Green Shoots

I bet we're the only house in the world with daffodils still blooming in the garden in May!  What a cold winter's tale.

As they're about the only thing that's blooming.  Or so I thought.  By yesterday lunchtime (spent with the Jilted Wives Club at the Endsleigh, the poshest hotel in the South West, total bill £12.50 each for the best sandwiches and Spritzer available in the universe) I was becoming despondent.  I have been pouring myself into my five post-breakup-money-making-ventures for over a year now, and all have come to nothing.  Not a single B&B enquiry, despite having spent three solid weeks on creating a fabby-dabby-doo website: www.wydemeet-dartmoor.com, complete with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation - which means all the things you have to do to get it at the top of Google, which I believe has now become an even more significant skill as part of the marketing mix than advertising or PR).  Breaking about even on my first house rental and no sign of the cheque, now due, for the second.  No further bites for my poet.  A blank in my brain about  how to make this bloggy thing commercial, and 40,000 words written of my book.

I am now overdrawn for the first time in 25 years.  And no sign of things improving.

And then yesterday tea-time: Ping!  An email from a Swiss couple wanting to stay for a night or two in August!  And then, Ping!  My July rental lady emails to say she would like to drop the cheque round personally! Wowee! There are signs of life after all! Fancy that!

Never mind that I don't want to do August B&Bs because the children will be at home, and that the mower's at the menders, so if my potential rental turns up she'll run a mile if she sees that jungle.

All is not lost.  Trip Advisor must have sprung into life.  I will forward the swiss couple to my friends' fantastic hotel, Prince Hall, just up the road, and perhaps we might enter into some mutually beneficial arrangement over time, if this happens again.

Just when you think there is no light in sight, bingo! I now have the energy to get back to my poet's ringrounds, investigate getting advertising onto this site and going public on it to my 2000+ email contacts, and adding to my book.  Just needs a little kick up the arse, and off I go again!