In other moos, I'm panic-buying Christmas

I spent what seemed like the whole day steeling myself to place a massive order of Christmas cards (for resale) from my the Flamingo Paperie warehouse. The Highland cows design above is the current bestseller. The bad moos is that orders are taking much longer than usual to fulfil, because of the lack of fuel, lorry drivers, and staff absences in the warehouse. My cards won't reach me in time for next week's market, unless a miracle occurs. There may not even be a reprint of popular designs this year, because there may be no room in the printers' schedules. I've already got some singles and had ordered a few packs of certain designs already, but not the bestsellers, sadly.

Steve was going to town and dropped me off, so I could make a hair appointment (for tomorrow, yay!) The hairdresser's, which had relocated since my last visit, had just one client and one hairdresser in it. It's now closed on Thursdays owing to lack of staff.

I walked home and started thinking about cards again. Ordered some more from a charity with a strong marine theme. These can go in my pick and mix basket, sold as single cards. As I'm now overdrawn, I hope all today's gambles pay off. Last year, I had 46 packs of Christmas cards in stock when the November lockdown was announced! By selling them and my advent calendars in the road outside our house, I managed to sell all but one pack by the last market weekend in December.

You can order the charity cards online via my website, www.helenascards.co.uk and, as web customers take priority over traders, you'll get them faster than I will! I have to add that I do not design or illustrate these cards myself, but they are all the work of UK artists; have always been printed in the UK; and support UK charities. My work is to sell them at markets, fairs, private gatherings and to individuals. I put a great deal of effort into the business, because I do believe in the product. (Thank you very much for looking at the website, if you choose to do so. I can post out brochures, please ask in comments of you'd like one for your relatives, and we can do addresses, etc. by email).

Talking of relatives, I rang my mother. She sounded on the ball, but repetitive, as she is these days. She can't bring herself to talk about her carers as carers, so refers to them as "supper providers", "dinner ladies" or "the people who throw cereal in my face" (they don't really!)
I said we were thinking of coming for Christmas, and her response was to say, "I don't know if I can make you very comfortable". Maybe she meant that Steve might not be warm enough. I assured her that we were perfectly comfortable on our last visit. Then she said she might not be able to assemble all the various families under one roof for Christmas dinner, "because no one has a massive house". I said that we weren't expecting that. Did wonder if she thought I was anticipating a return to some long-agoChristmas in the 1980s, before the Celtic diaspora of our family. Maybe the year when I was given a clock radio and a jumper with strawberries on it?

So that was my day. Panic-buying, but not of fuel.