December is the cruelest month

The Place: Here

The Time: Now

I keep trying to blog, but I somehow can't.

I am 44 years old. I will shortly be 45. I am 5 feet and 8 inches tall. Perhaps five feet and nine inches when I wake up. I weigh somehwere between 13.5 and 14 stone.

From about 16 to getting on towards 30, I was a skinny runt of about nine and a half stone. Somehow, over the last 20 years, I've got to be twenty years older. It's not been altogether a bad thing. People have far more respect for me now that I'm an adult. Far more than they ever had for me as a child.

Seasons pass, Months pass. Weeks pass. The beginning of december vibe is as low as it gets.

We probably have the worst of it in front of us. The shortest day, though just minutes shorter, is weeks away. Come January, when you get the worst weather, you at least know that you're heading for spring. No wonder we put the two biggest festivals at this time of year.

Financially, things might counteract each other. The drop off in earnings I always get in these pre-christmas weeks should hopefully be offset by an increase in earnings from the shop.

The Shop is failing to thrive.

We've always struggled to keep our heads above the shit. Always. When I was younger I would sometimes skive, but I've been a fully paid up member of the working class for the last decade or so. No matter how hard we try, we never ever can relax in the knowledge that our income covers our overheads.

Right now, I'm quite optimistic about how things are going for my driving school. Here's why.

A couple of months ago, I established a really good working relationship with a Woman who is in a relationship with a web wiz. We established a sort of barter arrangement, where I would work for a reduced price, in exchange for a professional and fully SEO'd website.

Thanks again to Jim Bliss at this point, who offered to do this sort of stuff, pretty much for free. I don't think I really appreciated what WordPress was capable of at the time, or realy understand what Jim was offering.

But ther cheap lessons are being given, and the site is up and running, and appearing in the listings without me spending £££££££ on advertising. I'm on the top page for many sensible search enquiries, and once Christmas is out of the way, I reckon I will be getting rather busy. While the next few slack weeks go by, hopefully, the shop wil become busy with Christmas shoppers.

The shop.

The shop was many things. It was a way of my restless, creative, pragmatic wife to try to bring in more money. Bren wasn't some wide eyed newbie. She spent a lot of time working out how it was all going to happen. She researched the local economy. She prepared several different plans - an optimistic plan, a middle plan, and a pessimistic plan. She did everything she could have to maximise her chance of getting things off the geound.

It's never ever thrived. Things may change over the next month, but hand crafted local goods are a luxury at a time when such things should be becoming the norm. But so far, something that should have taken a weight from my shoulders has instead just vastly increased the weight on Bren's.

I'm happy to acquiesce in terms of what we do in life. My needs are very simple. I resent the work involved in relocation but I'll  make a nest in any old tree.

She's pretty much decided that we're going to sell up and move to something smaller/cheaper. The house needs a huge amunt of work doing on it, which we can't afford. Some builder will get it at a knock down price, and we will free up some assets, and move to some form of living with lower running costs.

Our options include living on a barge or narrowboat, living in a mobile home or static caravan, moving to a smaller property in a worse neighbourhood.

I hope I can earn enough for us not to have to move.



driving lessons in Wallasey? learn to drive in Wirral? driving instructor in Birkenhead?