Motherly love...

On Monday morning I arrived at work and found a copy of the News of the World in the staff room! I have just employed several new Sunday people and they all seemed intelligent and well-adjusted, but there was obviously a cuckoo in the nest.

I trawled through the employee handbook to see whether there were legal grounds for sacking someone on the basis of what newspaper they read, but it was unclear what I should do. Then I noticed that there had been a free DVD of a George A Romero film and it all made sense. Johnny. I breathed a sigh of relief, sat down and spent the next hour reading the newspaper, where I found this particularly depressing article...


Interviewed by a News of the World journalist, Kerry Katona's mother Sue gives a life-affirming account of the mother-daughter relationship. After describing how Kerry lost her virginity at 14, Sue recounts an episode that took place three years later when Kerry was sleeping with Sue's employer.

'The bloke was 25, a cheeky Scouser called Dean, and I was absolutely furious. I knew he was a bastard and I didn't want a man like that going with my daughter, never mind sleeping with her. And he was courting someone.'

Fair enough, but what was Sue's novel solution to the problem?

'One night after work...he offered me a lift home and said he has some wine for us to drink. I f***** him that night, purely so I could tell Kerry what he was really like and end the relationship. Next day I went to see her and said that I'd f***** your boyfriend last night. She asked why and I told her it was to show her what a total c*** he was.'

The next day, Sue went into work and 'beat the guy up...because he'd cheated on my daughter.'

Yes, with YOU Sue!

Sue then goes on to relate an incident when Kerry, still a schoolgirl, asked how mother about oral sex. 'I told her to get a carrot out of the fridge and I showed her. It may not be conventional , but that's the way I did it.'

Nice.

'I've been out with some bad men and Kerry saw things as a kid she shouldn't have. And when I lived with a woman called Tina she got bullied at school because her mum was a lesbian. I beat up the teacher because he did nothing about it. Tina and I finally split because she beat me up - then I knifed her and she needed 17 stitches.'

Later, 'fame-hungry' Kerry sneaked off to have topless photos taken. As she was still legally underage this action prompted a call from social services. A social worker turned up at the Katona household and his gay persona prompted Sue to comment 'You wouldn't have a problem if she had a dick, would you!'

Next to this article there is a short interview with Sue's sister Josie who claims that Kerry and Sue snort coke together.

By this point I felt totally depressed by what I'd read. I'd like to think that the whole thing was a tabloid fabrication, but it's horribly plausible. There is an underclass in this country that seem to inhabit a different universe and I don't know why this is. Once we would have cited poverty as the cause, but it is more complicated than that.

My mother grew up in relative poverty: a family of six occupying the upstairs floor of a small, semi-detached house, three sisters sharing a bed and the parents sleeping in a large cupboard. However, like many people in her class, her family had a strong moral framework and would have rather starved to death than take something that didn't belong to them.

How have people like Sue Katona come to exist? Why have things changed? Is it the collapse of organised religion, the breakdown of local communities, the influence of American film and television, the benefits culture, the consumer culture, post-modernism or all of these that have created a climate in which Kerry Katona is now described as a 'role model'?

Mentioning the War...

One of the best films in recent years is Downfall. Seeing the Second World War from the German perspective is always fascinating and Bruno Ganz's portrayal of Hitler has got to be one of the ten greatest performances in the history of cinema.

However Downfall has eclipsed another fine German movie, Sophie Scholl, which depicts the true story of a 21-year-old German girl who was executed for treason in 1943. I'm not quite sure why the film focused almost entirely on Sophie, as her brother and a friend were also captured and subjected to a kangaroo court before being condemned to death with her, but the result is a success. Julia Jentsch (who was also in The Edukators) delivers a mesmerising performance as Sophie Scholl and quite rightly won the Best Actress award at the European Film Academy Awards of 2005.

Sophie Scholl also beat two excellent films, Hidden and My Summer of Love to win the Best Film award which is slightly surprising, as this is in many ways the least challenging of the three films.

Perhaps what is so remarkable about this film is the insight that it gives into an aspect of Nazi Germany that so few of us are aware of. We talk of the Germans and the Nazis as if they were one and the same thing and see no dichotomy between belligerent, bellicose country that conquered most of Europe in the 40s and the peaceful democracy that gave us the soporific tones of James Last and Richard Clayderman.

During the war it was necessary to portray the enemy as universally evil, but sadly this propaganda has become embedded in the national psyche and remains with us today. How many people are aware of the fact that the Communist Party was as big as the National Socialist movement before Hitler took power and erradicated all opposition? Of course it could be argued that it is typical that a German film should focus on an isolated act of heroism rather than the more general atrocities committed by hundreds of thousands of Germans, but I think the film served a very useful purpose. The many millions of Germans who weren't Nazi didn't all disappear or convert overnight. They felt impotent in the face of a totalitarian state and remained silent.

Sophie Scholl is a tribute to the bravery of the few, but also a reminder of how dificult it was for ordinary Germans to fight Naziism. Sophie and Hans Scholl tried and paid the price.

