Dungeons and Dragons

Why is it when we have a packed calendar, we get the fear and yet the prospect of free weekends seems exciting but also daunting?  With freedom of choice comes indecision.  How will we fill our time?  Where will we go?  Somehow, passing the time doing anything short of amazing feels like wasted time, when so many weekends have been accounted for. Panic sets in. 

I call it “the comedown.”  Regularly engaging with our supporters/friends galvanises the feeling that we are on the right track with Voodoo Street, but take away that dialogue; the festival vibes and suddenly we feel cut adrift.  Out of touch. 

Processing orders online is anonymous.  As grateful as we are for them, it’s just not the same as engaging with a friendly face. 

T-shirts are T-shirts at the end of the day, or so you might think, but once you have been privy to a man’s 20 minute deliberation about whether the large or extra large tee “hangs” better from his neck, you realise that:

a)      It’s a myth that women are a nightmare to shop with and;

b)      Buying a standard fit T-shirt is obviously a more exact science than either of us ever realised!

So whilst receiving an online clothing order still offers the usual thrill of having been chosen, it’s now also filled with the trepidation of sending it out there and wondering if the neck will be ok! 

Touch wood, we’ve never had any issues with clothing sold online and love it when people take time out to photograph their purchases and tag us in them.  It makes it worthwhile.  Here are a few recent ones.

Photo courtesy of official_jr_skating

Thank god for Instagram and Facebook!  Those who choose to interact with us on social media may not realise it, but they are like co-workers – our own little cyber office.  By day, we’re beavering away in our dungeon, at Voodoo Towers and this contact with the outside world gives us a buzz.  (There’s only so long you can spend chatting to the postman without coming off as creepy J)

Lee Foulkes in his Voodoo Street Urban Army Cap

At this point, we’ve sold one of our stickers to nearly every corner of the globe at some point and have encountered some pretty “out there” surnames.  However, on Friday night a particularly familiar name popped up on an order of stickers.  After a little Internet research, we discovered that it was indeed the son of a certain Cypriot born member of BBC’s Dragon’s Den.  Not necessarily worthy of champagne popping, but definitely a talking point.  Another swiftly followed this order, from one Martin Kemp, although we’re doubtful that it was Spandau Ballet’s bassist.

Photo Courtesy of Steve and Cat Bath

Vespa Love

So, back to our free weekend.  What did we do?  Well, after a week of stock taking, updating our online store, washing rain battered odds and sods and reconciling a mountain of receipts, we were kept busy with family birthday celebrations on Friday. Saturday’s torrential rain and consequent flooding also made us grateful that we weren’t standing in the middle of a field somewhere, although the enforced time indoors did result in the beginnings of a new little project for Voodoo Street.  We also spent a little time on a design that we periodically tinker with.  (Hopefully we’ll be able to share these new bits and pieces with you very soon). We rounded off Saturday with a curry and beers with friends.

Can you buy grey jelly?

In other news, our favourite time of year - Halloween - is fast approaching and already, ghoulish Chinese tat is creeping into our house.  So far, we have some tea light holders, a jelly mould in the shape of a brain and 2 pumpkins.  There will be more.  This year we seriously need to up our game on the pumpkin front.  Both of last year’s gourds were hurriedly carved on Halloween and in all honesty would probably have looked better if we had taken a machete to them blindfolded!

Incidentally, in an update to my last blog, we discovered this sign nailed to a tree in the woods.  Our familiar outlook of tall woodland pines at the end of our garden (a view we fell in love with when we first looked at the house, which looks like a location from a Stephen King novel) is clearly not going to be around for much longer.  It looks as though their days are numbered.  Very sad.

