Exciting and New

Spring is here, at last!  It has been a long hard winter this year.  We are bracing ourselves for the future as we are being told that we are heading into the worst el Nino conditions this October to January.  But that was not the exciting news, far from it.

No, the exciting bit is that we have put our bookshop online so you can now buy from the books you have seen in our Lockhart shop, in between visits to the town.  It is something we have wanted to do for a while now so we can better promote our physical presence by venturing into the online world.  We still encourage people to visit and discover us in Lockhart which is a pretty little spot in the Riverina but we understand that Lockhart is not exactly on the regular route map for many and you might only be in town once or twice a year.

I am working each day to put more of our extensive stock on the website so keep an eye out on a regular basis as it is worth seeing what is new.  We run a browsing shop where you have the opportunity to stumble across gems you never knew about or were on your 'one day' list but if you don't see what you are looking for, you are welcome to contact us via the store website and we will see if we have what you want in our 'yet to be catalogued' pile.  As you can imagine, it is quite a task and we were eager to get the site up and running and too impatient to wait until I had everything entered to 'go live'.  My goal is to catalogue a pile of at least ten books a day so there will be something new all the time.

Here's the link to the new bluebird-books shop.  www.bluebird-books.com  Have fun shopping for a good book and remember, we hand pick our stock based on my long library background of reading and matching readers with good books.  I know a lot of readers and they have been recommending books to me for many years so I rely on their impeccable taste as much as my own.  I have also stocked the shop with books I've read with my many book groups.  You won't find any of the well-known mass produced romance series or churned out mysteries in our collection I'm afraid.  And I haven't gone for fantasy collections either for the simple reason that if you don't have the whole series all the time then you are usually missing the one particular book that the serious collector is looking for.  No, we specialise in good fiction, literature but not high-brow literary, Australian and New Zealand works, some classics, small print run local histories and a selection of Australian historical texts from a private academic collection.

Read and Enjoy.

Snow falling on NSW

I wish that I could publish photos of snow on our blog as other NSW towns have been able to but despite the rumours, I have not seen any snow in Lockhart over the last weeks of the so-called 'Antarctic Vortex' that we have been experiencing.  I have however, been indulging in an equally fun aspect of winter, that being curling up with a book in a warm bed of an evening.

In the last couple of months of winter I have read two of the Joy Dettman Woody Creek books, true stories 'A street cat named Bob', Making the rounds with Oscar' and 'The house of grief'.

Joy Dettman is a master storyteller and I mean that because she manages to write basically a period soap opera drama that hooked me, a cynic, straight in.  And how does she do this?  Joy is an incredibly adept 'character craftswoman'.  She writes amazingly simple yet incredibly engaging and believable characters that keep readers like me (and my mum) reading when we openly admit that the storylines are silly and soapy.  Ah, but what does that matter in a bit of winter escapism.  I have always said that there is a place in life for reading escapism and so I applaud Joy's skill at being able to suck a cynic into her six book series.  At the end of book two 'Thorn on a rose', I told myself that the plot was implausible and I would not read any further but that did not hold me back for more than a week from plunging into book three 'Moth to a flame'.  Oh, how quickly I abandoned my literary snobbery and opted instead for the pure pleasure of reading and escapism and I am not ashamed.  There is a time and place for relax-a-read and winter is the perfect excuse.  So go for it, in spite of myself, I recommend Joy Dettman's Woody Creek series of which the first book is 'Pearl in a cage'.  I just sold it over the weekend but we still have a number of the books in our shop.

Besides, I think I needed escapism after bravely plowing my way through the harrowing tale of the Farquharson trial in Helen Garner's 'House of Grief'.  It was an engrossing book thanks to the skill of Helen Garner at describing her obsession.  Basically Helen spent years in the press gallery of the High Court in Melbourne following the trials of a father accused of drowning his three sons.  Helen examines public reaction for and against the idea that a loving father could kill his family supposedly to revenge himself on his ex-wife who was getting on with life when he was a broken man who could not.  Many could not believe that an average man and good father could possibly have killed his own children and yet it does happen.  The book was fascinating but I did feel weighed down by it and needed escape afterwards.

The two cat stories provided that in some ways but both touched me in different ways.  They provided a much needed emotional release and an excuse for an indulgent cry.  I believe that we need a private tearful release from time to time to help us deal with all those circumstances in life when as adults, it is not appropriate to throw tantrums or howl in frustration.  Books like 'A street cat named Bob' and 'Making the rounds with Oscar' also remind me how fortunate I have been in life.

The story of Bob and recovering heroin addict James Bowen really touched me.  The ginger cat who would be just an average cat if not for the fact that he was so laid back and tolerant that he could cope with living on the streets of London and busking in busy thoroughfares with his pal James.  For James, caring for his stray friend gave him a reason to pick himself up and get his life in order.  He admits that until meeting Bob, he had led a selfish existence but the wee cat spurred him into the responsibility of looking after someone other than himself.  The pair have become a YouTube sensation with James having penned three bestselling books about their lives as official Big Issue sellers in London.

