Memories of warmer days

I forgot my camera today and had what might have been an interesting blip in mind... so this is a bit of an emergency shot, with a hastily constructed "studio" made from 2 sheets of watercolour paper. Resourceful? I was previously a Girl Guide and grew up in the era of Blue-Peter-double-sided-sticky-tape...

This little Ganesh figure, which fits into the palm of my hand, usually sits on the mantlepiece as a reminder of a fascinating holiday in Tamil Nadu, a year before the Tsunami struck. That Boxing Day is fixed in my mind as I didn't hear from an Indian friend out there for weeks afterwards and I knew there was a reasonable chance he could have been leading a tour group along the coast at the time. Luckily all was well on that score.

A slightly strange day. The works Christmas shutdown period has been extended to two weeks as the orderbook is sparse in the current economic climate. While it will be nice to have a slightly longer break it's obviously unsettling feeling direct evidence of Le Crunch is biting at the door (and I'd also had other plans for the extra leave I've now got to take, but oh well).
We had to make redundancies in June/July as result of losing a big chemical order to China (no suprise there then) and while it was absolutely horrible at the time, I'm hoping the timing was a blessing in disguise. To the best of my knowledge, all those whom we had to let go found new employment pretty soon after, which would be alot harder now, and hopefully we're already operating leanly enough to get through ... we can't get too much leaner although of course nothing in the current climate is guaranteed!