You have to admire that individual zip, that quirky approach to life and business ........ you can either enjoy the joke and enjoy life a little bit more or be a boring conformist and just believe that you are enjoying life.

Following on from my operation on my knee on Monday I have had to rest the leg to let the swelling go down and the cuts heal. So Alison has kindly taken the week off to be there for me and also to keep the momentum of the decorating going so we have a chance to meet our deadlines.

Claire, my Daughter, has also been making sure that I stick to the regime of rest by stealing my walking stick and locking me in the house. She is, like her mother, a formidable person and whilst I may sometimes push the boundaries with the both of them I am both old enough and wise enough to know when I am beat and this time I am most certainly beat.

So whilst I make the best of lazing around Claire has been looking after the more domestic of arrangements and Alison has concentrated her efforts on the annex decoration. The house is not massive but big enough that Alison has been working in a fair amount of isolation whilst she has painted all the window frames and ledges a fresh gloss white alone with just the fumes of the paint to keep her company punctuated only by the familiar odour of white spirit. I'm not suggesting she is an alcoholic (although she does like that odd glass of wine) but she certainly needs the white spirit as she is more than generous with where she leaves trails of white gloss.

I have spent my time this week sorting out photographs from my years and years of photography to put into a display book with a view to selling some, creating a sort of catalogue if you please. This may well be a bit too presumptuous of me but I am an 'entrepreneur' now and I need to start thinking that way if we are to survive on our own.

I do not intend to pressure any of my guests into buying anything but merely place an option to do so in a subtle way in front of them. I may even have pictures on the wall with a discrete price tag on as is so popular in many cafes and restaurants. I am not and will never be a Dell Boy or a Thenardier who is a guest house owner (in the Les Miserables musical ) of great disrepute. The guy would not hesitate to rip off his own grandmother and uses every trick in the book to fleece his guests......

Charge 'em for the lice, extra for the mice
Two percent for looking in the mirror twice
Here a little slice, there a little cut
Three percent for sleeping with the window shut
When it comes to fixing prices
There are a lot of tricks he knows
How it all increases, all them bits and pieces
Jesus! It's amazing how it grows!

Lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer

Cripes, now I think about it maybe that is me!

I used to love putting signs up to try to flog extra items in my smaller Supermarkets where you could get away with a bit of cheek.
Like

"Com'on You know you fancy some Crumpet this weekend" 

or 

"Our Butcher has the Best Sausage in town, ask him..." 

It was all done in the worst possible taste and despite its crassness those double entendres genuinely got extra sales as people loved to play along. You can't do signs like that any more, you can' have fun any more. It has all been legislated and policied out of life, the corporate business is trying to take over the world and in so doing is smothering the life out of its best asset, its people.

When we were in America there was a small town on the West coast called Port Townsend and it was simply full of shops and businesses with my sort of signage on the windows.

Like this literally cheeky sign...

 Or this.....

And even the boring old 'Closed' sign was approached from a different angle.

A year later and we are on the East coast in an equally remote area, this time in a place called Boothbay harbor, New England. Here the shop demonstrates its relaxed opening hours. I especially love the fact that it is presented on a special little picture frame hanging on the front door....

You have to admire that individual zip, that quirky approach to life and business that says I'm different but this is who I am, so you can either enjoy the joke and enjoy life a little bit more or be a boring conformist and just believe that you are enjoying life..

Across the road from us is a bus shelter. We have two buses in the village but don't get too excited, remember we are in the deepest depths of Norfolk and when I say we have two buses I don't mean two buses a day. No we have two buses a WEEK!  And.. they don't even go to the same place. One of them turns up on Wednesday and will take you to Norwich, but you will need to be on time for the return journey because if you miss it you'll not be able to catch it again until a week later!
The other leaves on Thursdays to go the our local market town of Fakenham, once again you need to ensure that you are at the bus stop for the return trip 'cause you won't see that bus again for another week. We live on the edge here I can tell you.
So anyway in the bus shelter we have all the village notices on a large board covered by a locked glass frontage. It has the parish meeting minutes, info on keep fit events, charities and local social thingys. All squarely placed,tightly in line with the bit of A4 next to it. Right in the middle of the board, at a jaunty 45 degree angle, quite at odds with all the formalities around it there is a small sign that simply says "Be interesting put signs at an angle". That was its one and only message, it had no other purpose in life but to be a sign telling people to be different, break the rules a bit, you don't have to conform. A message that reached out to my own heart and soul.

I wanted to check the exact words and so I have just nipped across the road to check and the sign and someone has almost completely covered it up by placing a Blood Donor A4 poster parallel and regimented in the same way as all the others on the board. Another cry for freedom from a like minded person crushed.

Brothers, we will fight on regardless .......





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