The Aardvark Blog

Aardvark Christmas Fair opens in three minutes
3/12/2023

Well I always like the Christmas Fair to seem seasonal, but this morning when I took Byron out for a walk at 6am the Green was covered in snow and I got the feeling that I had overdone it on my Christmas wishes.

Still fortunately all the roads had been well gritted and we have a full complement of stallholders with wonderful potential Christmas presents to buy. I am not sure if it is going to warm up much today but you can always be certain of a warm welcome at Aardvark (particularly if the long-haired abrupt person is kept in check).

Clearing the warehouse for the Fair this week was something of a Herculean task, and I owe a big thank you to Andy B for his intrepid boxing up and moving of books on Wednesday and Thursday (mostly in sub-zero temperatures). Every time we do this and the warehouse is clear Ethel intimates to me that perhaps I could try to keep it clear, but then almost immediately a new buy happens and we are once again filled with tables with books on them. Still buying books is probably the best bit of being a bookseller - along with chatting with customers about their favourite books - so I shouldn't really complain.

Christmas is a time when one thinks about Christmases past and also about friends, families and customers who are no longer with us. Edward obviously, and Julia and many others too numerous to mention. This year we lost a number of people from the village, but the universe hates a vacuum and we have also had a number of new additions. Isatu Hyde has been a particularly brilliant recruit to BB and her studio is open this weekend - as are many others - as part of the Brampton Bryan Open Studios Christmas weekend.  She recently got a rave review in the Guardian so make sure you come and stock up with her beautiful bowls etc, before they all disappear.

This Christmas seems to be a particularly poignant one given the situation in the Middle East and the impact that it is having across the world. My stepfather Martin Benson was Jewish, and faced prejudice throughout his life. I am so sorry to hear that Jewish people in Britain are feeling afraid, and I pray that the current conflict with its grievous loss of life on both sides can be brought to an end as soon as possible. Inevitably it is the innocent who suffer and the pictures of little lifeless bodies drapped in makeshift shrouds would break the hardest heart.

One of the things I have always enjoyed in the bookshop is the way in which all the subjects which are meant to be banned from polite discussion - politics, religion, Royalty even what Private Eye used to call 'Ugandan Relations' - all get  talked about here with a degree of empathy and wish to see the other's point of view, that would be very useful in the Houses of Parliament. Perhaps people who like books are just particularly thoughtful, either way I am yet to hear any-one express anything other than the deepest of sorrows for both communities.