We saw a Jay on the way to work yesterday. It swooped from trees by the side of the road, flew in front of us and dropped into a park on the other side of the road. They are both colourful and unobtrusive, being quite a shy bird. This is the time of year to see them as they collect acorns and stash them away for future use. It’s not the first time we have seen a Jay at that part of the journey as they live in the park, but they rarely show themselves..
This morning I had an acceptance for the revised haibun, which was good. I’m always slightly wary of edits, as I may have said in previous posts, but this one seemed to work out alright. I try to do what editors ask, as a second pair of eyes can often see what I don’t, and they are helping me for free. There are several possible pitfalls, but we seem to have avoided them.
The owner has been away for the last two days. It’s always relaxing, but it is also frustrating because we end up having to stop what we are doing to deal with customers. At that point you appreciate what he does in the course of the week. I am trying to get things loaded up on eBay but people keep ringing and visiting and generally stopping us working. I’m used to the phone calls because they are a normal part of my day, but I normally rely on him dealing with customers. It just goes to show what a finely balanced machine the shop really is.
It hasn’t helped that we’ve found it hard to locate a number of the things we have sold. Once you lose one coin in a coin shop it can be quite a performance finding it again and it can take several hours out of the day. It always annoys me when that happens because time is money, as they say, and if you spend an hour looking for a £6 coin there is no way you are going to make a profit. It’s one of those cases where spending five minutes on filing and labelling would pay for itself. Fortunately we are all as bad as each other when it comes to losing things so it doesn’t seem so bad.
British West Africa 1/10th of a Penny
Holy moley. Tens of thousands of items. I would think that organization needs to be your top priority. Any idea why I see grumpy Santa instead of a blue jay?
Because I have plenty of grumpy Santa photos. It’s just sup[ply and demand . . .
Proper filing is always done tomorrow. It is the bane of my life and it was really lucky that I had good secretaries when I was a head teacher or I would have been even further up the creek than I usually was.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day . . .
Shakespeare had the same problem. 🙂
Pretty jay! We have jays in Maine, but they have blue feathers on their entire bodies. A lovely bird with a raucous call. Congrats on the acceptance!
Thank you. In the confusing way of bird naming we call your jays blue jys. We don’t have them but they always look nice. Number 2 son has them in oronto and is very fond of them.
We call them blue jays, too. I just shortened it in my response.
🙂 I’m still mesmerised by the fact you get hummingbirds in Maine.
We have the same noisy blue jays as Laurie does. But I don’t see that picture. I only see a grumpy Santa Claus.
There’s an ordinary Jay on the link. I have never mnaged to photograph one myself.
I have only ever seen one jay. Now I will look out for them at pannage time. Congratulations on th poem. It is good to see the owner has his uses.
You can easily mistake them for pigeons if you aren’t concentrating – look out for the white rump.You can often hear them before you see them too.
Thanks
Good luck!
Congratulations on the revised haibun acceptance, Simon. I am glad that worked out.
Interruptions can certainly derail one trying to do a job. Division of labor has its merits. 🙂 And I agree on a few minutes of filing and labeling save much weeping and gnashing of teeth later on trying to find an item, even at home. 🙂
I have managed to label some, which has made it easier, and the owner has just started labelling some as he does them, which is also helping. The trouble is that we still have 2,000 lots posted on eBay and it’s a lot of stuff when you have it all together. Then we have at a lot of stuff that isn’t on eBay. Tens of thousands of utems . . .:-(
That is a lot of items!
Certainly is! 🙂