so farewell then octopus, ozcars, erotikars, whatever your name was...
A little kid was weeping and wailing as his mother tried to drag him into the shop. ‘Don’t like this bookshop!’, he whined. ‘Like the other bookshop!’ Could he have been a plant? Secretly working for W. H. Smith’s? I did wonder when his Mum asked why he preferred WHS and the boy replied: ‘Well Mummy, Ottakars’ don’t have the same range and depth of stock, and their displays are frankly uninspired.’
We need hardly worry, especially as we don’t exist anymore. By September we will have been ‘rebranded’ as Waterstone’s. However, on a recent course, I met up with Mark, an ex-colleague, and we have decided to form a secret society to keep the name of Ottakars’ alive. In our basement hideout we will wear our Ottakars' badges with pride (which is more than I ever did when it was functioning, of course) and bow down to a shrine dedicated to founder James Heneage, who we will bombard with e-mails and personal visits until he is forced to take out a restraining order on us.
At least they will not turn us into HMV now, as a record shop has finally appeared in Brentwood. I was dining with two of the staff from the old one (the notorious Moondance, aka Trumps) on Friday. Liz and Dave were talking about their ‘top fives’. Dave’s featured Mariah Carey and anyone who looks like her, and Liz’s was topped by Jon Finch (from Hitchcock’s Frenzy and Polanski’s Macbeth) because she has ‘a penchant for 70’s men’ (for a minute I thought she said ‘poncho’). They wouldn’t let me leave until I’d come up with a top five too, so on the spur of the moment I did, and here it is:
1.) Benny Hill
2.) Champion the Wonder Horse
3.) Sooty
4.) Hattie Jacques
5.) John Prescott
I wonder if I had the right idea. Actually, I’m a bit ashamed of the last one (I was in a hurry) and would ideally like to replace it with a Marks and Spencer’s Vanilla Bean and Maple Syrup Smoothie. Mind you, the last one I had was disappointingly thin.
Also, I didn’t realise at the time that Dave - that’s housemate Dave - was abused by Sooty as a child, which makes me feel I should have opted for Sweep, always the more intellectual one in that partnership anyway.
We need hardly worry, especially as we don’t exist anymore. By September we will have been ‘rebranded’ as Waterstone’s. However, on a recent course, I met up with Mark, an ex-colleague, and we have decided to form a secret society to keep the name of Ottakars’ alive. In our basement hideout we will wear our Ottakars' badges with pride (which is more than I ever did when it was functioning, of course) and bow down to a shrine dedicated to founder James Heneage, who we will bombard with e-mails and personal visits until he is forced to take out a restraining order on us.
At least they will not turn us into HMV now, as a record shop has finally appeared in Brentwood. I was dining with two of the staff from the old one (the notorious Moondance, aka Trumps) on Friday. Liz and Dave were talking about their ‘top fives’. Dave’s featured Mariah Carey and anyone who looks like her, and Liz’s was topped by Jon Finch (from Hitchcock’s Frenzy and Polanski’s Macbeth) because she has ‘a penchant for 70’s men’ (for a minute I thought she said ‘poncho’). They wouldn’t let me leave until I’d come up with a top five too, so on the spur of the moment I did, and here it is:
1.) Benny Hill
2.) Champion the Wonder Horse
3.) Sooty
4.) Hattie Jacques
5.) John Prescott
I wonder if I had the right idea. Actually, I’m a bit ashamed of the last one (I was in a hurry) and would ideally like to replace it with a Marks and Spencer’s Vanilla Bean and Maple Syrup Smoothie. Mind you, the last one I had was disappointingly thin.
Also, I didn’t realise at the time that Dave - that’s housemate Dave - was abused by Sooty as a child, which makes me feel I should have opted for Sweep, always the more intellectual one in that partnership anyway.
posted by martin at 3:34 AM
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