Today marks the fourth sunny day in a row, which makes it hard to focus when I have a day of admin ahead of me.  Warm as it is by day, the temperatures seem to be plummeting at night in these parts and as we all know, the drop in evening autumn temperature marks the arrival of my nemesis – the spider.  I can handle zombies, ghosts and anything else Halloween throws at me, but I find these creatures truly terrifying.  I’m not a fan of insects in general; anything bigger than an aphid increases my heart rate and not in a good way.  We have had some roasters in our house: unnaturally hairy, too many legs, muscles ffs!  Gaz has to carry out a night time “sweep” before I go upstairs.  Maybe I should consider hypnosis.

An accurate artist's impression of a typical spider found in our house with frightening regularity

Anyway, onwards and upwards!  Til next time!

From the Cut to the Castle

Throughout the weekend at Vdubs in the Valley, Gaz made utterances about trading for a third weekend in a row in deepest Gloucestershire.  Baking hot and barely coping with demand, my back suffering from too many nights on a camp bed and too many hours on my feet, I chose to ignore these utterances, preferring to reserve judgment on this one. 

Come Monday morning, the situation had changed somewhat.  Not only had Gaz committed to doing the show – at Berkeley Castle – but we were also now sponsoring the event by producing the official show sticker.

I disappeared upstairs to unpack our weekend travel case and was taken aback.  It literally smelled of hay.  In fact, it also contained copious amounts of hay, stuck to socks and just about everything else!  Living out of a suitcase on the Vdub scene ain’t all glamour let me tell you!  My back had now properly seized up and I was wearing a groove in the rug pacing up and down every 15 minutes, trying in vain to loosen up.  As the show was a one-day event, it was decided that Gaz would go it alone.  For my part, determined to fix my ailing spine, I ordered a used copy of “The Permanent Pain Cure” by Ming Chew, as recommended by a friend.

The early part of the week was therefore spent designing said show sticker and working on some faithful replica stickers of a now obsolete mountain bike, Mountain Cycle’s San Andreas – a favour for a friend, who is generously gifting them to a true San Andreas enthusiast for his 50^th birthday.

The Workshop

Wednesday was a day reserved for fixing up the Golf.  An oil leak and squeaking suspension were driving us insane.  This was long overdue.

In need of some exercise, we decided to drive up together and hot foot it back along the canal or “cut” as it’s known in this part of the world.

Always time to photograph a cool ride

With our weekends spent largely in rural surroundings, it made a refreshing change to re-visit the local heritage we take for granted and so I thought I would share a little of our surroundings with you.

Heading towards the Red House Glass Cone and Glass Quarter along newly gravelled towpath

The 15-minute drive to the repair workshop took us up a road you could legitimately call “Exhaust Alley,” a featureless urban B road flanked by boxy new builds and post war housing estates.  The route back however, took in interesting and varied terrain.

Picturesque former public house, now private residence, stone's throw from Exhaust Alley

We walked along canal towpaths running adjacent-to-but-a-comfortable-distance-from Exhaust Alley....

Boat Yard

...through the once world renowned glass quarter, famed for its cameo glass and cut crystal...

One of 4 remaining cones beside Stourbridge 16 lock flight, the Red House Glass Cone Museum offers up glass blowing demonstrations and exploration of its underground tunnels.  There were once over 20 glassworks in this area.

Work in progess.  Former Glassworks currently being converted into apartments.

A narrow boat passing through a lock

through fields overlooking Millionaires’ Row, 

This is part of one street, just a few minutes from our home with the highest concentration of millionaires outside of London.  Spot the swimming pool.  NB.  Nothing like our house.

culminating in woodland we are lucky to have direct access to from our back garden, although for how much longer is uncertain, as the attached Estate property – an equestrian facility - is now on the market for a cool £1.9m....

The Gate House to the Estate

and rumours are flying that our precious woods have been sold separately.  We’ll see…

 

Our Woods

The remainder of the week was a blur of deliveries, promo and labelling of stock. (I am loving our fully quilted, herringbone weave newsboy caps).   

WANTED:  STOCK RAIDER

The obligatory show weather warning for Saturday night persuaded Gaz to delay set up until early Sunday morning and true to his word, I heard the front door shut at 6.00 am.

