Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all of you!  Thank you to all of you who have left messages on the blog or who visited the stall in Chamberlain square or the web site over Christmas.  I have been taking a few very well earned days off with the family.  It is curious that after big events rather than feeling a sense of achievement one often feels an unjustified sense of anti climax.  Everest never looks quite as good from the top as the idea of having climbed it looks from the bottom before the ascent.  Few mountaineers get medals for coming back down mountains as opposed to climbing them!

Next year will be the 10th anniversary of the Christmas Craft Fare market and so planning for that will start immediately.  One of the nicest aspects of running this business is the chance to meet people and be able to encourage their interest in quite unexpected ways. An 11 year old customer of mine springs to mind.  Part of one of the endless school trips brought down by teachers to the fare, he stops and casting aside the urgings of his class mates to carry on he took a good look at the stall before alighting on one of the crystal pendulums laid out there.  I showed him how to ask for a yes and a no with the pendulum and he tried it and found it worked for him and got his pocket money out and bought it and went off really happy.  I am not at all sure whether I would have shown the same interest when I was his age or the same confidence to disregard the attitudes of my peer group in making up my own mind about what to be interested in.  

The new product lines I introduced to the stall worked well this year.  The Hand made silver jewellery was very positively received as were the VW campervan mugs and other memorabilia which went down a storm with passers by.

Now the New Year is here and the whole cycle begins again.  The Mirrorstone Crystals shop will be reopened this time with me actually there most of the time on Monday January the 4th.  I would myself have opened this week but have had no staff to help me during Christmas week.     Still I have high hopes of this next quarter.  I shall be introducing some exciting new lines of stock all at Mirrorstone Crystals ‘sensible prices!’  We are also planning to begin doing card readings in the shop for those who are interested.  ‘Watch this space!’  I have some amazing new fossils which will soon be available to view/purchase.  

I am also introducing a range of essential oils which to compliment the extremely popular range of incense which has already proved such a hit with many of you.  Again all this is about working to towards providing as comprehensive a range of products as feasibly possible at this stage.

This is a very useful time of year I believe.  Many people bemoan the cold and the darkness and few of us if given the opportunity wouldn’t choose to spend a month or to somewhere warm and sunny if we could.  But consider this.  As human beings even living as we do in the middle of a big city like Birmingham we still come from the Earth and are part of the Earth.  At this time of year the soil knows to rest itself and that which is in the solid and of the soil.  The plants and animals also know to rest.  Plants need time to go dormant before they germinate in spring and even when they do they begin by germinating in the dark.  None of us at the time of the Winter Solstice and as we prepare to celebrate New Year know what the coming year will bring for us.  Yet deep in the darkens of the unknown to come the seeds of our futures lie waiting to germinate.  And how do we find our way from here and now to there and then. 

My two dogs know the way though they do not know that they know.  As they chase each other oblivious around the garden  in the rain and cold and mud, coming in every so often to nuzzle me and try and persuade me  to come and join the  fun.  Their wisdom.  The only way they know to live-in the present and trust in the future.  In a world full of fearful maybes it seems a precarious way to live, but on average they seem to spend more time smiling than I do and so perhaps as 2010 beckons and another years fights and fancies retreats into the rear view mirror of my life I could do a lot worse than take seriously the lessons their approach to life has to teach.  So let me finish this entry by saying I look forward to seeing you all in 2010!    Let’s hope the New Year helps us all to manifest our dreams!!!  It would be great to hear from you about good things that happened to you over Christmas and New Year.   How you spend the time and celebrated. How you connect with the turning of the seasons and what you are planning and hoping for in this New Year so why not leave a comment.  It may be that there is someone out there who maybe able to help you make your plans a reality.

Cheers,

Adrian