You are allowed to enjoy this…

Here’s a lyric to a song I’ve not yet recorded. The first verse came to me in a waking dream, which is unusual for me, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I purloined it subconciously from another song!
The Things I Believe (or “I Can See The Future Coming”)
I can see the future coming
From the corner of my eye
It is mysterious and elusive
Like the stars up in the sky
I can see the path before me
Like the shepherd leading sheep
I know we can get out of here
I’ve just got to believe
CHORUS
I believe we will overcome
The obstacles in our way
I believe what doesn’t kill us
Makes us stronger everyday
I believe that everything that happens
Is a lesson to be learnt
You don’t put your hand in the fire
Knowing it is going to get burnt
I can see the future coming
Like an uninvited guest
A portent of things to come
Another question in the test
I can see the time unravelling
Like the springs inside a watch
Tightly coiled, relentless
A vision of what we could have lost
CHORUS
I believe we will overcome
The obstacles in our way
I believe what doesn’t kill us
Makes us stronger everyday
I believe that everything that happens
Is a lesson to be learnt
You don’t put your hand in the fire
Knowing it is going to get burnt
God pays debts without money
On that I can depend
What comes around goes around
Karma’s going to get you in the end
Justice might be stupid
Justice sometimes might be blind
But I believe that you’ll get what you deserve
It will just take a little time
CHORUS
I believe we will overcome
The obstacles in our way
I believe what doesn’t kill us
Makes us stronger everyday
I believe that everything that happens
Is a lesson to be learnt
You don’t put your hand in the fire
Knowing it is going to get burnt

…you spend the time downloading and installing the Windows 7 Beta on your laptop using Virtual PC…

Whereas most of my thoughts about running a newsagents have written down but not published on this site, here’s an article about our recent troubles that have faced us. It’s a good read and will give the gossips something to talk about! 🙂
Disaster Diary Article
Don’t worry – I am hoping to write a book out of this too.

Woolworths at Lea Bridge Road, Leyton
So the very last Woolworths stores are closing today. My career began in the Woolworths at Bakers Arms in Leyton. Happy times. Due to my charm and dashing good looks (no really), I was put to work behind the record bar dishing out LPs, 45s and 12 inches left, right and centre. It was here that I met the Missus and we worked together for a while before she left for pastures new and then we continued our friendship.
I used to joke how we’d probably have been better off staying at Woolworths and that we’d probably have ended up managing our own store by now. Ooops…got that wrong. It is a shame because I used to go and spend money in that shop on a regular basis but cash-flow is a big fat horrible cow of a beast.
Instead of wasting our money on the war on terror and sending our own soldiers to be blown up in Iraq and Afghanistan, the government could have bailed out these retailers who are going to the wall. It could have prevented the rise of unemployment and honest, hard-working folks losing their livlihoods and eventually their homes.
Oh well. To better, more innocent and exciting times. Working at Woolworths all those years ago was one of the reasons I wanted my own shop because I loved dealing with the customers. But those times have changed and then you realise that Leyton is very different from Norfolk.

My article for the Retail Newsagent appeared in this week’s edition. I’ll PDF a version of it when I have the time. It is a good edit according to The Missus. This pleases me as I rarely ever read anything again that I’ve written (how poncey is that?). The article is entitled “Diary of a Disaster” and explains exactly what we’ve been through, though I have excluded a lot of the shitty, nasty, personal stuff.

Well a new year is upon us and I know it has to be better than the last one? Plans are drawn, the future is pretty much mapped out for the first quarter of the year. For the first time ever, we have a good idea of what we are trying to achieve in the coming year and my new year’s resolution should be easy (and a joy) to keep.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll even get around to recording some more music!!!

The idiots of the village continue to snicker and bicker and spread all manner of untruths about our situation. As our neighbour remarked to us: “It doesn’t matter if you have anything to do with these people, even if you keep yourselves to yourselves – they’ll still make things up about you.”
Ahh, the petty small-mindedness of village life. So the first rumour that emerged since the incident was that my mother had died of a heart attack as a result of it. This I find amusing as her condition as “unhurt” had been reported in the local press, so I put it down to the local kids’ wishful thinking.
Another good rumour was that my mother had stormed into the Co-Op store (which like every good unethical business has decided to profit on our misery by starting to stock newspapers for the first time, but claiming that they are helping us as we can’t keep our regular hours. Not true, you mealy-mouthed cunts, you are stealing my trade for ourselves. Kick a man while he’s down, why don’t ya?”) and thrown all their newspapers into the street.
The source of that rumour was my mother herself. She remarked, cheefully laughing, that if she had it in her she would go into the Co-Op and do the self-same thing: throw all their papers into the street, such was her consternation at our plight. It’s an off-the-cuff remark, but the drooling idiots that populate this place grab hold of it and spread it as truth. Morons.
So now the newest rumour was that in fact a body had been found in the rubble. A body had been buried in the walls. My mother heard this from a customer and a day later a different customer came in with a much more macabre variation of this: it was a baby’s body buried in the walls that had been discovered by the police. Whoever is spreading this shit is sick in the head.
No-one died, no newspapers have been thrown into the street and, more importantly, no baby’s remains have been found on site.
Twats…