Organic-Ally

This time of year, every year, I dread having to do my accounts for tax purposes. I am fairly numerate, but when it comes to accounting, I wallow in the abyss between the debits and credits. My dear husband, trained in accounting, thankfully tolerates sitting down with me to sort out the numbers. Always we row over my poor book-keeping(??), my lack of analysis, and ... O dear! So last year, for Christmas, I was given Book-keeping for Dummies which I attempted to read, and even did exercises, etc. Last Saturday we sat down to do the accounts. I had made a start on the Trial Balance and the numbers on various bank accounts were adding up properly, etc. But still I managed to put some DRs and CRs in the wrong columns -- which he spotted, and I failed to find a record of my last payment to the accountant (!). But, BUT, we managed to balance the account without getting too cross with each other. Whew! Profit/Loss? Apparently I made a tiny, teeny profit, not enough to buy a half-decent han...

My son is nine (NINE!) today. I also took another plunge and started another 'shop' on Etsy where I hope to interest a non-UK market in my embroidered stuff. I am really getting excited about this crafty/creative business. As I noted in my Etsy page, most of the fun is in the digitizing process.

It has been a busier than expected year-end for me. I am not complaining. In fact it was very exciting and rewarding. I did notice that in the real shops, prices were being slashed before Christmas and I wondered what the effect that would have on the profit margin. According to M&S: not so good. Anyway the crazy sales continue and I must confess that I have taken the opportunity to buy a few things that I need, thinking ahead. So for customers who do read this blog my apologies for not being able to offer a massive post-Christmas sale at Organic-Ally. What I've done was to keep prices low BEFORE Christmas, knowing that I would need to put up prices after that. My Canadian supplier has put up both retail and wholesale prices by 15%, but my wholesale discount has gone down instead of up. In other words I have to pay more for less. The currency exchange rate also means I am being further disadvantaged. Other overheads are also going up all the time. I hope to remain economically ...

I filled in all the details for the little shop to get a repeat prescription for my husband, and then realized that he had exhausted his number of repeats and needed to see the GP for a review. I duly made an appointment for him, having had to hang on the phone for 10 minutes or so waiting for the automated system to get to the end of the day for his appointment. After his appointment, I trotted off to the chemist. They didn't have enough of medicine X so I arranged to collect two days later. When I did the chemist was on the phone but came off the phone to tell me that the GP had prescribed husband the wrong medication, so the prescription has to go back to the GP. "But he runs of out of his medication tomorrow." "Don't worry," he assured me. The chemist had in fact phoned the GP to notify her that she had made a mistake, a serious mistake. He had filled the prescription with the correct medication as directed by the GP on the phone, but the prescription it...

My husband requires repeat prescriptions. He had signed up with a large chain of chemists (and a bit) to organize collecting and filling these prescriptions. But they somehow always seem to manage to lose his prescription in between the piles of prescriptions they have, not have the medicines he needs, and almost always there is a long queue waiting to be served and waiting to pay. A couple of weeks ago we had a leaflet from our local independent chemist. They are a few doors from the sub-post office I use. They have now also introduced a collection service. As I needed a prescription filled for myself I went to them to say we would like them to do my husband's precription. They are so incredily friendly as small shops (and other owner-businesses) are capable of being. I've used their services before and have never been disappointed although the shop itself looked terribly dated and I could see that the packs of disposable nappies they were selling looked, hmm, dusty. Basically...

I don't usually get to read much of what is printed in the papers (when we do buy the papers), but there has been some interesting 'organic news' this last week or so. I was delighted to read one journalist's view on Why we should buy organic milk . Jane Wheatley says 'It makes me furious to see two litres selling for the “bargain” price of 65p in my local corner shop.' 'It’s not a bargain at all; it comes at a terrible cost to farmers and to the cows that are endlessly bred, pumped, primed and medicated for higher yields in an effort to reduce the gap between the price the farmer gets for his milk — around 18p a litre — and what it costs to produce it — about 21p. ' We have been very blessed in being able to have bottled organic milk delivered to us once a week. Sadly our fridge can only take so many standing bottles and we need to supplement these most weeks with store-bought organic milk. But we do buy it from the supermarket chain that this report hi...

Cousin took us out to lunch as she normally does during her stays with us. We went to Oriental City in Colindale where there is a 'food court'. It's a concept familiar with us Singaporeans. Different stalls sell different types of food in a 'court' (ie large hall) and we can purchase from any of the vendors, pay for it, wait for our order number to be flashed up on an electronic board, collect the food, and eat it any where we could find room to sit. There's a wide range of foods ranging from Vietnamese to Japanese, different types of Chinese to cuisines from different parts of south-east Asia (Malaysian 'nasi goreng', Singaporean 'Hainanese chicken rice', Thai green curry, etc). We had our greasy fill -- we do indulge once in a while -- but found that we could not finish the Shanghainese ('little dragon') dumplings that cousin ordered. To be honest, I didn't like it all that much. Usually, that would have gone to waste. Not today. To...