SHERINGHAM DIARY No 91- Einsturzende Neubauten***

4th September

Oddly, the shop did better in July. it was not too far off 2022. August, however, was significantly down on last year. Mostly as a consequence of the August heatwave. Who wants to buy stuff when you can turn yourself into a red lobster? Lets do beach. Its so much cheaper.

September is off to a good start. We have the loathsome 1940's weekend next week, which can be good for trade. That more of less marks the last hurrah for the high season. The schools are back. So once we've pretended we're from another era no one participating was even born in - Ta Da! - we will be on the slippery glitter strewn slope to Christmas!

We, meanwhile, are looking forward to autumn, when we can finally take a break and have a holiday. Probably end of Sept early October. We are thinking another week in North Yorkshire - Whitby - Robin Hoods Bay area. In a way it matters not. Just so long as we spend time far far away from the shop and our familiar environs.

7th September 

Yesterday was hard. Temperatures reaching the high twenties to thirty degrees C. Trade in the shop was death on stilts. A handful of small sales in the morning and none at all in the afternoon.  Though I had things to occupy myself with, the day was emotionally testing.

Bearing with a day like that inevitably has consequences. I was in a semi--depressed and aggravated mood during the evening. I am still feeling the testy aftermath of that this morning. Not mentally in my most positive frame of mind.

This year, as I've said before, we've been experimenting with doing half days in the shop. So between us we cover the day. As a strategy its proved generally better for our mental health. Then, if we do have a bad days trading, you only have to bear with half of it. I don't find half days great for my engagement with making, productivity wise. But everything has a down side.

However, when we are in high summer season and hence open more days, we both need to have full days off. So one of us will then be in the shop for a whole day. Once you've stopped doing full days, going back to them, well, it can be a subtle form of torture. Specifically when the day is testing, like yesterday was. When 1940's weekend is over, we hopefully can return to being closed Sundays and Mondays, and a form of work/life balance can be restored.

This is the way we are surviving the current economic downturn, through trying to keep creative and responsive in how we approach work. But there are times, when I just feel like I've had it up to here with it all. That we might well scrape through this current economic tailspin, but what state we will be in by then? 

This maybe the darkness of my present mood colouring my perception. But today it feels that our country, and our culture as it is currently constituted, is in some sort of long drawn out death throw. And much as everyone wants it to return to full health and  whatever  'normal' is, it is refusing to do that. It may be there is some greater teaching at play, where we need to learn (or is it relearn?) something we've lost sight of, or believed we could do without.

The economy is totally trashed. The government is ineffective or runious at pretty much everything it does. We fight ridiculous unnecessary and vitrolic wars over race and gender. Parts of local government are effectively bankrupt. The relationship between media, business and government is corrupt. Meanwhile, the concrete is fracturing in the walls and ceilings of our schools and major institutions. Relatively recent buildings constructed in the last 50 years could fall down with no forewarning, because we've failed to maintain them properly.  I mean ***Collapsing  New Buildings, you couldn't dream up a better metaphor for our current malaise. Our institutions are crumbling all around us. Does that mean we now officially qualify as a failed state?