SHERINGHAM DIARY No 70 - The Prognosis Going Forward

November 6th
This week the shop takings have been truly dire, as bad as it can be post Christmas. It maybe that this is just a lull, an odd bad week after the brilliant last week of October Half Term. We will just have to see. I can't help but feel that we maybe teetering near the edge of Cottonwood Home becoming unsustainable.

I've reached the point where trying to remain optimistic in the face of declining takings, is itself part of the problem. Facing fully the possibility that we may not be able to scrape through the winter or the recession, has to be taken seriously. Its starting to feel unrealistic to focus only on a positive outcome. An unhelpful level of strain is involved in trying to maintain such a focus,  The conditions are not looking favourable and that has to be a part of what we hold, alongside our continuing efforts to survive.

November 7th
Though yesterday's entry remains true, there is also another factor to take into consideration. How much more of this economic uncertainty and dwindling custom we can personally handle? What would be the point in surviving all that is forecast, only to be a complete nervous wreck by the end of it? At some point you do have to decide not to throw more good money after bad. Jnanasalin and I will need to sit down and talk through what our options are, and what we are up for. We are imagining that time of review will be post Christmas. But who knows really?

November 8th
Mondays out of summer season have turned into probably the worst day of the week. With five of the retailers in The Courtyard already closed on Mondays, this has left just the off licence next door and ourselves open. We have decided it just isn't worth persisting in being open either. We will be closed Sunday and Monday for the time being. Keeping an eye on how things are in case we need to reverse this decision. Time away from the tensions currently inherent to the shop is essential too.

The Thursford Christmas show has its first performances today. In past years we've had coach parties stopping off in Sheringham for lunch and a browse of the shops, before moving on for the matinee. So we'll see if that makes any difference.

November 9th
It's been obvious from the very beginning of Cottonwood Home, that we'd need to develop a second income stream to see us over the quiet months. Our winter footfall has always been pathetic, we'd never survive on Sheringham locals alone. We struggle emotionally increasingly with this every succeeding year. Our web site doesn't seem to ever take off. We haven't the capacity to keep both shop and website spinning simultaneously. For instance, ensuring the website is up to date once the summer season arrives. We're thinking of adopting a different approach. The majority of our online sales have been lampshades, so perhaps we need to focus our website on promoting those.

November 10th
The anticipated Thursford bounce has as yet failed to materialise. So this second week in November continues with the same mix of days, from reluctantly acceptable to a waste of time being open. As things currently stand by mid November the shops takings look like being massively down on 2021. There is always the chance of a late rally, which was the case in September and October. I suspect there is a lot of hesitancy around with regard to next weeks budget statement on the 17th. Come on Hunt pile on the agony!

November 11th
The last of my Father's eightfold band of brothers and sisters died yesterday. Uncle Trevor was a bit of an anomaly in the Lumb dynasty, a bona fide gentle extrovert in a largely quiet and introverted family. He was outgoing, a bit of a charmer and a ladies man, who got away with a lot more than he should have simply by force of an amiable personality. A salesman in every sense of the word. The only person in Dad's family to be divorced. He'd met his then mistress who worked in a casino, Auntie Megan, and post the divorce married her.

Often treated in the family with an attitude of mild exasperation, bemused amusement or the butt of sarcasm. Mainly because he didn't behave or respond like the rest of them. He could, admittedly, be a bit of a scamp. He had a few quirks. If you were hosted at his house he wouldn't offer a repeat visit until you had hosted him in return. As a consequence few in the family saw him very regularly. Which was a bit of a shame really, because he was lively engaging company, who had no qualms about taking over the conversation and delightfully holding the room hostage. He'd get everyone dancing to his tune, whether they wanted to or not. This did ruffle a few feathers. Probably right up to the very end I expect.

November 12th
Yesterday we took £20 all day. Hubby returned emotionally worse for wear and feeling quite angry. With which I can quite empathise. Its not that we don't have a viable business. Last year proved it was, but this year is just a whole kettle of rather rancid smelling fish. 

I know from the decline of my own art shop in the late 90's recession, that survival is never solely about how much effort and initiative you put in. Your financial and emotional resources are vital too. But more importantly its correctly understanding the nature of the current external economic conditions you are trading within, and recognising that these are largely out of your control. In the late 1990's I had no financial capital of my own to tide me over, so one year I had to take out a small loan, and then the following year arranged an overdraft. In the end these did not enable my art shop to survive that late 1990's recession.

My art shop's lease had a five year break clause in 1997,so I was able to get out of the business cleanly, but that was a year away. That final year was emotionally the most stressful of my life. It was difficult keeping engaged with a shop you know is going to fold. Running it on my own was never easy. Knowing the right moment to start running stock down, was hard to judge. Yet, once I had taken the decision to close my art business twelve months previous, it did provide a form of relief that I was going to let go of a painful situation. Also, I already knew what I wanted to do afterwards, to join a Buddhist community and work for Windhorse - evolution.

However, the sense of myself after that time was that the closure of my art business represented a sort of failure, that it was a flaw in me personally that I could not make it work and survive. And it took many years of Buddhist practice to work my way out of the hang ups that period left behind. Given an emotionally difficult day in Cottonwood Home these feelings can bubble up and ripple the surface still.

This time, with Cottonwood Home, I'm not on my own with it. The shop is on a very open rolling lease, so we can get out of it any time we choose Should we make it to June next year, I can draw my pension This could contribute to bridging any financial gap. But that is still seven months away, and there is a whole vein of huge unpredictability running through the time between now and then. For us, the question is not simply whether we have the resources both financially and personally to survive the sort of straightened circumstances predicted for 2023. But do we want to use what money we do have, as a life raft in this way? We have limited financial reserves to draw on, if this will be enough depends how bad it gets. 

Even if we did decide to close the business, the productive window for doing so in 2022 has passed. Post Christmas is our traditional quarter of dead months. To have any chance of selling off stock effectively we'd have to wait for the Easter holidays at the beginning of April next year anyway. The prognosis going forward is undoubtedly challenging, whichever way we eventually choose to look at it.  As we are still reluctant to consider what a post Cottonwood Home landscape might look like, it seems we are not prepared to abandon all hope in its future just yet.

I just want to be able to relax easily into my daily working life and enjoy it. Instead it can feel like it has actually been one stress point after another for three and a half years. With, more often than not, a Tory government generated economic chaos and uncertainty forming the background to it. 

November 13th
I've got three days out of the shop now. Yesterday was our best days takings this month - so far. Ten times what we took the day before, which is the way and the inconsistency of retail in 2022. Every time we do well, its lampshade sales that are making the difference. A good days sales always perks up our flagging resolve. We have to hold onto our confidence that what we are doing can still be viable, and at the same time be clear that having the odd good day is not in itself going to be enough.