But here are the things that are weighing on me. Do the lease agreements have to be redone? What about council departments we liaise with - from Business Ratings, HMRC to Food Safety - do we have to write to them all and tell them about our 'new' address? Does it matter? Then there's our bank we'll have to deal with. Utility companies... What about our Google map and the dozens of online web listings that have us down as a venue - should we track them all down, edit them all or leave them as they are? Our many suppliers, in fact the whole darn creditors list, do we have to send masses of letters or emails? Our cloth bags (just ordered 500 two weeks ago), plastic carry bags, bookmarks, business cards, etc etc...
Feeling like a balloon that's been popped. Deflated. (Sorry to moan out loud.)
You know, a few months ago, a lady wrote to us. Said she was a mom with young children, was going to retire or quit her day job, something like that. Said she wanted to start a bookshop, that it was her dream. I shared with her that it's a tough, long road. Worth doing but the pros and cons should be ruminated over carefully. If you need a living wage, I told her, don't start a bookshop.
Feeling cynical. All that talk about Mary Portas Report, revitalise the High Street jazz, yadda yadda yadda... Save our indie shops campaign, etc etc etc... The amount of hoops you have to jump through is incredible. Organisations and companies you didn't know about crawl out of the wood work to harass you. If I could list the number of balls from the left field we've had to parry, the kind of scams one should avoid (and we have been scammed for supposed charity causes), the pitfalls of iron-clad agreements, the nature and quantity of threatening phone calls I get from non-existent suppliers, and so on, it would be a sizeable tome. I better not get started on that topic, or I'll be here all day.
Time, effort, costs. Another list of tasks we could have done without.
Okay, time to take a deep breath. Cheer up. Pull myself up by the bootstraps and all that.
Enough whingeing.
The Chinese have a saying - When the horse dies, get down and walk. [Translation: Find an alternative and deal with it.]
Think it's time to start walking.
Fran
PS. I'm sorry if I depressed you. I promise I'll write again soon of happier things.