Last week of the month now but still warm and dry. April showers and all that kinda shit are most definitely a thing of the past. The drought years are upon us an' best of luck to ya. Grass looking dry and wasted already, not even May. Oh fuck, oh bloody fuck. Should be an interesting summer. Been sleeping well this week as all the exertions of last week get flushed outta my system. Dylan at the beginning was the big one. Yeah, can't get much bigger really, well ya can but not with the kinda life I'm leading. Go on to Expecting Rain everyday to check on Bob's progress as he makes his way through Europe on this Spring 07 leg of the Never Ending Tour. Since I saw him Bob has played shows in Germany and France and tonight he is in Geneva. Kinda makes me wanna just hop on a plane and go over there to catch his show. What a buzz that would be! He is gradually getting further and further and south and will soon be in the land of the Romans. Lucky Bob, the talented, the immensely talented old bastard.
Began to have money worries again at Wisdom. Serious money worries and they have kinda crept up outta nowhere but now they are here and there aint no hidin' away from them. Went through one of those 'orrible sweaty periods last night when I just couldn't get it out of my mind how much money Wisdom owed to various people, companies and organisations, and how the hell, how the bloody fuckin' hell, we were ever gonna pay everything back. It will only get worse as the year goes on if the sales don't improve. Aint no doubt about that. All this latest internal grief came about 'coz the website was out of action for 24 hrs on Mon which meant we lost a fair bit of business just at a time when we could have done with something like that coming along just like we would have wanted a great big hole in the fuckin' 'ead.
Makes ya feel kinda helpless just sitting there in the office not knowing what the hell it is your are supposed to do. Dream up new strategies, find new ways of increasing sales, stuff like that. Yeah, all that kinda shit. All can get to seem pretty damn desperate at times though and I guess there is a part of me which would be more than a little relieved if it got to the point where we just would not be able to carry on. Too many bills to pay so that one day we make the dreaded call to the receivers to pull the plug. Relief that it is finally all over would be my first emotion, I'm pretty sure of that. Aint jokin'. Nah, just like Bob at his shows aint talkin', I aint jokin'. Dunno how the hell it is that I am still at Wisdom after nearly 18 years but there you go, facts are facts. We all have to take responsibility for the paths we take in life and mine are laid out plain an' simple, can trace them back pretty damn far if I wanted to and yeah man I can hold my hands up fair and square an' say head on that it aint nobody's fault but mine.
All can seem a bit of a joke anyway when ya consider what it is we actually doin'. Here we are thinking of strategies to stay alive as business. The business is selling books, cds, dvds and other stuff on, primarily, Buddhism. What is Buddhism though Chief? The path of letting go, the path of less desire, getting to the point where ya can just sit in a room with ya mind and be happy, be very happy. Renounce an' pounce upon the wonder of the simplicity of it all. Think we at Wisdom Books sometimes go in the opposite direction. Yeah man, off into money valley and the ponies of slavery yoked to our necks.
Main thing that is dragging us down is the money we are having to put aside to have the boiler and heating system replaced. 14 grand. Absolute killer. No two ways about it and now it is beginning to bite. Stretching things to the point where others who we owe are just gonna have to miss out until we get this done and dusted. All calculations of course to a certain extent depend on continued good business an' at the moment the fact of the matter is business could be better. We have to take it as a given to a point that orders from our customers will continue to come in through the door, but the hiccup, the fuck up in the system, we have had in that department is that the orders have slowed to a trickle recently and when that happens we really are in a bit of a fucked up situation. We need the orders, I gotta snivelling well say, oh boy we really need 'em.
Loadsa money also going out at the moment 'coz it is mail out time. That means paying Jimbo to stuff all the supplements, label them an' bag 'em up.Then paying for the postage to get them out the door and paying to get the literature printed. All money, hard earned dosh which flies right out the window again. Do I think we'll crash? Yeah there is a chance. Website seems at times weather driven. If is it nice and sunny then people don't surf unless they are on a beach of course; as far as El Webo is concerned however it can go down to Jack Diddly Squat. What we need is a prolonged spell of miserable wet and cloudy weather but the way things are going it is in just the opposite direction. More dry days and hot sun, parched grass and barbecues. People making the best of things before the end of the world. Not interested in turning round their lives. Yeah an' to be honest with ya I just can't see things changing in the near future.
So there we sit in the desert of the office. Leigh, Mike and myself. So many years now. Institutionalised. We work well as a team but all things are finite, nothing is a given an' bust is bust, fuckin' simple as that. We can't expect to have the right to last forever and it might be that as far as Wisdom Books are concerned we are reaching the end times. The bye bye times.
