culled both the secondhand fiction and the New Fiction and pulled out anything over 18 months old – these are now for sale at 10 secondhand for £5.00 or 5 New for £5.00.
Whicever way you look at it that’s some fantastic bargains going on there. The authors include Dan Brown, Arthur C Clarke, Audrey Howard and other top authors. Honest this is not dross just overstock we needed to shift to make room for the new units and stock!
So anyway Religious books are moving from their ‘stand alone and cannot be grown’ section in unit 3 over to the main bookstall – this way there is room for expansion – in fact there will be an extra 5 bays worth of space to expand into and some nice gift units and slat wall space as well – This will also put the Christian Books in a much more prominent thoroughfare than they are currently on – and the reason for this??
Because we are not ashamed!
In fact we are not ashamed of anything we do, including our LGBT section which has also been relocated in the move and this is now in a more prominent section as well – situated in the middle gondola of the main Fiction section rather than hidden in the corner!
we are not ashamed and we will not act as if we are – we will not apologise for our beliefs, for our friends or for our outreach!
That said we would like to announce that we are now also stocking Jewish Prayer Books and the Forms of Prayer, and we welcome all our friends from the Lincoln Branch of the Council of Christians and Jews to come by, it was good to meet you and be involved in a very small way with the ‘meditation of Advent and Chanukah’. Thank you.
Ok now also whilst I have your attention, Palm Crosses, Paschal Candles and the rest of the Lent/Easter paraphanalia are on order and in some cases even in stock! so NOW IS THE TIME to let me know exactly how many of what you want putting by!!
Pass the word around please – Lent Books are in and orders are being taken for Palms and Candles.
Thank you!
Ohh we counted how many jigsaw designs we had when we had to move them all for the new units! (These went fantastically well at Christmas and are still going well now, probably as we are one of the few places in Lincoln that does them, and we do them all year round and at very good prices as well!)
Anyway that would be just over the 100 mark! These span the gamault from 1500 piece puzzles down to the 8 piece childrens puzzles, with the most number being in the 500 piece range and then followed by the economy priced 1000 piece puzzles, though my favourites are the ones with the Gold and Silver highlighting – particularly the Indian Maid and Fawn one – just lovely! and then also the Shaped Fish & Dolphin Puzzle. Lots of different brands as well, Gibson Games, Jumbo, King, Paul Lamond Puzzles, Falcon, Heye, Classic Deluxe, Ravensburger and a few more as well!
Then there were the Paint By Numbers, both large, standard and small, and 2 different manufacturers styles in those as well. It certainly makes for colourful on top of the new units.
So anyway when the refit and rejig is done and about ten minutes after I stop doing my own victory jig all over the worklorn minions (who actaully have been working! and I have to admit may have some hidden architectural or interior design skills that have a lot to do with making best use of the tardis like propensity of the strange space in a Unicorn Tree domain! Thanks M1 & M2) then I will get out my camera and take new snappy snappies for you all who cannot come in and see it for yourselves.
See you in the shop soon – I am the one with 2 coffee’s on the go at the minute as one just doesn’t do it in a refit situation.

SPCK CLOSES!

On tuesday my old work team and my friends were treated in a most reprehensible way, they turned up to work at the SPCK Bookshop as it had been (it still said SPCK outside but in point of fact it had been renamed as the SSG Bookshop some months ago by the current owners), to do their daily work at the Charity just to open the email system up and find that their employment had been terminated – effective immediately - by the Chairman of SSG from his base in Texas.
This I find to be a totally reprehensible act – to fire people by email – especially such dedicated people. The irony of it is that just the week before they had been out having a meal that was from the £100 they had been given by Mr P. Brewer when he awarded for the them the first ‘Third Space’ award in the chain. This was explained as being an award for having such an attractive, welcoming and well presented shop! the first two spaces being, our homes and our places of work – places we feel inately comfortable and welcomed – the third space and hence the award is a space other than these two where a similar feeling is invoked!!!
Well there will definitely be no third space awards going to SSG and their owners in my estimation.
So anyway if anyone out there knows of jobs going for some extremely talented and dedicated retailers, who are also skilled in customer service and office work, then please do let me know so I can pass this info onto them.
If I had the ability to give them jobs I would but currently the situation just does not allow for this – however as I am now the only retailer in town doing Christian Books and Church Supplies it is my hope that in the next few months I will have been able to grow this side of the business to such a level as was at the old SPCK and then be able to take on my old staff! so please assist in enabling this (that is if you haven’t got a job you can give them yourselves!) by supporting me in growing this business!
Much more information on the goings on of SSG can be found at Dave Walkers wonderful Cartoonchurch blog here:
http://www.cartoonchurch.com/blog/category/save-the-spck/
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So thats the most of my news, though if you haven’t been in since the last blog update then there is a music sale on – all cd’s currently half price – this will only be on until the end of this month!
We have Jigsaws out on display and doing well – there will be a new delivery of jigsaws in by the end of the month, and also a full top up of Paint by Numbers, Scraperfoils and the Like at the end of the month too.
If you are a Church then let me know what Paschal product you want! and can you give me a clue as to the main size candles you want for every week use as well. On saturday i will have some palm crosses, baptism candles and votive stick candles in stock, along with basic church stationary ie certificates, registers etc. let me know what you need and i will get it!
Ok blog done for now, please again I reiterate either support me so I grow quickly and can give the spck crew jobs being out of their tree with me again (think of it as recycling! recycling staff now there’s a green initiative for you get behind this lent!), or offer them a job yourselves if you can – they are great people and did not deserve this treatment.
(This post has been edited as a safeguard – for the reasons as to why this may have been necessary visit
http://www.cartoonchurch.com/blog/category/save-the-spck
, Oops now wait you cant – I guess you better go here instead:
http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/series/cease-and-desist-notice-on-dave-walker/
Should I be notified personally and directly by the concerned parties of anything then I will of course let you know and then take any further necessary actions as may be required)

