There is No Such Thing as the Perfect Christmas

As you can see from the title today, I wanted to talk about Christmas.  The whole event seems to start a lot earlier than it did when I was younger, but then maybe Im just turning into a grumpy old woman (no comments on that score from my nearest and dearest please).  From a commercial point of view I totally get that the need to buy in your stock, materials and do your advertising is a must in order to make those extra sales which will tide you over what I call the dark time in January and February until Valentines Day arrives when hopefully sales will, for some of us, take off again. 

However, from a personal point of view the pressure on all of us to be "happy" at Christmas is so awful.  There are lots of adverts on television showing the "perfect" Christmas meal, the perfect day, tree, family, presents.  In reality this is never the case. 

Speaking totally from the heart my happiest Christmases were those when my husband was alive.  The lead up to Christmas was so good, when we could share the shopping, the card writing, present wrapping and the day itself.  I still love to see the children open their presents and spend time with my family and friends but there is always an empty space.  I am sure this is the same for anyone who has lost someone they care about. 

So because I don't find Christmas easy without my husband I decided not long after he died that I was going to accept that it wouldn't be "perfect" for me, instead I just made it another day but one to spend with family.  Accepting this has made it easier for me to deal with the whole process because time doesn't change the feelings of loss, time just makes you learn to live with that loss.  In a way I look on grief as similar to post traumatic stress, you relive events in your mind, have flashbacks and memories and then slowly learn to put the pieces back together again.

Then there are those who suffer with mental health issues, cancer, disease of any kind that too impacts upon the time of year, for some it can be a living hell to have to be surrounded by too many people, its too much to cope with.  I wish for them a peaceful time and the courage to face the day in their own way and to do whatever it takes for them to say this is how I look at Christmas and it doesn't matter that its not how everyone thinks you should look at it. 

And of course, there are our own families, those relatives you don't really want to see, who drive you up the wall, who always drink too much or who complain loudly about everything (mental note to self, stop being a grumpy old woman).  Those whose children don't possess good manners and constantly whinge and whine, Im sure we all have some of those in our family, its like the old saying goes, "You can choose your friends but you cant choose your family!"

Also there is the cost of presents, food, cards, postage, the list goes on.  If, like us, you don't have a great deal of spare cash, then it can greatly add to the stress of everyday living to have to find the extra money for all of these things.  I have never been the parent who buys their child the latest toy, I have a budget and stick to that.  Rather I buy several small presents, more to open under the tree and more to do if they get bored, not that my girls ever seem to.  We still do stockings and as time has gone on the gifts are changing, this year it will be make up, nail varnish, toiletries.  Again, lots of little things that I can pick up throughout the year.

More and more I am trying to make this time of year a time for family and friends, not for money and waste.  I feel very strongly that losing my husband made me value my family all the more for who knows how long any of us is going to be here.  I want to be able to look back and say I gave time to my family, for me that is the best gift there is, spending time with the people who make up the structure of our lives, even if they do drive us up the wall sometimes!!

Have a lovely time whatever and however you choose to do it and I wish you peace and happiness for the year ahead.

CANCELLATIONS AND CHRISTMAS

Ive talked about craft fairs before on this blog.  Some are good and some are brilliant and some are just a plain washout, its just part of the game.  You win some you lose some, however when people invite you to a craft fair that is supposedly going to be a big event, especially near to Christmas and then it gets cancelled with about a fortnight's notice that is something that really annoys me and its happened not once, but twice now with the same organisers.

I am using the term "organisers" loosely here as it seems there is one spokesperson for a team of people in our local town who just don't seem to be able to get themselves sorted out, neither do they seem to be able to realise that for those of us who run a business its not the simplest thing to just find another venue or to make up the loss of potential earnings at such short notice. 

I think the problem is that most of the people involved in these events do not actually run business' themselves so have little idea of what is involved in the process. 

I do feel like a bit of a yo yo when this occurs though, I post on my page that Im going to be attending such and such event and then Im having to say its cancelled. 

It will also mean that many of us will no longer wish to be bothered with these organisers as we will all doubt whether the actual events are going to go ahead after all.

So now I am left with the problem again of trying to find another venue at VERY short notice to replace the lost one in order to make sure I can make up my lost earnings so we can have a Christmas.

 

IMITATION IS THE BEST FORM OF FLATTERY?????

