Blog post

Hello! Three things.

1) Power 2010 / Unlock Democracy is featuring some interesting ideas for democratic reform from the many little larabuckertons of "Blogland."

2) Meanwhile, I visited London this weekend to look for survivors and found nothing but bookshops. The bookartbookshop near Old Street tube station is a sweet little diving bell, stacked with pretty little hand-mades and a few poetic bots and bibs. Definitely worth a lick of its icing, but it has funny opening times so make sure you have a giggle at them before you go.

While you're securing the area, there's a little bookshop in Old Street station itself. Full prices, but "stacky" like a second hand bookshop, so I didn't feel afraid, and for its size it's a good selection of genre and cult stuff.

Altogether grittier is the Barnardo's charity shop near Brixton Tube, where Bon Jovi side-projects and suspect baby slippers mingle with rare and sacred texts of the contemporary avant garde -- you know, Articulate How, Eckhart Cars, that sort of thing. It probably won't be long before they clear either the poetry or the slippers out to make room for the other, so hurry girls!

I'd also recommend, back in Edinburgh, Armchair Books, which is along from Grassmarket. It has a nice large jumble of science fiction, fantasy and horror, and a large antiquarian collection whose books I can't afford, but whose titles made me titter melodiously. Two notices, "This bookshop may revert to a private residence at any moment," and "Please don't piss against the door -- it runs into the shop" also trickled under my fancy.

I haven't visited Peter Bell Books next door, but doesn't it sound trustworthy? Like a Praxis MP!

3) I'm guest-editing the "Scotland" bit of an online poetry journal, Sleeves run I think by Marcus Sleeves? I met him at a sort of poetry rodeo thing in London, he has very pure skin like a baby and carries a moustache comb. So do send me your poems, if you live in Scotland (larabuckerton at "gee, male!" dot com), or let's say down to Newcastle, by the end of November.

4) There are now four bald men and one with a ponytail opposite me clustered around a Toshiba laptop watching something that goes "Aaargh! Eugh! Aaaargh! Bchkew!! Bchkew!! Aaaaargh!!"

Looters xxx