www.lincolncentralmarket.co.uk
Unicorn Tree Books, Central Market, Lincoln. LN5 7ET
www.browseawhilebooks.co.uk
www.alsarts.co.uk
htp://unicorntreebooks.blogspot.com

The Brain at work for Christmas!

A clip of Pinky & The Brain from a Christmas special that perfectly sums up how the unicorntreebooksboss felt doing the bookcase boogie just before the Lincoln Christmas Market.

So apt on so many fronts in fact!! except the spellchecker given to Pinky should really be given to the minions!

http://www.lincolncentralmarket.co.uk
Unicorn Tree Books, Central Market, Lincoln. LN5 7ET
http://www.browseawhile.co.uk
http://www.alsarts.co.uk
http://www.lincolnmarket.co.uk

OOH how time flies & we have an officially nominated charity to support!

Ohh, who knew bookselling could be such hard work, and so grubby, boks just are filthy filthy things – and no thats not a referecne to those black lace books up on the top shelf at the back of the shop, or those paranormal sex crazed vampire novels such as Laurel K. Hamilton and Sherilyn Kenyon & Christine Feehan write, or even the Blaze range of Mills & Boon books, though it could be an apt description – how rude!! no I mean that books are dust gatherers, I reckon even if the building ws hemetically sealed books would still get grubby!
White shirts are out, cream trousers! never, black is the cool and sensible colour of the bookshop manager!
Anyway enough of that, I have in the last three months been busy rejigging the shop so all the books fit and are in some semblence of order! We are almost there with cataloguing and zapping them into the computer system too! it will be great when its done, well one hopes it will.
Last year we gave £87.00 to various charities through the pennies that people are generous to leave behind, so see that addage about looking after the pennies is apt! as after all when I say the pennies left behind I do mean exactly that, that £87.00 was from 1p pieces left over from lots of £6.99 books etc. Actaully we gave more than that but thats the amount that came solely from Customers pennies.
So this year we are doing the same sort of thing but adding a bit more kick and emphasis where we can!
We have read a book (well more than one! but only the one on this subject!) about being socially and ethically good, so we are attempting to redunce our carbon footprint in the shop – turning off equipment we dont use often and just popping it on when we need it! and we are recycling our cardboard and paper and plastics, we also have a recycling4charity collection box for inkjet cartridges and mobile phones and £1.00 for each cartridge and up to £20 for each phone will go to Habitat for Humanity (GB) to help provide low cost and essential housing both in the UK and abroad! so if you are visiting then drop off your old cartridges!
And we are also supporting a great charity called ClearVision – they take ordinary books and using a clear acetate sheet they braille it and then pop it back into the rebound books, this means that these books can be used by both Blind and Sighted readers! so Children can read to parents and parents to children, young people can read to each other or share their books regardless of whether they can see or not! is that not the best idea!! It costs about £7.00 to turn an ordinary childs book into a braille/sighted book that can be used over and over, so we would like it if you would help us support this great endeavour – to that aim we have set up a justgiving charity fund raising page and would love it if you could find it in you to visit and donate! by the way if you are near the shop you can come in and see one of these great books! its really impressive. So come by and visit and find it to help this great charity if you possibly can by going here:

Anyway so thats what we are doing for this year so far, well that and cleaing books and book shelves over and over again!
oh yes and remember to come visit our nearly proper website at http://www.lincolncentralmarket.co.uk if you have the time.
anyway enough from me – have to go runa bookshop by myself again tomorrow and its already very late! ta ta for now!

http://www.lincolncentralmarket.co.uk
Unicorn Tree Books, Central Market, Lincoln. LN5 7ET
http://www.browseawhile.co.uk
http://www.alsarts.co.uk
http://www.lincolnmarket.co.uk