Im sat here wrestling with a bit of a problem.  For a little while now I have had the feeling that a couple of other people on Facebook have been imitating my work.  Now I know that, like the title of this blog says Imitation is supposed to be a form of flattery, in other words, copying something you like is supposed to be a compliment to the original designer, however, I am getting a little bit fed up with providing ideas for my competitors.

Why can they not come up with their own designs??  I have been doing a lot of hard work on the internet, late hours and long ones, researching Egyptian, Celtic and Art Deco styles of jewellery and coming up with some original pieces as a result. 

I also spend a lot of time networking and promoting my page only to find that the same person is trotting along behind me the next day posting similar things about their work and themselves.  Not nice!!!

So if any of them happen to come along and read this blog, and you will know who you are,  just stop it please, make your business grow because of yourself, not because you are hanging off the back of someone else, don't be lazy and use your own imaginations to come up with your OWN designs not mine!!

That's that off my chest.  And now I am off to the workroom to finish some pieces off for the new retail outlet in Weymouth which I am looking forward to visiting next week.  The new owner sounds lovely, we have spoken on the phone and I think we are going to get on very well together.

So a brief blog, but necessary as I cant always say these things on my page as it doesn't look professional but I can rant on here.
 

New Beginnings

Yesterday I reached a bit of a milestone.  I know I have talked before about finances and how we all struggle to make ends meet.  Well a lot of you probably don't know that I had, for five years, been making regular monthly payments into an IVA or an Individual Voluntary Arrangement.  Its a form of insolvency but one that was brought in some years ago to prevent the person undertaking the agreement from losing their home and all their assets. 

When I remarried in 1999 I hadn't realised that my late husband had so much personal debt.  It wasn't something that had been revealed to me, he wasn't very good at money, as simple as that and had a lot of debt that had built up from his first marriage.  So because he wasn't very good at sums, handling money etc, most of his cards, accounts etc were put in joint names with me so that I could talk to the creditors and try to make some sense of everything and put payment arrangements in place.  So, consequently when he died they came after me for the lot.

I struggled with this for four years after his death and eventually I couldn't deal with it any longer, both financially and emotionally so I decided to declare myself bankrupt and if I lost the house well so be it because I just didn't care anymore by that stage.  You see it doesn't seem to matter if someone is left on their own to these people, and by that I mean banks, credit card companies, no matter what the circumstances they just assume you must have run the debts up yourself and you are judged quite harshly in some cases, there is no sympathy, no compassion.  I watched a programme on t.v. once about personal debt and how it happened and they were interviewing one poor man who had lost his business, his wife and kids and his home all because his business went bust due to the economic downturn.  They asked him how it was that he thought he had got into this "mess"  and he replied all because of circumstances beyond my control.

And its true, I fell in love with someone who owed money, not that I was aware of that of course, had I been and had he been more prepared to face reality and deal with his situation it could have been changed.  But that's just the type of person he was and no one of us is perfect, we all have flaws and that was his.  So when that man died very suddenly, without life insurance, leaving me with £26,000 of debt (and that was half of what it had been) what was I to do. 

So as I said, I decided to declare myself bankrupt.  I googled firms that would deal with these issues and came across a firm called Baines and Ernst.  Now I was familiar with these people having dealt with them in cases of firms going out of business when working with a brick merchant during the time that a lot of the small building firms went to the wall. 

I rang them and got talking to a really nice guy, explained how things were, what had caused me to get on this road and said I needed help.  He in turn explained to me about the IVA and I opted to take that route.  When they told me to go into town the next day, change my bank account and just stop paying everything I was very scared.  No seriously, obviously not your mortgage, insurances, the important things, gas, electric bills but go and stop paying all the creditors. 

So I did, took a deep breath and just did it.  The relief was indescribable at that point.  I really felt as though a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.  And really to be honest, it wasn't my debt but the debt from my late husband and his first wife and where was she?  Sitting pretty having walked away from their marriage and left him to pick up the pieces.  I really do feel resentful about that one.  Maybe there is some Karma in there somewhere that I had to take responsibility for the mess they made.  It will take time for me not to be cross on that score.  Im working on it.

