KIRSTY ALLSOPP RANT

(so soon in the New Year – we thought Matt might manage to wait until at least…February?!)

Have just seen the trade catalogues for the forthcoming Interiors Spring Fair at the NEC. I note that Kirsty

Allfluff is being lauded as TV presenter, craft and property expert and will be taking questions in two Q&A sessions covering craft tips. If Kirsty’s TV shows are anything to go by, she will have a team of experts ready to answer any tricky questions. Getting craft experts to show her how they do things does not make her an expert. I have a neighbour who is a pilot. I talk to him a lot when out walking our dogs. It doesn’t mean I could fly an airbus to Spain. I certainly couldn’t answer questions on navigation or thrust vectors. I might be able to tell you how to inflate a life jacket…which I suspect is about the level of Allfluff – she certainly blows enough hot air!

NEW IMAGERY?

We would quite like to get Olive, the workshop Labrador, involved in the online photography…we haven’t mentioned this to Dan and Julia yet, but Olive seems up for it and we have been trying to train her to balance things on her head – perhaps not so much furniture, but maybe the odd, small non-delicate, non-food err….thing..

Maybe we should just arrange things around her when she’s asleep (95% of the time).

WHY ARE WE CLOSING OUR ‘REAL’ SHOP?

This is the question we keep getting asked and as we haven’t had a proper rant for a while….here we go!

For a while, we have been losing trade to the internet. For example, we have noticed that on deliveries we will ask a homeowner, as we wheel in their purchase, where they got that lovely cupboard in the hall, or that painting on the wall. The answer is never an actual shop, it’s always “oh, we saw that on the internet”. We have no problem with this, but our footfall has dropped and as a bricks and mortar business we have to pay the government tax on everything – tax on air, shoe leather, talking to customers, not talking to customers, sunshine, rain, ideas, dreams, random thoughts etc. It just goes on and on.

However, the internet seems free of all these taxes, plus we don’t need fire inspection; electrical safety compliance; insurance in case someone sues us for getting dust on their skins. We don’t have to pay business rates, we don’t need to have a licence to pay music for customers and we don’t have to clean the shop or clean up sticky, sweety finger marks left by lovely children.

Sadly, however much we love our shop and, if we could ban the internet, raise the VAT barrier and make business rates realistic then we would carry on trading at Burwash Manor. But we are where we are, so please support our growing online shop and as a reward we will open our lovely old workshop several times a year for general browsing, rummaging, poking and fiddling – all the stuff that makes shopping interesting.