'Making the rounds with Oscar' is similarly about a special cat.  Oscar is among a number of cats living in Steere House nursing home and helping with the treatment of dementia patients and their families.  Oscar however has the gift of knowing when a patient is close to death and staying with them to provide care and comfort in the last hours of life.  Ordinarily he is standoffish but curls up with a terminally ill patient in need of his comforting presence.  Two feel-good books.  I want my next book to be set in a warm sunny place.  I might take on a Joanne Harris book set in a french summer.  I am looking forward to reading Harper Lee's 'Go set a watchman' but as I have put it on my birthday wish list, I will have to wait another month to see if I am lucky.

On the Road

Apologies to any visitors planning to stop in at The Blue Bird this coming weekend (2nd and 3rd May).  The shop will be closed as we are taking our books on a road trip to The Clunes Booktown Festival in Victoria (near Ballarat).  We are building more and more on the Blue Bird Bookshop and felt that Clunes was a great opportunity to get our name out there in the wider world.

A fella spotted me reading during a quiet moment in the cafe the other day.  "You have time to read?" he asked in a scolding tone.  "I make time because reading is very important'" was my reply.  And I meant it.  For a year while we slogged away trying to start a new business and find our niche, I was so tired that I lost the desire to read.  I would pick up one of our books every once in a while and read a few pages but I didn't get into any of them and I was worried that I had lost that immeasurably important habit of reading.  And it is extremely important.  Reading not only broadens your world view and fills the soul with experience but just the simple act of digesting words on a page keeps your brain active and challenged.  If you let the skill slip, you risk losing it to some degree.  Mental activity is as important to our health and well being as physical activity so I was being very slack about looking after myself.  I work very hard, harder than most people probably see and I am very tired indeed.  We all need a little escape to keep us on the straight and narrow.

At a time when exhaustion and depression was getting me down I picked up Tony Birch's book "Blood".  It is not an upliftingly light story but a tale of hardship, personal battles and family bonds.  His writing easily allowed me to put myself into the place of the characters even though I have fortunately never been through the desperation they experienced.  Nevertheless, I could see how easy it would be to sink to such depths and I knew people who had come close so I I was completely engrossed in the characters and the story.  It was a real page turner and I thank Tony for his amazing ability to create such wonderful writing.  I have loved every one of his books so far and now eagerly await his next.  And most of all I am grateful that he propelled me back into reading is such a dramatic way.  Since then I have easily slipped into every book I have picked up and have remembered how truly important it is to MAKE TIME in our ridiculously busy lives to read.  And so it is without shame or need for excuse that I was able to reply to my critical customer that I, just as much as any other person, am entitled to incorporate reading into my day.  It is for the benefit of the well being of the world.

But that is beside the point.  It also made me realise that the cafe side of our business had been allowed to take too much time priority over the bookshop.  We are working on that balance as our original dream of running a quality second-hand bookshop with coffee and some light meals seemed to be fading from our business plan.  Plans change and evolve as time moves and shapes them but it is important to revisit those original dreams to see if they are still valid and still achievable.  And we believe that they are.  There is always room for a bookshop with a quality collection and now, more than ever, it is important for the world to read and broaden horizons.

So we are spending the weekend in Clunes among other book traders and readers and it will be a fantastic opportunity for us to connect with like-minded people who love books and reading.  Nourish the mind and soul with a good book today and make the world a better place.

Australia All Over

If you are not a fan of the ABC Radio's Ian (Macca) McNamara's regular Sunday morning programme 'Australia All Over' then you missed out on a gem last week.  This Sunday just gone Roger and I were on the show!  Ian caught us at the Eat Local Thursday Market in Wagga and he asked us where we were from.  We gave him a potted history of the Blue Bird and he was charmed by the story of the resilience of Kyriakoula overcoming sudden widowhood with a large young family.  Not to mention Jack and Peter, the colourful characters behind the bar at the cafe.  It was fun hearing ourselves on the radio so I wanted to share the interview for anyone who missed it.  We are about 5 mins 20 in on the podcast.

Australia All Over Podcast Sunday 22 February 2015 

Booth Boost

Late last year the booths went back in.  It saw the completion of a project that had caused us much heartache over the last two years.  We never intended them to be absent from the cafe for so long however a long priority list, logistics and the sheer amount of work that was overwhelming us meant that it took two years before everyone else was finally able to see the vision I had for the cafe from that first day.  I had been steadfastly holding an image in my head, resisting the doubts and the doubters, knowing that it would all be worth the heartache in the end.

