SHERINGHAM DIARY No 84 - Semantic Understandings

Monday 15th May

Last week was a challenging week, one among many, interspersed with clusters of good days. Painfully poor days in the shop followed what was the Coronation Bank Holiday weekend bonanza. Then an OK Friday and a brilliant Saturday, the best trading day of the year so far. Thus concluding on a high our long stretch of work, where both of us being in the shop part of every day for thirteen days in succession. Hopefully we wont have to do that again for a while. It was unexpectedly more grueling than we had envisaged. 

Though the half days make it easier to manage emotionally, it does mean when you need to be open 6-7 days a week, you never get a full day off or time away from it. I find this means progress on my making becomes fractured and slow. Without some adjustment, this will not be a sustainable working schedule over the high season months June - September.  

Sunday and Monday were our first full days off together for over a fortnight. What a relief it was to just go out, relax and let go to a degree of shop related things. Sunday, a cold damp start. Stopped off at Stiffkey Stores for coffee and a slab of their excellent Peanut Blondie. By the time we reached the Farmers & Makers Market at Raynham Hall it was glorious and warm sunshine. As we'd donned our winter coats, we were over dressed and over heated. The craft fair looked like the sort of thing we might easily do well in. The genuinely artizan rubbed along with the handmade, but sometimes village craft fair level of stallholder, plus a smattering of mass produced stuff being misrepresented as craft. So, no one vets or curates the stalls I expect, they just sell you the pitch and you turn up. Good food area, short on seating, rubbish bins and loos. It was set up inside what would once have been a walled garden, but this makes for an easily self contained trading arena away from the hall.

In my search for apt business names, I sometimes am taken entirely by surprise standing at a road junction waiting to cross a road. A blue estate car pulled up in front of me. It's livery informed me they provided professional mobile foot care and that they were called - Momentoes.

Wednesday 17th May
There is as I speak a rather alarming event going on in London. Its a series of conferences run under the banner of National Conservatism in European capitals. Now no one appears to know how this thing came to be, nor how it turned up here. Its  American Fundamentalist Christian based, and funded by The Edmund Burke Foundation, but what sort of individuals provide that financing would be interesting to know.  But we have former and current members of the Conservative Cabinet falling over themselves to give speeches at it, as if this is all totally legit and above board. There have been some speeches which were frankly barmy and insulting to ones intelligence, which if you stop and give what they are saying any thought whatsoever, you will find simultaneously laugh out loud ludicrous, whilst also being deeply worrying. This seems the beginning of a further raising of the far right's profile and presence in this country. The very far from honourable David Starkey gave a speech on the last day, in some respects this is the sort of party he loves to go to, frothing and angrily fulminating at the mouth.

The Tory party, obviously concerned about its future post the next election, is already sniffing about in this particular trough to see if any of its pig swill will save them from themselves. As a group National Conservatism has already been abbreviated by mischievous elements in social media to The Nat C's, so you can see how this development is being viewed and where it is ultimately pointing. This is where the Conservative Party, like The Republican Party has already in the US, totally loses its brain and all sense of being in touch with sane reality. If this hasn't already happened.  Pritti P and Nadine D, in the same week have been speaking at a newly formed sub group of Tory MP's, The Conservative Democratic Organisation. Roughly speaking its Bring Back Boris on hallucinating steroids. These groups are just the beginning of a scrabble to find a new soul for the Tory Party, and the right and far right wings are making sure they are the first to lay out their stalls.

Another roadside revelation happened whilst I was walking home to the village. Just about to turn the corner into Upper Sheringham itself when a van drove passed me offering - a range of stair lifts, care services and mobility aid products, called  n-able.

Thursday 18th May
At the Coronation Makers Fair we were approached by a guy wanting to set up a regular Makers Market in Sheringham, Initially, once a month on a Wednesday when there is already a traditional, but small market. With ambitions to develop it into being on Saturday or Sunday at a later date. At the moment it is still in the planning stage, but this is quite an exciting development if it happens. There is no idea, as yet, about how much this will cost in site fees. Hubby has also been in touch with the woman who runs the Raynham Makers Market. And we've been booked for future fairs, one in August another in November.

Whilst wandering around the Farmer's & Maker's Market at Raynham Hall, we bought food from a trailer. They were selling 'Buddha' type poke bowls, offering - rice, chickpeas, edamame, mango and red cabbage with delicious chilli flavoured vegan mayo sauces. Very appropriately called - Poke-Nom

Friday 19th May.
At present I don't feel I'm sufficiently on top of the work I'm doing, it is on top of me. I'm always seemingly playing catch up. No sooner do I complete one job I'm back making more of something I made barely a few weeks ago. Larger jobs like furniture upcycles, or mirrors, are not getting a look in at all. Ditto book keeping, website photography etc. My frustration descends into a disinterested apathy. But more concerning is there not being sufficient time for projects that are just for my own enjoyment. I finished last week a shrine project for Our Lady of Walsingham that I've been working on fitfully over the last eighteen months. I'm satisfied with the end result, but the process of getting the thing finished has been more testing to my engagement than enjoyable. Work- Life balance is a bit out of wack, and I don't currently have a way forward in the adjusting of it.

Stupid Politician Opens Mouth Speaks Stupid Idea

Anne Widdecombe still full of practical, patronisingly insensitive suggestions, but totally batshit now, has told hard pressed families not to put cheese in their sandwiches. If you haven't got the money for food don't buy it! You are supposed to just bare with the starvation I suppose. I bet the Cheese Marketing Board, if it still exists is thrilled about that. 

Its the War on Cheese next chaps!