A warm trade wind blew through the palms, their wayward murmur broken only by the steady creak of the rope sling that rocked me gently between their up stretched arms. A thick haze of heat danced up from the sand, and through it I began to see the outline of an approaching woman. Closer now, her grass skirt joined in with the music of the trees, and I could see she had a large pair of coconuts. I knew them to be the vessels of a native brew so potent that one draught would send me ever further into a dreamless sleep. Smiling, the woman offered me the larger of the two; it was hairier than I had imagined, and I drank deeply.
The last I would see would be the fathomless black of her Polynesian eyes, the last I would hear would be the ringing call of a jungle bird….getting louder….and more relentless……and….. ‘HELLO…what do you mean it’s in Nuneaton? I’ll give you 1500 good reasons why it matters pal, they’ve got leather jackets, long hair and semi legal choppers, and they’re all waiting on the sea front at Margate to take delivery of their bike rally T-shirts — if they don’t turn up they WILL divert to Nottingham to give me some physical education.
Knackers, I’m back — potent native brew! Happy Shopper own brand coffee shavings and a soggy choccy hob nob more like.We all dream of escape. I know, it’s hard to imagine given the glamorous red carpet whirl of the garment decoration industry, but we all hope that one day we’ll press the last lid onto the final pot of ink, flick off the six head and walk away.
But it’s going to take money, and sadly a whole lot of spending money, so what are the options for the wizened ink jockey, the stoop backed yarn threader?
Well we could sell up, lock stock and two smoking autos – the kit, the premises, the garments, the goodwill, but will that get us our BFH, the old bus fare home? Probably not — you know what’ll happen. Selling kit is a the same as selling cars — the blow dried villain you bought it off in the first place, will tell you that the big sales speech about residual values on equipment is no longer relevant, due to a need to make some money out of you – so your machinery is worth diddly.
Premises? Chances are we’ll all still be renting some fly blown lean-to from Fagin’s Asset Management. Banks as we know require an enormous deposit and the right to re-posses your grandmother when buying a commercial property, so although most us have dreamt of owning our own gaff, that and the fact that paying it off over a commercial term means Pot Noodling for the next ten years has meant that dream is of the pipe variety.
Goodwill? Maybe, a little, but most people inour game assume that when the main players have left the original line up, there’s a strong chance that the business will evaporate with them — Happy Larry’s T-shirts won’t be quite as happy when Larry is loafing on the Algarve. It’s a strong testament to the strength of customer relationships in our industry, but it doesn’t help when you’re trying to leg it. There’s also the likelihood that any prospective buyers will know where your work is and take the view that they’ll wait until you’ve done one, and then nick it anyway, the stinkers.
Stock? Forget it — most of us have it in and out the door faster than Forest go one behind at home, so there won’t be a European T-shirt mountain to flog off.
Not looking that great is it? And then when you chuck in a few tax issues and the fact that if you were bought out, all the chaps you’ve stood toe to toe with for years will probably get laid off as you pull out the car park, it looks even worse.
Speaking of the work force though, the hearts of oak that have dug the tunnel that will hopefully enable your escape, what about handing them the keys to the executive wash room, or in my case the outside khazi? I wonder if this is the way forward — they know the score, they’ve earned it, and if you didn’t go to the Mike Baldwin School of Personnel Management hopefully they’ll quite like and you and who knows, maybe they’ll even bung you a few quid every week out of the profits — then you can go and rock backwards and forwards in your own trifle wearing state supplied clothing. I went to visit an old printer last week, banged up in The Shady Pines Retirement Lodge — on the wall there was a big sign for the bewildered saying ‘ Today is Tuesday’ above a clock that said it was ten to three.
It was actually half past four on a Friday, so what with that and forty years of thinners Frank probably thought it was five to two and we were having a drink on the moon……not that his plight inspired this article of course. I guess there are other possibilities — at the speculative end we hope that if we build a sufficiently wonderful web site, we’ll have a sales generating monster that will be of some value. And on a general e-commercial note dream of relevant traffic so vast, and data bases so extensive that maybe even the wider business community will see a price tag on our efforts. And at the more quantifiable end there are always pensions of course — I’ve got a rock solid one with Maxwell Assurance, so no worries there then. Looks like a lottery ticket then — I’ve never bought one before on the basis that you’re 12000 times more likely to die by Saturday than you are to win; I figured if I avoided the whole idea I might live a bit longer. Looking at previous winners it seems like you can increase your chances though by: getting your house a dodgy stone cladding job; installing a 20 foot plasma screen TV that’s visible from the interest free credit sofa on the front lawn; walking bandy legged in sportswear carrying a tin of Special Brew, and investing in a Celtic tattoo…….I know I know, I’m a bad person, totally politically incorrect, they’re all God’s children and that line about the sportswear was just a cheap shot…it was a bulls eye, but a cheap shot none the less.
The last thing I’ll see of course will not be the dusky smiling face of willing native abandon, but the underside of an auto when I collapse in the middle of a small and irrelevant run of T-shirts for a dog training club — they won’t get rid of me that easily though, it’ll take at least three days to chisel me off all the glue on the floor!
Cheers,
Paul
