As understatements go, “The last few weeks have been eventful” is in the top 10!
September 2nd brought news of a good friend’s death and you can read Steve’s tribute to Bill Ford on pages 62 and 63.
Business-wise we had made all our new plans for moving the business from our home into one of the new units at the Mountsorrel Memorial Centre.
We’d arranged flooring and fittings, telephone system, signs, furniture and, because Mary and I would often have to make our way to the new office separately, we bought a van; although this was partly planned anyway to help with our ever growing distribution and that we’d appointed our very first distribution manager, Peter Collett, a couple of month’s earlier. You may recall that we had also appointed a solicitor to help with the negotiations with the lease. Holidays, days off, confusions and misunderstandings barred the way to progress and we were becoming increasingly frustrated with no end in sight. In mid-September we were informed that we had won the SME news magazine’s award—”The Best Community News Magazine for 2018″
My right arm was still in a sling which meant that I couldn’t drive anywhere until the physiotherapist gave me the okay on 21st September.
Our local printer declined to contract to us for another term as we had asked to increase the size of the magazine and he hadn’t the capacity to accommodate us with his current equipment. This meant that we had to find somewhere quickly to store each month’s delivery and with no Mountsorrel unit available any time soon we were beginning to panic. So, with bitter reluctance, we decided to withdraw our interest and make other plans. Peter, our new distribution manager, came to the rescue short term and offered us the use of his garage. We are now investing in our own home to create more space. Our old print partner from 2016, Warwick Printing Company, is happy to contract to us for the next 12 months so all is well on that front now. Then Mary’s old computer proved more troublesome than was good for either of our tempers so we upgraded it to a new one. We really should have waited until after the deadline – but we didn’t! The best analogy I can come up with for all this experience is – it’s like learning to swim in a deep pool with crocodiles chasing you!
Ahh, well! Back to the future 🙂
