a great day at work

I had a brilliant day today. Was at work but did very little. Spent the day sorting stuff out. Got this email when I arrived from a business development agency I am registered with about a creative arts fair on 30th August. No idea if I will be ready to Trade but its only £5 a stall so decided to go for it. Rang the organisor who is a woman and explained the situation and she was very encouraging and helpful and even told me who to contact to try and get a grant. How good is that. Also apparently a local hotel is after some soap that is different and may be interested in mine and she knows of a potter who sells all sorts of other peoples crafts and may be interested in my soap. How wild is this. Then after got back to desk after long phone call to sort all this out had another email from Vegan Society about certification so rang both my suppliers. Have to get em to fill a form in for me to state no animals or animal tests in my products. No problem with one who supplies most of my stuff but the olive oil supplier is being a bit awkward. Hopefully they will make the statement else I will have to find a new supplier which is a shame cos it makes lovely quality soap. I do not believe the olive oil has any animal content either its just the hassle of having to fill in a form they do not want to bother with. Ah well if I have to change supplier so be it. I will get certification in the end one way or another. Finished the allergens declaration for the last 3 soaps too so emailed them to printer and its all looking like its coming together amazingly. Also due to 2 requests I made coconut soap last night. It smells and looks lovely but it is not natural since you cannot get coconut essential oil. I will see what its like and get some feedback but not sure if I will want to sell this one really. Just made it cos 2 different mates have asked me to.

time to stop dreaming and get real

The more I consider it the better is seems the right thing to do. I could rent a shop in Devon or Cornwall .............just for a season, make and sell soap, and keep the house on at home. So long as I make enough to pay the rent and mortgage and to eat it would be the perfect summer. Alright its going to be hard work but I really think it may be the answer to the things I truly want in life. Move to the seaside and make soap. Then if it worked well could sell the current house and actually move. The we wouldnt be risking much since we would only buy a company at the seaside if it worked out well. I am off to Cornwall in October for Ms birthday so intending to go and talk to some estate agents and see what a shop would cost me to rent. then will see if its a really viable idea or not. Till I know more it will just remain a dream. Sending off to get vegan society certification tonight and once i have that I will get the labels printed. My graphic designer is on holiday this week so cant move forward anyway till he gets back so I need to get this all sorted for next week. its meant to take about 4 days to get a yeay or ney on the Vegan Certs so should know by Tuesday next week if they are going to give it me for my products. I have to try and focus now on actually getting round to selling cause all I am currently doing is supplying my mates with free soap and dreaming!!

lazy at blogging

Well I feel that I have been very lazy. Should have got round to blogging. Its been nearly 3 weeks!!!!! Lifes been a bit hectic. Been making loads of soap. I have been doing a full day at work then going home and working making soap for 3-4 hours a night so that I will have lots of stock to sell once I can start trading. Have also had to sort out commercial insurance which is not too expensive ( £300 ish) so better that I expected. On top of all this spending ages talking to graphic designers and still making new soaps for next years collection so its all very hard right now. I havent had any time to blog or even to email most of the people I normally keep in touch with! I really really need to spend less time doing my mindless job. Its so frustrating now that I am stuck doing something that seems completely pointless and I hate. I think the real problem is I do not feel at all Stretched at work and you do need some sort of stimulation. My old job working for a local council was at least stimulating and made me feel I was achieving something even tho I hated most of what I was expected to do. I worked in enforcement of environmental crime then and most of what I enforced was just petty and I simply didnt believe in my work at all. Still it may have paid less but was much better than my current work from the point of veiw I was less bored. I suppose at some point you always get bored at work but where I am now its just constant boredom with little interest at all. I suppose it pays the bills. Other than that its simply not worth the effort of getting out of bed! And I spend the majority of my life feeling this way. Its such a waste of a lifetime. I am sure the majority of workers feel this way. There just has to be something better. Now tho I have to face the possibility my own company will just not take off. Its all quite scary really but if I do not go for it what else will come my way to improve my life. I envy these people who have the courage to just up sticks and run off to live at the seaside not even knowing how they are going to eat when they get there. If I didnt own a house it would all be much easier to do but I do own a house and its currently not in a fit state to sell even if they were selling at the moment which they are not due to financial climate in this country. I can plan ahead and think of the future and maybe in 2 years move to cornwall or devon but right now it all seems really frustrating and pointless. It all a bit sad really cos you go to work and spend the day wishing it will end so you can go home .........wishing your life away. Sad to say but sometimes I truly wish I never went to Uni and had stayed unemployed and unemployable without qualifications and on a low income cos at least then I was free!