Obviously there was paperwork to be filled in, and a county court hearing, not that I was required to attend but to be honest I felt really ashamed and have done so for five years, ashamed that I had to do that, ashamed that I hadn't been able to manage and pay for everything, but why should I have  felt like that when it wasn't my fault.  Why should I have been ashamed to hold my head up in front of my friends and my family and even my own children, what is it about our society that makes people feel this way when something happens beyond their control.  I think others are far too quick to judge and to come to conclusions without knowing the full situation.  I also think that the call handlers at the credit card companies and the banks should be trained to be more compassionate and sympathetic towards people in these situations.

Mind you, its opened my eyes to the world as it is.  I have become quite hardened at fighting companies on the phone.  To turn around and tell the local council that they have a choice over whether I pay my council tax or feed my children as I have done in the past is not something I would have done five years ago.  To have to say to the electricity company, your prices are too high that's why I cannot afford to pay my bill in full and don't start ranting at me because its only going to give you a headache, you cant cut me off when Ive got children and I will pay when I have the money and not when you tell me I have to pay, again is not something I would have done before but desperation does strange things to people.

So yesterday was the last ever payment, in a few months all the ends will be tied up and I can finally move on and walk away from the mess that became my second marriage.  Yes I loved him, I probably always will but I cant forgive him for what he did to me and our children and there in lies a difference.  I may sound like a bitter woman, Im not really, I have a lot of love and compassion for the people in this world, my heart goes out to anyone struggling as I know so many of you are at the moment but please be aware that you don't have to have the latest gadgets for your children, they will survive without them and bring them up to understand that the most important things in this life are a loving family and being kind to others.  Those are the things that mark us as human beings, not how many computers, tablets, I phones etc that we possess.  It needs to change out there and I for one will be working hard with my own children to make them aware of this. 

There are two sayings which I have tried to work to all my adult life, I will leave these with you in the hope that they will help and offer you some guidance.

"Do as you would be done by"  and "Life is mostly froth and bubble, two things stand like stone, kindness in another's trouble, courage in your own".

 

Not Enough Hours in the Day!!!! In other words OMG ITS CHRISTMAS!!

This is Saturday evening and the girls have gone to bed.  I had to go and collect No 3 from her friends' house where they had been having a get together for someone's birthday.  They are all growing up so fast and soooo tall.  No 3 has grown again and is now a good inch and a half taller than me :(  Not Good!  Nos 1 and 2 didn't gain my height of 5ft 6 ins but No 3 is now about 5ft 7 and a half.

No 4 has grown as well and will soon be leaving me behind I fear. 

So, if you are a regular visitor to my Facebook page you will have probably seen that I was very excited this morning to announce that as from the middle of November I will have a retail outlet at Trinity Road in Weymouth, right alongside the harbour.  Ive Google mapped it and looked at the street view (love that I can do this) and have decided its well worth a day out so when its time for me to take in my first lot of jewellery I am going to drive down, will take me about an hour (according to google) and go to visit the shop in person.  I am only going to hire one small shelf in a locked cabinet for now but its in a good place just inside the door so easy to see from the window and will have good lighting I hope.  This will be the third retail outlet I have now and I feel really excited.

As a consequence I am going to have to visit the other two outlets now and do a stocktake as I have got to ensure that I know whats where, if you get my drift. 

As I have five craft fairs now booked before Christmas and am still making stock for those it occurred to me somewhere in the early hours of the morning as most of my daft ideas do, that I needed to make some more stock for this new outlet.  So I have had some designs sitting in my sketchbook for a while which I decided to put into action this afternoon.  You can see these pieces on my facebook page but I will post them here as well

 

The top one is a hand forged Copper pendant with shell disc bead hanging from the inside top of the pendant and the bottom piece is hand forged pendant with freshwater pearls on a chain of hand forged links.  This is silver plated wire but I would love to make one from sterling silver, sadly this will have to wait until someone orders one because the outlay is too high at the moment.

 

I think it will probably hit me, most likely at 3 in the morning again very soon that I have an enormous amount of work to do.  Its a good job I have patient friends and children, friends because they are most likely not going to see me between now and January and children because only the basics are getting done and the dinners are slightly singed around the edges because Im in and out of the workroom whilst trying to cook dinner at the same time, juggling customers, orders and stock.

 

However I have to admit I wouldn't have it any other way.  I love working for myself, still get a buzz when someone falls in love with a piece of my jewellery and buys it.  Really love getting those "likes" under my pictures knowing Ive given someone some pleasure.  And selling at the fairs is brilliant, I love meeting my customers face to face.  I have met some amazing people and loads of great crafters as well in the other stallholders I come across.  I never cease to be amazed at people's skill and ideas in what they make.

