Hindsight is a Wonderful Thing! Part One of Our Story
Monday, May 9, 2011 @ 6:08 PM
They say that hind sight is a wonderful thing. On that Friday night in February, when we had to make the final decision about whether to take over a rather run down garden centre, if someone had warned us that the world was about to nose dive into recession, perhaps we would have said no. But at the time it seemed the perfectly logical thing to do. It was the next big step forward as a company. What could possibly go wrong?!
Maybe we should have had someone over to read our tarot cards for us and predicted what the future held. I mean they can be quite accurate. I had had my cards read for me many years before. At the time I thought Madam Fifi or whatever her name was had told me a load of mumbo jumbo. I had smiled politely, whilst inwardly laughing at her comments, thrown the tape of the reading in a cupboard and forgotten about it. Until her predictions had started coming true!! At the time of the reading I was the mother of three small children, one only two months old. My world consisted of washing, cleaning, cooking and child care. When she said I would do some voluntary work that would lead to a career I thought “Yeh right, like I wanna work for free!!” I was already doing that at home. But when my youngest started full time education I suddenly had a whole day to fill and watching This Morning just wasn’t cutting it. So when the PTA asked for volunteers to help out in their “Wildlife Garden” at the school, I jumped at the chance. After all I loved gardening. I had lovingly redesigned my own back garden, learning about every plant I had bought, its likes and dislikes, soil type, aspect, requirements. Little did I know when I volunteered that the Dell, as it was called, constructed out of an old bomb crater from WW2 was an overgrown, weedy patch, full of fox holes and half chewed trainers that the foxes had stolen. 3 or 4 volunteer mums had the unenviable task of constructing paths, painting the bird hide, building and stocking a wildlife pond and trying to control the 6-7 foot tall stinging nettles that grew everywhere. Couldn’t have them stinging the little darlings on one of their bug hunts – Health & Safety don’t you know. But it was fun!! I was out of the house, chatting to other mums, getting fresh air and free exercise. Even at that stage I hadn’t thought about the tarot reading. Only later when I was asked to mow a friend’s lawn on a fortnightly basis and get paid for it and a small garden maintenance business developed, did I think about the tape.
If Madam Fifi had sat with us on that February evening and predicted the future then maybe I wouldn’t be sitting here right now, writing about the demise of our business. We weren’t the only ones, not by a long shot. I mean we lasted a year past Woolworths closing their doors. That was a shocker!! And MFI and Zavvi and all the other hundreds of businesses that had no option but to shut up shop. But on that evening as we smoked another cigarette and said should we or shouldn’t we, it seemed like the only logical thing to do. The world was our oyster. The only way is up. Things can only get better. As I said, hind sight is a wonderful thing!!
