Apprentice makes good

Readers of this blog may remember that last summer we took on an apprentice, albeit fleetingly, Long Tom. He did well, showed promise, but decided to return to his studies. And this year he has proved that a wise decision by getting first class honours. Well done Long Tom from all at LLL.

I have just about finished sorting through the 22 trays of blocks I brought up from Dorset a couple of weeks ago - at the cost of the rear suspension in our car. It was a pretty unpleasant job, all the trays covered in dust and grease and the blocks themselves jumbled and muddled. Still, it is done now, trays cleaned and the blocks sorted by subject. Now the real work should begin....

Going off the rails

At Libre Livre we are going off the rails. Or to be precise, we are getting more and more fed up with the poor service on Southern Rail, delays, cancellations and persistent failure to give passengers the information they need to plan their journeys during times of disruption. Other people must be getting fed up too, as on a train last week the ticket inspector was acccompanied by an armed policeman!

We firmly believe the responsibility for the service quality lies with management, and strange to say the contact details for the managers of Southern Rail are not that easy to come by. After some searching around, however, we did find the name and address of the Managing Director and here, as a service to our customers and others, it is:

Mr Chris Burchell,
MD, Southern Rail
Go-Ahead House,
26-28 Addiscombe Road,
Croydon CR9 5GA

tel 020 8929 8682
email chris.burchell@southernrailway.com

Cost Control

Libre Livre being a small company we have a constant eye on costs. It is astonishing how small, seemingly trivial costs add up. Post and transport are a couple of examples, but communication is another. Telephone bills creep up insidiously, even for landlines. So by the time you have added in a few copper for the odd call to a mobile, a few more for line rental etc the monthly charge can often be quite substantial. We have recently been experimenting with Skype, a piece of software that requires no additonal line cost and where the cost of each call (calls between two pcs made from Skype to Skype are free, though calls to/from other 'phones are charged) can be seen deducted from the remainnig balance in your account. So far so good, but don't take our word for it, take a look for yourself: Skype

And when you've done it, if you do, don't forget to drop us a note of your contact details.

Cobblers

A visit to my local shoe-mender has alerted me to the fact that cobblers use hammers more or less identical to the backing hammers so beloved of bookbinders. That is not to say they are necessarily any cheaper, but you never know what you may find.

Incidentally, on another topic altogether we at LLL have decided to boycott Boots, whose new chief exec is the boy blunder of British banking - he didn't know his limitations in that industry and we are far from convinced that he knows them in this. "Pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap" may work ok in supermarkets, but it is not the philosophy we fancy underlying the purveyors of our medicaments.

A word of caution

I bought a new laptop last week from a local shop, small but apparently reputable. I don't consider myself a natural cynic, but in an idle moment I did check that the size of the RAM and the hard disc were in accordance with the specification. And though the RAM was ok, the hard disc was 40 gig smaller than it should have been. It's all sorted out now, but has left a nasty taste in my mouth. I'm just not sure; accident or design?

Down to Dorset

Just back from a trip to Dorset to collect some new type and blocks. East-west is not the easiest direction to travel in southern England and the journey took around 7 hours door to door to door, but it was worth it to get some fabulous blocks covering sports, vintage cars, cartoons, animals..... and as for the fonts...

Letterpress equipment is getting scare, and Livre Livre is always keen to expand our collection. If you have any, or hear of any , looking for a new owner please drop us a line - for contact details click here: Contact Libre Livre

(T)rain (t)rain go away....

The LLL team were up in town yesterday, worse luck. The rain was torrential all evening, and by the time we came to catch our train down to Sussex the rail network had become one vast soggy mass of inertia. Victoria was chaos. The esteemed management of Southern rail had made available no information that passengers might want concerning such complex questions as when the next train to the coast might depart, and from which platform.

On our train, when we eventually caught it, we noticed the "managing director of Southern rail" - if ever there was a misnomer...- huddled in a corner.... working hard at his emails. Good for him, a lad who knows his priorities, not talking (God forbid I should suggest apologising) to his customers for their inconvenience, his lack of a half-way decent contingency plan etc, not ensuring that pertinent information was broadcast, but diligently working away at his emails. A veritable Churchill of our age: I don;t think

A Private View

This weekend the head marbler and I visited a private view of the work of some local artists and printmakers at Pelham House hotel in the centre of Lewes. What an enjoyable evening. We met up with a number of old friends and binders from around Sussex and were particularly pleased to meet one of the artists, Charlotte Matthews, whose work is outstanding.

The theme of the exhibition, the prints of which have been bound together and are available as a book, is Tom Paine in Lewes. Charlotte's print is of the historic Market Tower, only a couple of hundred yards from our atelier.