Catch 22!

Before I go into detail about this week's title, I want to continue with my unintentional theme of the joys of travelling on public transport.  I have two stories to tell you that have happened in the last seven days.  The first was the young woman on the bus who decided that we all needed to hear her music.  It was bad enough that the music wasn't to my taste, but then she kept skipping through the tracks and then after ten minutes, she found a track that she liked and so began to sing along (badly).  Then as if she could read my thoughts, she turned up the volume to drown out her (now really bad) singing.  I couldn't take it, I couldn't just sit there and not say anything.  So, I did say something.  I said "Excuse me.", she turned slowly and fixed me with a glare and a smirk.  I said  "Could you please turn your music off."  I'll condense what followed next.  She basically said no, she would turn it down, she asked why "I had to be the hero, no-one else was complaining."  She told that she was high and that she wanted to listen to her music on the bus.  I told her that most people including myself, used headphones when they wanted to listen to music, after all, it is a public bus.  She told me that she would turn it down.  Now, she did turn it down, but only by about 0.0000001 decibels.  I decided to try and ignore her and her music.  A few minutes later, my partner laughed about something we were discussing, which had absolutely nothing to do with this woman.  However, this sociopath, obviously thought that we were laughing at her.  So she started to rant.  She was blatantly "off her head" and I didn't pay her any heed until she said to her friend, "Watch me and her get off this bus together and then I'll stab her up!"  Hold on just one minute, how did we get from me asking her to turn her music off, to her telling her friend that she would stab me, in broad daylight, on a busy street?  Now, of course, she didn't stab me, as I'm here writing this entry and in fact, in the end she got off the bus before me, leaving me with one word as her farewell, bi**h. 

A few days later, with the previous incident still very much fresh in my mind, I got onto another bus to find three young adults having an argument.  I groaned inwardly.  It quickly became apparent that the girls were sisters and the guy was in a relationship with one of them.  However, the guy had been in contact with his ex, in fact he had "linked her", I still don't know what that means.  The sisters screamed at each other, the girl screamed at her boyfriend, he screamed back.  In a ten minute bus ride, I heard the f-word about 100 times and I learned that they had in fact, both been unfaithful to each other, more than once and that the sister thought that they should still stay together, that was of course, all in between all the "shut up" "no you shut up, you ...." 

Ok, now about the business.  Well, I feel like I'm hitting my head against a brick wall at the moment as I don't have any working capital!!!!  I need more business cards, I need to get more pictures framed, so that I can sell them, there are then, rather than taking an order, I need more mounts, I need to go out and take more photos around London, which in turn leads to me needing to order more prints, I could do with getting someone to look at my PR and marketing, I need, I need....  Which brings me to the title of today's blog.  I can't get the money I need, unless I sell my display stock, but then I'll have no display stock to be able to sell more!  Frustrating!

This entry is quite long now, so I'll save story of the pretentious pr**k at the market who can't handle a little competition and the story of the £50 fine for putting my cigarette on the ground, in order to go and talk to a potential customer (I was going to pick it up!!) until next time.  Take care.

PS thanks to my (2) followers, though your number is small, you are appreciated.

Late again!

Okay, I know, I'm rubbish at keeping this blog updated.  Anyway, this week is half term and I can't tell you how wonderful it was to wake up this morning at 10am!!!  Pure unadulterated bliss and as I write this entry, I'm still in my pyjamas!!!  However, this is just a quick update as I want to go and see the Street Photography exhibition at the Museum of London today.  EleBoo is just great at the moment, I'm constantly grateful for all the wonderful comments I get regarding my photos and the sales are still (slowly) trickling in (I am, like the rest of the market traders, praying for an economic turnaround soon, especially as the stall rent is increasing soon!).  If anyone out there knows how I can get my hands on a business start-up grant, I would be grateful, I've spent hours looking to no avail!!  So, before I sign off, I just want to ask the question as to why people think that it's acceptable to tell a whole bus-full of people all about their life intracacies.  I mean in the space of a week, I've listened to a guy on his way home from court, talking about all the unsavoury things that he done and how he'd "gotten away" with a five-year suspended sentence, then there was the guy speaking to his wife, who then decided to put her on speakerphone so that he didn't have to hold the phone anymore!!  However, the most incredible was the guy on the 69 bus the other night, who wanted to tell the person he was speaking to that he was running late.  He started by saying that he was at Leyton station and asked how long it would take from there to get to his destination.  The person either didn't hear him or became instantly unable to understand the English language, as he then proceeded to repeat his location over and over again.  Ley-ton station, I'm at Leyton, I'm at LEYTON station, I kid you not, he said it about 20 times, everyone on the top deck, was laughing by this point, he then said "Can't you hear me?"  To which I said, "Obviously not!!!"  The guy then realised that everyone was laughing at the ridiculous conversation he was having and then he said "I'll send you a text".  Why he didn't just do that in the first place, is anyone's guess!!!  See you soon x

Okay! I'm getting a bit lazy, or am I just busy again!

My aim to write a new blog entry every week has gone up in smoke, but I'm here now!!  So, in those two weeks that have passed, I've gotten myself into a school and they want to keep me and will even allow for the time off to go to Central America.  Am I happy?  I'm ecstatic!  The kids are manageable and the science dept. have been really welcoming, so all good there.  As a result though, I'll have to knock Fridays at the market on the head for the foreseeable future, but don't worry, I'll still be at Greenwich every Sunday and the every other Saturday too.  In fact it's so great to be back in the classroom, that the fact that I'm still waiting for solicitors, courts, the old school to respond correctly (or at all) to my requests, has failed to register higher than a 2 on my 'blip radar'.


As for EleBoo, that's great too!  I seem to have attracted lots of elephant-lovers to the stall in a last few weeks, so there's now a page on the website just for their viewing pleasure.  Also, I took a bit of a gamble on having a picture enlarged to 30" x 20" and then mounted on Diasec®, it cost a fair bit too, compared to normal framing, but, oh my gosh, I sold it less than 24 hours after collecting it!  Big thanks to Kay Mounting for an amazing job and of course to "R" for buying #1 of 25.  Lastly, I just want to say how great it is to meet such a mix of wonderful people at the market, the day passes much faster when I spend most of it chatting!!  Oh, now this really is the last thing for this entry.  “He who heeds the word wisely will find good, and whoever trusts in the Lord, happy is he.” (Proverbs 16:20)