Speculation, Fact and Fiction

I got back from my trip to Croatia, where I was the guest of honour at Istrakon, on Monday evening. I had a really good time, both at the convention, and also thanks to the opportunities I had to see something of Pazin, in Istria, and Zagreb, and the spectacular scenery along the road between the two cities. I shall write a full report when time permits. Yesterday was picking up the domestic threads day, and today will be sorting out work-related stuff, which includes writing a book review by the end of the week, so it may take a while for me to find the time.

Checking my email, I find another bad news saga unfolding for bookselling in the British Isles. Borders are getting rid of their non-US operations, as reported in The Independent and The Guardian.

This has prompted some pertinent analysis of the state of play by Susan Mansfield in The Scotsman, with input from Mark Le Fanu of The Society of Authors, in The Telegraph, and also in a feature on debut novelists in The Guardian.

The consensus seems to be it really has never been tougher in the book trade. No, really. Honest.

So what next? According to The Scotsman, WHSmith may be interested in the Borders' airport shops, while Tim Waterstone might be interested in the rest of the business. According to The Observer, so might the Borders UK management team, or even James Heneage, original founder of Ottakar's.

Well, we shall just have to wait and see what we shall see. And keep writing, and hoping for some kind of outbreak of sanity, in the meantime.

There’s apparently word going around the local parents' grapevine of a website that kids can go to, enter a URL of something wholly unsuitable and reach it directly as this enables them to bypass whatever filter or internet security software might be on the computer they’re using.

There are some parents who might tell me this, and I’d be hard put not to hide my scepticism – urban legends and all that. Only the one who told me is usually pretty reliable – only, of course, she couldn’t recall the exact details of the website.

I’d be interested to know if anyone among the tech-savvy hereabouts has heard anything along these lines – and if so, I’d like to know the URL via direct email so I can bar it permanently on our system.

My sons are pretty good about behaving themselves - not least because of the world of trouble they got into the one time I did find something dodgy in their browser history. But I'd like to be one step ahead of temptation if at all possible.

Or to know this is just hysteria without foundation.