Gaz making his presence felt at Berkeley Castle

Gaz, left to his own devices, is nothing if not industrious, as regular customers Simon Flack and the lilac-locked Celia, will testify.  Short of an extra pair of hands, he thought nothing of asking them to organise shout-outs over the loud speaker to alert visitors to our stand, which they did, without complaint and were on hand to provide moral support throughout the day.  Cheers guys!

Simon and Celia, unofficial Voodoo Street hustlers ;-)

 By 7pm he was back in the fold and updating me on the amazing 86 year-old stunt driver Dick Sheppard, a Berkeley local and Italian Job stunt driver.  Dick, who has also worked on “Thunderball” and “Diamonds are Forever,” has crashed over 1,000 cars and aside from a hip replacement, seems to have miraculously avoided arthritis. 

Year 2 Berkeley Selfie with Dick Sheppard

So, as I type on this rainy Monday afternoon, the postman has just delivered my book, hopefully containing the secret to achieving a spine as flexible as Dick’s!  Wish me luck!

Bikes, Boxes and Blogs

OK, so it’s been a while since I posted and today is the day that I make good on my new year’s resolution to bore you, sorry, blog more frequently.

Running a business, child containment, crappy day-to-day domestic stuff and maintaining sanity and fitness is a struggle many of us deal with.  Waiting for the perfect week to blog about is never going to happen and there aren’t enough hours in the day to labour over the words to write, so this week’s as good as any to let you in on the random events, irritations and lifestyle of the three of us here at Voodoo Street.

Monday dawned with the usual mixed feelings; a new week in prospect and all the potential that brings, coupled with the knowledge that we face the nightmarish back-bothering task of lugging our entire stock down from the loft (once quite a nice room, now a dumping ground for Voodoo Street’s growing collection of stock, skulls and curiosities) to the front room and again outside into our VW van ready for Bus Types this weekend.  An intense 30 minutes swim at the local pool helped reinvigorate the senses (or dull them just enough to cope with the week in prospect!)

Tuesday was a race against time to supply our friend and super talented BMX rider Pinder, with some Voodoo Street tees.  He had been asked at short notice, to film a video for Rockermini BMX in India, but we all failed miserably with Pinder stuck at work in Birmingham after 9 pm having still not packed for his 3 am flight.  Thankfully he still has enough Voodoo swag to rep us out there and we’ll hopefully share some of his updates.

In between, I’ve been assisting the boy with SATS homework, babysitting tortoises (!), booking a ferry to the Outer Hebrides (more of that at a later date), talking Gaz down from finishing off our complete tool (not in a good way) of a printer with a lump hammer, tackling a gremlin on Facebook which has served to arbitrarily delete our posts, ironing stock, updating our web store and photographing an array of items we have accumulated in recent months, some of which might be on offer at Bus Types. This Packaway Stove might be on offer for example.

Bus Types is in Oswestry, one of Britain’s oldest settlements, and in keeping with Voodoo Street’s trading history, no doubt set to be the scene of apocalyptic weather for the next few days!

As I type, the living areas of our home have been sacrificed to boxes, filing cabinets, paperwork and our SMEG fridge door sticker display.

 

I have accepted that until Monday evening, our home is more likely to feature on TV show “The Horders Next Door,” rather than gracing the pages of Ideal Home magazine.

Today, with Gaz organising stickers, lifting boxes, ensuring Dr Jones, our tattooed mannequin, is ready for business, I’m wrestling with the more important business of what to wear.

Always keen to rep the brand, I shall be donning one of our logo beanies at the very least.  But those of you who know me, also know my penchant for vintage and that I like to mix things up a bit.  So, given the forecast is damp and chilly, these are going to be my key pieces:  Voodoo Street Logo Beanie, Doc Martens, ageing nicely and vintage faux fur jacket.  I might also throw in one of the maxi dresses acquired from our trader friends Kinky Melon’s Retro Boutique alongside my jeans.

If it ain’t nailed down, it’s going in a box or a suitcase!  Til next time. x