The future of bookselling

Last Christmas was, perhaps, the most important one for the book trade since the demise of the Net Book Agreement. The tills rang as usual and thousands of books were sold, but the end results made dismal reading for most booksellers thanks to a fundamental shift in the way people buy books. Internet retailing has revolutionised bookselling, particularly since internet usage has changed from being the province of geeks to a mainstream activity and now 60% of people in Britain shop online. But in addition to internet retailing, bookshops have also faced competition from supermarkets who buy in bulk and sell cheap.

Last year, when highstreet booksellers realised that the sales weren't coming through, they began an orgy of price cutting that led to many key titles being sold at cost price. The end result of this was the the profits were slashed and one chain went to the wall.

This Christmas Waterstone's has said that it is going to keep its nerve and focus on the positives. They have doubled their marketing spend and have taken the radical step of advertising in the Sun, which would probably have Tim Waterstone turning in his grave if he wasn't still alive. They also hope that the acquisition of Ottakar's and the resumption of independent online trading will herald a stronger Christmas. But will it?

There is certainly a strong selection of titles this year and the pricing is very competitive, but what I hear on the shop floor alarms me. Customers seem very clued-up. They like our wide range of books and we're their first port of call when they want to make a buying decision, but once they've chosen a title there is no guarantee that they'll buy it from us. I overhear people saying that they'll buy it from Amazon or try the competition first. Even if we've taken £7 off a hardback novel, customers often believe that there's a better deal out there.

When I try to explain this fundamental change to people, the stock response is 'Oh but people will always want to buy books in bookshops.' Well yes, maybe, but it is not enough to keep half or even three quarters of your customers. I once ran a shop which took around £60,000 a month. The rent and rates were £15,000 per month, the wage bill was about £10,000 and this the stock cost about £35,000. Add heating, lighting, banking and other occupational costs and we were struggling for most of the year. The only thing that kept us afloat was the prospect of making £200,000 in December.

If bookshops like for like sales continue to collapse, then we will see closures. Independent booksellers may feel a certain schadenfreude if Waterstone's fails, but anyone who cares about books should support the high street, chains or otherwise. I remember the misery of having nowhere to buy books except a drab, poorly stocked independent run by a misanthropist, or WH Smith's. Waterstone's revitalised bookselling bringing city centre standards to small towns and while some independents died, many good ones continued to prosper.

My gut feeling is that book retailing has over-expanded during the last twenty years and will go through a period of contraction before it re-adjusts itself. Shops in downmarket towns and those with high rents may go to the wall, but the majority will probably survive. I am convinced that most readers want bookshops, but in a world where time is as important as money, people will also opt for the convenience of the supermarket and on-line bookstore.

There are a lot of changes taking place in Waterstone's under its new managing director and from what I can see, he's doing all the right things for a large retail chain. He's invested in on-line bookselling, tried to make Waterstone's more accessible to the non-traditional book buyer and is maintaining a sensible price strategy. But will this be enough? I certainly no longer feel that I have a secure job any more and even if I do, will I want to stay?

POSTSCRIPT - AUGUST 2013: Just over a year after writing this post, I took the 'jump before you're pushed' option and left Waterstone's. Since then, I've watched the chain go through a slow and steady decline (almost going under a couple of years ago), while Borders and many a good independent have disappeared from the high street. I saw the writing on the wall seven years ago, but underestimated the scale of the collapse and failed to foresee just how big an impact the ebook and smartphone would have on the bookselling environment. We need bookshops - browsing online is pretty frustrating - but don't seem to be prepared to pay for them.

The Turn of the Screw

After the success of my first experience with opera, I decided to visit Glyndebourne to see Benjamin Britten's adaptation of Henry James' 'Turn of the Screw'. Glyndebourne is weird. It is as if someone has picked up a chunk of London's South Bank complex and dropped it into a field in the middle of the Sussex Downs. It has a decent sized concert hall and stage, a top class restaurant and a massive car park, but driving down the narrow country lanes that approach it, you could easily miss the turning. I only found Glyndebourne because I was stuck behind a Toyata Prius and one guessed that the sort of person who could afford one would probably be going to Glyndebourne. Luckily I was right.

The evening was a huge disappointment. The production was good but I realised that I didn't like the music, which lacked heart, and I also had no idea what was going on. The Shostakovich opera I saw last week was in Russian, so there were 'surtitles'. Britten's opera was in English and surtitles weren't deemed necessary, but I couldn't understand a word anyone was saying through the throaty vibratos.

After the first half hour the dim lighting had a soporific effect on me and I started to nod off. By the end of the first act I had woken up but was faced with a dilemma: should I stay or should I go? Reader, I went.

I was tempted to stay. I didn't like the idea of giving up on an important work of art and I also felt that I should get my money's worth, but I also thought that life is too short to put myself through another hour of torment so when the interval began, I walked to my car and drove home. That is the plus side of going to things on your own - if you don't like it you can just go.