 

During this year that I have been selling through Facebook and building up my business I have also done a little bit of shopping for myself through some of these people who I have found through Hike Those Likes, so I buy jewellery supplies, have my business cards made, and have more recently been ordering Christmas presents.  Facebook is a great community and speaking as someone who is the only adult in our house, its good to have some company in the lonely evenings as well when the girls have gone to bed.  Many of you I have never met in person but still feel as though you are my friends.

 

And enough hours in the day, no certainly not, and if I don't get much time to be posting between now and Christmas, I hope you have a good one!!!

 

Virtual Money

This very soggy morning I had to go into our next town and visit my bank.  It brought to mind how when I was a single parent for the first time, over 20 years ago now, I was on benefits and found it much easier to manage my money because everything was paid at the post office in cash.  I didn't have a bank account  until I started working and needed one to pay my wages into.  I was on benefits for a while until I got some work and towards the end of my time as a single parent was again on benefits as I had found working full time with a very unpleasant woman boss was not something I could cope with, the woman almost drove me to a nervous breakdown and life is far too short for that!!

Anyhow getting of my ranty box the point I was trying to make is that I used to go to the local village post office, cash my benefits, child benefit used to be paid weekly if you were a single parent and my little bit of income support and then come home and divide up the money.  I had a little wooden box with envelopes in, each one labelled for each household bill (council tax wasn't paid then if you were on income support), electric, water rates, telephone, food, and I used to put a certain amount into each envelope.  Then when the bill came due I had the money to pay it.

Today its a whole different story, finding myself a single parent again after my husband's death ten years ago.  The day after he died I rang the benefits agency and asked them what I had to do and what was I entitled to as being a full time mum of 2 and 4 year old children with no other means of income as my husband was self employed and had died leaving us with nothing.  So I had an interview and was helped to fill in various forms and then was given a very generous amount to pay for his funeral and allotted Bereavement benefit which will last until the girls are 17 based on my late husbands National Insurance payments.  This helps a lot, together with my widows pensions from his earlier career as a headteacher we get by.  But do I actually ever get to hold any of that money in my hand?  No!! 

Money is virtual today, all payments are made over the internet or using my debit card.  Rarely do I draw the money out of my bank account and go and buy things with it.  I still have to allow so much for each bill but most is now done on monthly direct debit so there are my little envelopes I suppose, but where is the satisfaction of knowing I have saved up for my bills as I cant see the money in front of me and the only people who benefit are the companies who are making huge amounts of interest on our money going in each month. 

I would be so happy to go back to having my money in my hand and choosing where it goes rather than being told you must pay us this amount each month by all the companies.  Yes my bills were always paid but now I must admit I find it difficult to budget each month with money being taken for all my bills each month there is very little spare for other things like clothes!!  Its all too easy for people to borrow money on credit cards because they cant see the money.

If I have ten pounds in my hand I know that I will have to use that carefully and its such a good feeling to hold real money but give someone a credit card and they can go out and spend money in ridiculous amounts and get themselves into trouble.

So Im wishing for money to go back to what it used to be when I was in control of it and I could hold it in my hand and feel good about my bills and have a sense of pride.

Other things we could used to do was to visit the electricity showroom and buy savings stamps towards our bills, where are all those gone now?  We could buy stamps at the post office to save towards our car tax etc, now no longer available, why?  What caused all the companies to stop doing these things?

Id be interested to know how many other people feel the same way.  Cash in hand as opposed to plastic and virtual banking!!

 

An Emotional Day

I think I mentioned that I had to go to a funeral on Tuesday afternoon?  Forgive me if I didn't but the memory is not what it was, too much to remember each day methinks.

My father was a policeman, he worked in the county of Somerset for many years, mostly out of rural police stations when there was still such a thing.  He had many good friends amongst his colleagues, the last of whom sadly passed away at the end of September.  My mother and I both felt we wanted to attend the funeral of Dan who had been a really good friend to my father.  In 1977 my father suffered a major heart attack and during his recovery and subsequent depression it was Dan's regular visits that got him back on the mend and back into work again.  Dan was a large, proud, Welshman whose loud laugh I will never forget.  Sadly during his later years Dan suffered from Alzheimer's and to see such a once upright and amazing man reduced to a living skeleton who didn't know where he was or who he was made me very very upset.  What it did to his family I cant begin to imagine.