Bored

I am so bored at work. It all seems so pointless. Thought I couldnt get on work email today ( no internet) but after having closed PC down several times its working. No idea what I shall do if it goes down. Since end of June had to access my emails from external site cos program went wrong on PC. They fixed it last thursday but since then have had no database access. Cannot do my job without it. Very very bored. Will need to cover reception tomorrow anyway cos 2 pepes are off and to be honest cant wait! At least I will have something to do. Boss still doing my head in over horse racing. Rest of staff as bad too. Mind you I couldnt resist telling my boss my union have asked me to strike. His face was a picture when he realised I am in a union. Ha! Totally pointless tho since no unions where I work. I just stayed in it since I feel safer. They cant stop me after all and if they are going to get rid of me I doubt it will make any difference either way. Just means they know they have to have a good reason. I dont actually want to wind em up and I suppose if they had got rid of me unfairly I would have had an ace to take action with legal support. I still have that tho and really i would prefer they just dont get rid of me cos sadly I need the money. I started a new blog the other day to stick my poetry on. Normally I just write on the walls but once the house is done up I have to use a note book. Well I think M would object to graffitti on teh walls once its all nice inside. Right now it doesnt matter. Have decided whats the point of writing into a note book. I will never get round to real publishing but can do so anyway by blogging it and at least then the odd random person will actually find it and read it. Rarely write anyway so there will not be loads. Usually only when something happens like the race course/work corporate do incident. Frustrated with having to work in a boring under paid job when could be sorting out my own company. I have so little time it seems to do anything for me. There has to be a better way to live than this me thinks. Had a meeting with the guy who will probably be printing soap labels on saturday morning. Normally would avoid doing anything work related at the weekend but its so different when its for your own company. Didnt mind at all. Was also quite an eye opener when M said he would like to run a shop. Maybe that will be the away forward for us. In theory as well we would then both be self employed. I am abit worried about just how much soap people will buy tho. I mean at £1:50 to £3:50 ish a bar (thats another thing - must actually get round to working out realistic prices!) thats alot of soap I need to make to be giving up full time work!

help with our boiler disaster

This really nice guy came to visit from Advance Heating. Decided to plug the name since have never had a salesman before who didnt try to sell us anything but actually helped us to move forward. And we havent spent anything yet! All he did was advise us. He says first we need to insulate all outside walls with Trisol 13 and need 2 layers. Lower our ceilings in the bedrooms slightly so we no longer have "caravan" curves since these cause more heat loss. Also insulate under floorboards in lounge. Then invest in stainless steel hot water tank - can add solar panels at later date if we ever afford to. He reckons if we do this soon we will cut our heat loss by around 50% and probably find it much easier to heat the house using current woodburner. That sorts us out for hot water and warmer home for very little and we only need help installing hot water tank. He said we can do most of what is needed ourselves. He is also making us calculate the BTU for every room. He said he could do it for us but charges £240 and we should use that as our incentive to get round to doing it. There are programs you can use online. I have done it for the upstairs so far and just need to do the downstairs now. He reckons we need to replace all radiators but can do this ourselves. I agree they are very old and probably inefficient. Also all are the same so not right sizes for rooms. Nice guy tho. Most people would have tried to blag us for them to do it for us. He gave us lots of leaflets on wood burning stoves and stuff with costs even tho he knows we wont have the cash for this till next january at earliest so he is not really getting anything out of this. He spent 2 hours with us and I feel dead guilty since forgot to offer him a cup of tea even. Very rude of me and he was a really nice guy. Well thats who we will be going with when we do save the money for a new boiler!

labels for soaps

Finally found a company who will probably be the ones I am going to get to do my labels. The guy who owns it seems very nice. Minimum order is only £50. Much better than the 1000 labels minimum order with the larger companies I have been talking to. They all cost loads. This sounds more affordable, the company is up the road so I will be able to actually pick up my labels or get them to deliver reasonably cheaply, and they are also a small company so more like me. They seems nicer to deal with and really shouldnt I be supporting local companies rather than giving my business to large corporate entities? There are too many large companies and not enough smaller entreprenours out there. Napoleon called us a nation of shop keepers. In recent years the likes of Tesco, Adsa etc have put most of the local corner shops out of business. Likewise the local soap makers ( Unilever, P&G, Boots) and the local printers are probably exactly the same. I think it is time to actively aim to buy locally. Then we support each other, our communities and we all work together to improve our different lives. Much better idea.

Grandma

I went to visit my Grandma. She has refused to see me for months since she says she doesnt want me to see her like this. Mad tho cos if I dont go she is going to die and I will not have seen her since Easter. Anyway just turned up on her doorstep. She is in a very bad way. Has mercury bandages on her legs which are very swollen and also has what could be the start of plurisy. I am sad to think it may really be the end. I know the stuff people say..................shes lived to a good age etc ............she is 93. But it wont help at all. She is still my grandma. I sent my brother (in france) an email and a text .............its Bastile Day today tho so he will probably be on holiday and wont read them. I may have been a bit too honest and brutal too so am wishing had been more thoughtful in how I worded it. Still he has also not been allowed to visit Grandma so he needs to know what is happening. One thing tho she is still not at all senile so that bodes quite well for me and my brothers really. If she didnt have carers tho she would have to go into a home or starve to death. Its that simple. She cant go out without someone to take her and considering she used to go all the way from Coventry to Walsall ( at least 25-30 miles) on her bus pass just because the lamb chops were better value there she has been a very active person till quite recently. She used to be out someowhere every day infact. Then again that is probably why she has lasted so long. I am finding this all very sad. Anyway most of my life is really quite unimportant and most of what I get up to is pretty mundane but Grandma is very important to me so I am blogging about her here for the world to know.