bored of excitement – the griefjunkie blog 

Dear Rachel

The bloke who prints some of our stuff has a brilliant way of letting you down gently when it comes to his frequently demonstrated inability to hit any kind of deadline whatsoever.   A regular feature of my Saturday mornings are exchanges like this:

Self: Morning Micheal [as a rule I always address people by the long version of their name] have you got those A1 and A2 prints I asked you to do for me?

Mike: No – that’s why I haven’t charged you.

Self: Fair enough, bring them in for next week then.

My current breakfast is a healthily unbuttered fruit scone, accompanied by coffee with milk, sugar and butter in it.  I will be some way through this before it occurs to me that yes, of course I’ve not been charged for Mike’s work, because he hasn’t bloody done it, and because he hasn’t done it, I can’t sell it to the general public, and because I can’t sell it to the general public, another tiny part of the economy crumbles away forever.  I don’t include myself among the ranks of the easily baffled, and am therefore regularly surprised that Mike’s ‘Good news – I’ve stitched you up!’ gambit works so smoothly, and always leaves me feeling like not getting some of the stuff I need to trade with has been something of a lucky escape, and not, I dunno, fucking annoying or anything.

That said, being a bit short of stock at this time of year is not always a disaster.  You may recall my mentoring of a gang of young stab enthusiasts from the Stratford knife crime district.   This is as unlikely as it is ongoing, and has lately prompted me to instill in them an understanding of Rule One of my Guide to Happy Retailing, which is this: The More Ker-chat, The Less Ker-Ching. This is the phenomenon, well known to those of us living a Precarious Life, whereby you are told repeatedly and in a concerted manner how brilliant your stuff is by someone whose (usually) husband would love it, but who isn’t actually going to buy it for them.   This provides the central kerchat v kerching misalignment.  Myself, I consider it a bit conceited to assume that everyone who likes your stuff will buy it: I like Porsches – facially, I look like a 1981 911 SC from certain angles – and if I was in a Porsche showroom I would talk at some length about how much I like them, knowing that I am unlikely to be treating myself to one this financial year.  A Porsche, though, will cost £120,000, whereas the item that the husband in our example will love is a travel card holder with a retail price of four quid.   Cheaper than a slap in the face, in fact, as I am fond of explaining.

This happened to me on Sunday with a woman whose particular husband had been a tube driver.   He needed a travel card holder, and had recently been researching the building of the underground network.   ‘This’ she said – picking up a travel card holder upon which we have redrawn the whole thing showing plague pits, ghosts, abandoned stations and so forth – ‘would be ideal’.   She went on about it for ages, even with me mentioning that it was on sale and everything, and perhaps commerce would shine its magical light and show a way we could all win from this seemingly deadlocked position.   My experienced casual retail brain, however, knew that here was someone who liked a cheap, highly desirable, easily portable and, well, nice item too much to actually buy it.   She had essentially broken retail, as I was at pains to point out.

Perhaps taking my friendly advice not to do anything rash and that, rather than spend her four quid all at once here, why not go up the Strand and have a night on the town with it, she wandered off.   She wandered back about an hour later, having called her accountant or something, and decided that she would take the plunge and buy it after all.   She didn’t, as it turned out, because I said I’d just sold all of them to a lady with a large family of relatives who were also interested in the history of the London Underground.   I hadn’t – I’d hidden them under the stall and was hoping that this might happen – but I enjoyed telling her that sadly she would have to buy her husband something he wouldn’t love.    An afternoon in Greenwich Market with her, perhaps.

Twitter.   Can’t really be arsed at the moment.    I go through these phases with it.

Facebook.  Down to 117 members.  I don’t think you can just click through to the facebook group anymore.