I had decided that I was not going to be sentimental, or to cry but when I saw the coffin being carried in, draped with the Welsh flag and the police helmet sitting atop the coffin I started to cry, my mum too was in tears. 

It was that symbol, the helmet that suddenly brought back so many memories of my own father and his stature.  When I was small all policemen were built like barn doors, at least 6 feet tall every one of them, and with personalities to match.  I grew up surrounded by this group of men and their families that made me feel safe and protected.  Only now do I look back and realise just how much these men gave to the local communities in which they lived and worked, each bringing their own touch to the job they had to do and going beyond the normal hours of duty.  I have known my dad come home to supper during his night shift and take his best pair of boots to give to an old tramp whose own shoes were falling to pieces and on another occasion, a cold Christmas Eve, he came in and asked my mum if we had plenty of food in the house, she replied we had and he took a box and filled it with food to take to an elderly man who had been caught poaching because he only had half a loaf of bread in his cupboard and no money to buy any food.  Instead of charging the man, he took him a large share of his own food to help him out.  Would that happen now?  Id like to think it would but you know in today's world I wonder.

When my dad joined the police force and had completed his basic training, he was given a bicycle so that he could cycle between phone boxes where at a given time he would receive a call from the sergeant at the police station who would then give him instructions on his next call out or investigation that was required.  Hence the term point duty.  Imagine having to do that in all winds and weathers.

Dan, also had his old police bicycle as had my dad.  My mum and Dan's daughter gave her two sons the old bicycles and they restored them and took them to France on a cycling holiday last year.  I think both Dan and my dad would have been very happy to see those bikes put to good use again.  It just goes to show how well built they were that they lasted over 50 years.

Being a policeman's daughter meant you couldn't put a toe out of line, it was quite hard sometimes as the village kids could be very cruel and call you names, especially if your father had given them a telling off for something.  I never told my dad and mum what had happened, I doubt they would have minded much anyhow, they were firmly of the belief that it "toughened you up" as a child.  Im not sure being on the receiving end of this that I agree, its a bit scary when the village thug, taller and bigger than you threatens you if your father ever tells him off again.  The last village I lived in was a very hard place to be, tell a potential boyfriend your father is a copper and he was gone.  Only the decent ones stuck around, perhaps that was a good test.

So, it was an emotional day, to see the widows of some of the men my father had known for years, good, steadfast friends who supported each other through all their hard times and good times, who enjoyed retirement together, bowls and coach outings and laughing at memories.  They were always up to mischief, the chief inspector had a hard time with them, often they were called in for a reprimand but always seemed to come out smiling, not bad men, just full of mischief.

I recall my father coming home when I was about 9 and explaining to me and my mum that he had got into trouble with the local police station for singing.  At that time my dad used to ride a police motorbike across the mendip hills to patrol his beat and my dad was riding out on a gorgeous summer's day and stared to sing his favourite song, "Oh for the wings of a Dove", okay not so bad you might say until you learn that my dad was tone deaf, couldn't hold a tune for his life and had forgotten to turn off the radio between him and the police station control room, because he was on his bike, engine going, helmet on and singing he couldn't hear the pleading of the control room operator to turn off his radio and they had to endure two hours of my dad's singing!!!!! 

I think that someone should write a book about their antics and about their kindnesses and help in their local communities because policemen aren't like them anymore, they don't have the time and the paperwork and the rules and regulations make it too difficult for them to do their job, half the time the "local" policeman doesn't even live in his/her locality, they don't know the local people, their problems or their lives, cant share in the daily life of the people around them like they could when living amongst them.  All those little country police stations are gone, closed down, sold off, you can still tell some of them because of the old glass blue bottle in the porch apex above the door.  The belief that very often a sit down and a cup of tea and a chat about the problems can do more good than a fine or an arrest.  Of course there were arrests, there was danger, the time my dad had to go and tackle an axe wielding nutter who had murdered the village postwoman and seriously injured her neighbour.  He muttered when I hailed him as a hero, oh by the time I got there he was being held down by two blokes, I suspect that wasn't partly true but Im so glad he was okay, hearing it about it happening made me very very scared till I found out he was fine. 

So here is my tribute to all of those amazing men I grew up surrounded by, Thank you for making the world a better place, to have known you all was a priviledge and to have had one of you as my dad makes me feel very lucky, I just wish I had realised how lucky when you were still alive Dad!!