A big lovelevenshulme shout out to Kelly and Ashima for doing such a fantastic job washing the cars on our street to raise money for the RSPCA. You've got to admire their motivation and the old school way they rolled up their sleeves and got stuck in. Great stuff for my kids to see and take in.
Same afternoon, Joan drops round with a bag of green beans, surplus to requirements and just what we needed to go with the mousakka (moussaka?). Oh, and Seb was able to pass on the gigantic railway sleepers he no longer needed to another neighbour a few doors down.
lovelevenshulme
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
What the Village Stores Are Up To
I dropped a lovelevenshulme postcard off at the Village Stores last week, and Ibrahim was so chuffed about it he tracked me down to the Library across the road to say thanks. Which made me feel chuffed too. So there was a lot of feeling chuffed in a very small space (and yes, we did keep our voices down. It is a library...) Here's Ibrahim's reply:
Hi,
Nice to get the card, it cheered us up, during these times of economic gloom.
We are in the middle of extending the shop a bit, so we can have a freezer section in the middle room, this will give us more room in the shop to stock more of the stuff we hope you will like. I would like to add some of the more hard to get items, you know, the odd ingredient that is in the recipe but no-one stocks it, though we need to remember we are a small shop and some stuff only has a short shelf life, the other difficult thing for us is, a lot of our customers are transient so business fluctuates quite dramatically sometimes.
The gardening season has slowed down so we don’t stock as many plants this time of year and what we have got we sell off at a discount sometimes, this has led to speculation that we are changing hands or even closing down, no, we are here to stay God willing. At the moment I am converting upstairs into a flat and would like to make the basement into a Cafe, but here is the problem, as I am a one man show it takes time, and as I am out a lot of the time at the Veg market, sourcing stock, getting plants or in the back ordering or doing bookwork, this is frustrating, as I feel this is an ideal time to make the building really something for us the community, but it is getting too much for me to manage on my own, perhaps I should involve others or hand over to someone who can move the business on, it was mentioned that some people where interested in forming a Cooperative, this raised my hopes, but it came to nothing.
So if anyone has any positive ideas on what we need to stock, or in fact on anything, please email them to me at thevillagestores@btinternet.com
Great to see what you are trying to do in your blog, we need to make Levenshulme what we want it to be, remember, that is cheaper than moving! Well I hope to see you soon, and thank you for your support (I will wear it all of the time.)
Kindest regards,
Ibrahim.
Hi,
Nice to get the card, it cheered us up, during these times of economic gloom.
We are in the middle of extending the shop a bit, so we can have a freezer section in the middle room, this will give us more room in the shop to stock more of the stuff we hope you will like. I would like to add some of the more hard to get items, you know, the odd ingredient that is in the recipe but no-one stocks it, though we need to remember we are a small shop and some stuff only has a short shelf life, the other difficult thing for us is, a lot of our customers are transient so business fluctuates quite dramatically sometimes.
The gardening season has slowed down so we don’t stock as many plants this time of year and what we have got we sell off at a discount sometimes, this has led to speculation that we are changing hands or even closing down, no, we are here to stay God willing. At the moment I am converting upstairs into a flat and would like to make the basement into a Cafe, but here is the problem, as I am a one man show it takes time, and as I am out a lot of the time at the Veg market, sourcing stock, getting plants or in the back ordering or doing bookwork, this is frustrating, as I feel this is an ideal time to make the building really something for us the community, but it is getting too much for me to manage on my own, perhaps I should involve others or hand over to someone who can move the business on, it was mentioned that some people where interested in forming a Cooperative, this raised my hopes, but it came to nothing.
So if anyone has any positive ideas on what we need to stock, or in fact on anything, please email them to me at thevillagestores@btinternet.com
Great to see what you are trying to do in your blog, we need to make Levenshulme what we want it to be, remember, that is cheaper than moving! Well I hope to see you soon, and thank you for your support (I will wear it all of the time.)
Kindest regards,
Ibrahim.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Back home
Hi,
Just to say that we were a recepient of one of your postcards, which had been put through our door whilst we'd been away on our honeymoon. To come back after spending 3 weeks away to find a positive message, as opposed to damaged cars, was a lovely welcome home.
Good luck with the blog, and thank you. I will be logging on in future to see what can be done to improve where we live.
Jo B
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