Newsletter

A manifesto which offered a warm and sunny Spring would scoop up all the votes. The rain is beating down, the wind sometimes catching a bucketful and throwing it against the window – that might even have been a rumble of thunder in the distance. The screaming Swifts and agile Swallows would do well to delay their arrival.

There’s a wonderful poster from the Second World War, it’s been titled ‘We Can Do It’ and was produced as a motivational image for workers at the US company Westinghouse. At a time when many men were away fighting, industries became reliant on women to provide the labour in the factories – the image has become iconic and a rallying call for strength and equality – it is simple, it is powerful and it is beautiful. These are the times for powerful icons, these are the times to be strong.

A switch has been thrown and as if by magic, conversations seem to be back in fashion. Now we’re able to mix with one another a little more freely, it seems we’ve re-discovered the joy of chatting. Subjects for discussion are wide and expansive, it’s like a dam has burst and the words come pouring out. Conversations in the shop have always been a ‘thing’, it’s a great place to chat, but being shut for three months it’s been a little quiet and has excluded those outside influences which come from meeting customers, publishers and other folk connected with what we do.

Like the unfurling of a bloom, petals turning to face the sun, the Town comes back to life – the busy’ness of commerce returns to these streets and lanes, the market on Friday, fully re-inflated, bounces through the day with gusto, smiling eyes and longed for conversations, the chatter in the book shop, the giggles from the children, the sights and sounds of people being together again – this is what makes Towns special, they’re not just places to buy, they’re places to be – and it’s so good to be back. Click on the image of Sheep Street below for a little film from fellow Bicestrian, Eddy Gong, it is a little piece of joy – putting the boost back into Booster!

The hawthorn blossom along Skimmingdish Lane is so fulsome at the moment, hedgerows with branches darting out in every direction, laden with white flowers like a head of mad, old white hair in need of a good cut. We have a few barbershops in town and on Monday they’ll be busy cutting their way through three months of growth, rooms full of chatter and the snip snip of scissors and sweep sweep of brushes – there is work to be done in those chairs and we wish them, and all our fellow shopkeepers in town, the best of luck in what is sure to be the strangest of days. The last thirteen or so months have taught all of us who have had to close our shops that fortitude and resilience are attributes which can see us through the darkest of times, for some those times have been, and have just become, some of the saddest and darkest ever experienced – but those times pass, the stone rolls on, it’s time to get back in the chair.

We’re under a flight-path at the moment, it’s qute noisy – the geese are the loudest, you can hear them from a way off, the rhythmic honking building to a chaotic crescendo as they clatter across the sky above. The ducks appear to have more energy, or is it that when in flight the small wings just need to work a little harder – the quacks more sporadic, an afterthought to staying aloft, whereas the occasional pair of swans has a grace which belies their size – the beat of their wings moving the air with a thud, thud, thud. All these returning tourists, about to touch down and make their way to the arrivals hall of Spring are a welcome sight and sound. This soundtrack of the changing season doesn’t just come from the sky, the gentle bleat of this year’s lambs as soft as the softest wool, the cow in the nearby barn mooing loudly as she prepares to calve – how lucky we are that mother nature is focused on the job in hand – the world still turns.