The Bookshop Launch

It's time to launch my bookshop and I feel nervous. I had lots of good comments from my 'Alpha trialists' and burned up a lot of time incorporating the changes then wresting with some of the problems that occurred (I think the WebPlus helpdesk people are trying to avoid me). Thanks particularly to Bjorn, Pete and Fergus for detailed comments.

Why am I nervous? Well, for one, you never finish these things - there are always a few loose ends and the loose ends often unravel the whole thing so that a little tinkering turns into a major slab of work. For another there's a nasty thing called compatibility. There are lots of internet browsers around and lots of versions of them and I can't be sure that the site will be OK with all of them. It's like a teenagers trying to speak to a bunch of old farts - they all speak English but there can be - well - compatibility problems.

Meanwhile I'm still guiding - yesterday I handed out the first cards to a couple of tour groups. The cards point people towards this website so marketing has begun. They seemed very pleased to receive them.

My second tour yesterday was for a choir from South Africa. I was expecting lots of black faces but this choir of teenagers were almost entirely white. I met them at Rhodes House in Oxford and they were still eating brunch. I had to hang aroundwhile they finished and then had the pleasure of hearing them sing - marvellous, they were really very good. During the tour they were well behaved, bright and polite: the product of a school with religious affiliations. Hello to Hayden the rugby player who seemed to take a shine to me.