The S&H (who is very clever) is building his mother (who is me) a shop (which is great).
As a result all along the top bar you can see words specific to remote shopping, such as shop and cart. However when you click on them, nothing happens. That’s because there’s nothing there yet.
In order for there to be something there, the shop assistant (me) will have to stack the shelves. This involves taking a photograph of each item, writing the description and the price and going through several routines to get them into the shop.
At present the shop assistant is writing this while watching the thick, thick snow falling (in November) and planning to spend the rest of the day making the Christmas cards. The cards are a major production number involving a month of planning and making. I have just got to the tricky bit, involving engineering, to make it work.
I would be Internet shopping but there is no Internet, I believe because everyone else has woken to see the snow and decided to go Internet shopping.* The snow is so thick I am not even going to walk round the corner to the garage supermarket, I am going to visit the freezer of my own fridge.
In theory (which is always fine and dandy) the shop will come into existence when the S&H and his mother meet, and the clever one with computery knowledge can teach the other one (me) how to do it. When I have done some learning the shop will appear and I will tell you it is there.
Meanwhile the S&H has installed a doodah for security. When you click on ‘Leave a comment’ a box comes up for you to tick. Please tick it. That’s all. Your message will come to me as always and I will reply, as usual.
I have been doing a lot of reading about tax and customs and excise and all that. My reading has lead me to the conclusion that the shop should be for UK customers only. I am sorry if you live far away, very sorry. A reader alerted me to the difficulties of shopping from the EU in the UK following Brexit. (Do you know, I have days when I think I’m writing English and days when I’m not so sure.) She said goods get impounded and export duties are levied on the remote collector.
I have some experience of this as I have been shopping for miniatures round the world for thirty years. If you are a giant TV shopping channel you can afford an entire legal department and another postal department and do deals with the post office, though it is worth noting that some giant shopping channels open studios in other countries rather than exporting, because of the difficulties.
I am just one pensioner, I’m the same height as the Queen, younger and with rather more al fresco hair. I am not expecting, even if the shows reopen and stay open, to make enough to have to pay tax. But I would like to have a few selected porcelain items for sale for collectors.
The situation may change. Politicians make trade deals round the world, it keeps them out of mischief, sometimes.
These days if I wanted to buy something from abroad I might ask friends in the country I’m shopping in, to do local shopping for me. One of the huge benefits of attending Miniature shows such as Miniatura, which is properly called Miniatura International, is that you do make friends with exhibitors and visitors from all over the world. When the countries of the world have finally acted together to save all the people from Covid and then, I hope, save the planet, we’ll be able to do that again. It may be that we’ll all be given a number of air miles as a lifetime allowance, if it happened I would applaud that and use mine to visit a show somewhere and quite a few museums. In the current health situation I am staying put. I would not currently get on an aeroplane with air shared with other people breathing germs into it for anything, I don’t even like being in a room with a lot of people, unless they are masked or family.
I do collect house kits from over the pond. I pay the import duties happily, they have, in the past, been hefty.
So that’s where I’m up to currently. There will be a shop attached to this website, probably after Christmas and if you are a UK resident you’ll be able to shop there.
I had a French teacher at school whose saying ‘There’s a good time coming but it’s a good time coming’ is frequently very apt. When the good time arrives, I’ll tell you.
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* No, it was because something blew over in the gale and then got snowed upon. I really hate winter. (And it’s only Autumn, so far.)**
**People burble on about crisp, clear days but it’s only so they can sell you a scarf.