In the meantime we tried to reassure customers who recognised that there was something missing from the cafe.  We fielded the frequent question: "why did you take them out?  Didn't you like the booths?"  Unthinkable.  Of course we loved them and felt that they were an intrinsic part of the cafe.  It was not complete without them but there was one light bulb moment some months ago when we realised why so many people were puzzled and in some instances, angry about their absence.  The booths are deeply personal.  People have memories of booths in cafes all around the country that tie into important life moments.  It doesn't matter that you may not have ever been into The Blue Bird in Lockhart before but people recall booths in the cafe that used to be in your home town.  And as one of the last remaining Greek cafes intact, The Blue Bird represents those moments in people's lives when important things happened.  And so I was inspired to write a piece about the booths and am pleased to say that the ABC Open has published my essay.  It is the first story about The Blue Bird but it will not be the last.  Others are already in the pipeline and I am working on a book about the history of the cafe.  You can read a taste of things to come on the ABC Open.

https://open.abc.net.au/explore/88989

The Ghosts of Christmas Past

I guess it is too late to wish the world a happy Christmas.  I don't really go in for tradition though, our Christmas window display this year says as much.  There was no tinsel in sight, no holly, no snow, no Santa.  I always feel sorry for anyone having to wear the red suit in the antipodean heat.

My Christmas display was simple and understated but it caught a lot of people's attention and plenty of comments.  I found an old Lockhart newspaper from December 1952 which featured advertisements placed by the Lockhart and district business people and shopkeepers wishing their customers a happy Christmas.  I cut these advertisements out and pasted them kindergarten style onto cardboard with the heading.  Happy Christmas from the businesses of Lockhart in 1952, do you remember these shops and where they were in the street?  Plenty of people let me know what they remembered and it was interesting which memories stood out.  For instance Alf Watson the milkman was also the night soil collector..although not I think, at the same time.  He must have been an early riser all his working career because both jobs took place in the dark while most of the town would have still been sleeping.

Les Paterson mended shoes and people remembered him for his wooden leg and his drinking habits.  There were a few names remembered as returned diggers from the war who had suffered wounds and were never quite the same.  The publicans were well remembered although most people commented that the pubs, The Gunyah, The Railway and The Commercial, changed hands that often that it would have been tricky to remember who was where at which time without the confirmation that the ads were from 1952.

The Monterey and The Blue Bird cafes were well remembered of course.  They were at the height of their rivalry for top Greek cafe in town at the time.  Leo Vakas was basking in his newly decorated fine example of a Hollywood style milk bar and the Veneris family was settling in to running The Blue Bird without the help of their Matis cousins.

My interest was caught by the first mention I have come across about two other cafes in Lockhart.  Mrs Biscaya's Aussie Cafe and Fred Winnell's Lattice Cafe.  Where were they and how well did they go against the fierce competition from the two Greek cafes?  Most people remembered The Aussie Cafe.  It was down the western end of Green Street and at least one person mentioned that there was also a fish and chip shop somewhere nearby.  The Aussie Cafe seemed to do all the same things that the Greek cafes did, light luncheons, morning and afternoon teas, dinners.  People were more vague about The Lattice Cafe.  It seemed to have been in a two storeyed building on the opposite side of the road and up the Blue Bird end.  I wondered (and still do), if it was the business that took over from The Paragon Cafe when it was vacated by the Veneris and Matis families.  No one seems to remember what happened to either cafe or to the building.  They are very clear about many places and landmarks but the fate of The Paragon building seems to have slipped from the collective Lockhart memory.  And it makes me curious.  What happened to the building?  Why was it demolished or destroyed?  And why can no one tell me what was built in its place.  The theory seems to be that the old Paragon site is still vacant land to this day.  There are two on that side of the street but if so, why has it never been developed and who owns it.  The detective in me wants to know but until someone with a better memory than most in town comes forth, I may have to go on theorising.  Was it the site of some disaster or tragedy?  Is there a dark past to it?  Is there a story that the town at the time wanted to forget and now it is so far in the past that it really has been forgotten?  As Alice in Wonderland once said, curiouser and curiouser.

Eat Local, Live long and Prosper

The Blue Bird Cafe duo (that would be Roger and Me), has joined the Eat Local Thursday Market as stallholders.  We have decided to focus our market offerings on our gluten-free range of food.  Last Thursday was our first foray into the market which operates at the Murrumbidgee Turf Club in Wagga Wagga between 2.30 and 6.30pm.  We really enjoyed meeting the other local food producers and felt so welcomed by their friendliness that we knew that it was the right decision to bring our food out of the cafe for a day a week and introduce it to a new audience.  We know that there are many people out there who have made the gluten-free commitment and we enjoy the challenge of catering for their needs.

Last week we had Christmas cakes, Christmas stuffing, Roger's Rock Show sauce, luxury fudge and gluten-free party popcorn mix.  We also took along our special CLOey fertiliser to share with the market stallholders.  This week we will have ready-to-heat gluten-free meals, retro chocky rocks, lemon teacake, chocolate nut biscuits and gluten-free jelly slice.

The raison d'etre for the market is to provide an outlet for local food produces to sell their specialties to an urban public.  There is an emphasis on organic produce and the stallholders support each other by buying ingredients from each other.  So the tomatoes in Roger's sauce are locally grown and we get to hand pick them at the market.  And so on.  We look forward to this week and meeting more like-minded food produces and buyers.