Now don't ya get me wrong. There aint no pint in acting defeatist or anything like that. We aint about to give in but at the same time ya gotta be realistic. No, as far as the boundaries and borders exist within the areas which we operate we will do all that we can to stay afloat. But that is all that we can do. Our best. After that there are just some things we cannot control. Like six months ago when the boiler packed up and we found that we had signed up to a fully repairing lease and were therefore responsible for getting a new one. To ignore those kinda things would be to court even more grief further down the road. We will just battle on. See what happens. Keep things are tight as possible. Try to stay positive. An' fuckin' go bust.
Measures we can take to save bills would obviously have to start with the workforce and whether we can afford to keep everyone. In fact I just given us all a slight wage rise and I guess every year, hook or by crook, we manage to do that and that is something to be quietly satisfied about. As far as the general level of the game is concerned at least we are keepin' up. Yeah man, I have given us the same increases as per the national average. But when push comes to shove if we have to shrink then shrink we will. Close things up. Downstairs two packers will become one. Then three in the office will become two. Shrinkin' up. Stuff like that. Jimbo doing the accounts will have to go in favour of a cheaper alternative, or at least we will have to cut him down. Think I will have to list out all the debts we have later this week so that I have a firm grasp on the situation. Management planning. If those things are clear we might have a chance. Then again, we might just simply be fucked.
Thurs now. What I wrote above was on Wed. Don't look like it's getting any better at work, in fact I think it might even get worse. Bills, bills, bills. Means we're gonna go bust, bust, bust. Just don't see any other way about it. Horrible feeling in one way but in another no one would be more relieved than me if the whole thing came crashing down. Spent too much time over the last 18 years worrying about Wisdom and whether or not it is gonna pull through as it lurches from crises to another. Really, do I wanna spend the whole of the rest of my life worrying about such things? Would be good, would be really good to be able to move onto something else and all this garbage behind. Shit like money. Worrying about not having enough of this, not having enough of that. Brings me down. Even if I leave and end up doing something which is just standing still then so what? Things can only go so far.
Scrapin' around in an East London dog fight to stay in business. Ya know it can really get to the point where you just wanna put your hands up in the air and say OK deal is done, we aint gonna be able go any further...the relief, the bliss of being able to wake up in the morning and look out upon new horizons...can't ell ya how good that might be. Yeah I know, might not be that good at all 'coz it is always tempting to think the grass is greener on the other side. Yeah man, always easy to think that. But in this case it might actually be true.
Fri now. Fri morn. Not a great night's sleep. All for the reasons as stated above. Work worries, what a piss pile of wasted energy yeah? Woke up at five. Mind busy with thoughts, useless thoughts and it meant an hour or so tossing an' turning before grabbing a little bit more shut eye before seven. Then up an' through the usual morning rituals before landing here at just gone 7.30. In front of the Lap an' looking at the green grass outta the window.
Weather cooler today. Kinda confusing. Gotta go into town tonight and it is difficult to know what the best clothes to wear are gonna be. Might have my hair cut today as well. Getting kinda longish for me so yeah it is time to get my locks chopped. Always go to the same place which is Michael's down in Walthamstow. Have done for years, at least 12 now I guess, maybe more. Usually once every six to eight weeks. Michael is a Greek Cypriot who has thought for many years that this country is going to the dogs. Too many immigrants, too many 'orrible Muslims milking the system in his opinion. Takin' the fuckin' piss and at the same time wanting to blow us up. Breakdown of law and order where justice for the common man has been thrown right out the window. Difficult sometimes not to stoke his fires if ya see what I mean. Yeah man, I know how to play the Devil as well.
Michael however has been a bit less vociferous in his opinions about all things wrong with Britain for the last three years or so because he has had big problems with his prostrate and has had major surgery to get things back in working order. Mucho paino aint no doubt about that. Pain has mellowed him, close shaves with the Reaper has toned his rantings down and now it can be kinda difficult to fire him up. All he wants to do is stay alive, get out as often as possible to his holiday home on Cyrpus and sit in the sun. Who can really blame him for that? We all have only a short time. These days he always talks well of the NHS and how well they looked after him so maybe things aint quite so bad after all with the old UK as far as Michael is concerned.
Michael does have his son and nephews there however and they have kinda picked up the baton as far as talking the game of the UK going to the dogs is concerned and when I walk outta the place sometimes it is as much as I can do to stop myself from finding a buncha strange faces an' calling the boys in to see 'em hanging from on high. Them, the troublers...Yeah man, I'm easily influenced I have to say. Kinda can lose sight of the ball completely and forget why I am here on the earth when I'm at Michael's. And why am I here? Oh yeah, essentially as a meditator and a man engaged in the business of selling Buddhism. Ta spread as much peace an' love as humanly possible during my short time here before moving on to Planet Zonk. Yeah, like fuck. I just don't wanna be a lousy stinkin' failure.
No comments:
Post a Comment