Hi folks

We are very busy preparing for Daffodil Weekend so just a few items of news from the shop:

1. Come early on Saturday and Sunday!
2. Our shiny new floor
3. The lucky 150 Club Winners
4. Village Photo from Jubilee Weekend
5. Wine Club
6. Shop Finances
7. Daffodil Weekend will be extremely busy for the shop on both days from about 11am onwards until about 4pm. Please can you come for your papers and groceries before 11am to avoid having to queue behind our visitors. We will of course , keep any newspapers that have been ordered but it would just be safer and easier for you to collect them before the rush starts.
8. Over two weekends in late January and early February, we changed the tiled floor in the shop with a fully welded vinyl replacement. The old tiles were lifting in certain places. The new floor is much easier to clean, deals with spills better and looks fabulous! Thanks to our customers who put up with a slightly reduced service whilst all this was going on – we understand that some of you actually preferred to be served olde-fashioned style, through the open windows on the second weekend when we couldn’t let anyone into the shop. Well those days have gone I’m afraid!
9. 150 Club winners for February were Caroline Shaw, Mike Braithwaite, John Smith and Ann Robertson. Congratulations to all! Caroline is on a lucky streak at the moment so try to find out her lottery numbers! The draw for March will be in the pub on Thursday evening this week.
10. We are ready to order copies of the Jubilee photo – yes we know it has taken a while – so if you would like one, please leave your details in the shop. They will be about 500mm x 200mm and should cost less than a fiver.
11. We will shortly be issuing a menu for the next round of the Wine Club so please respond to that email if you would like to place an order. If you are not on the (separate) wine club mailing list and would like to be, please contact Kevin via the shop or by replying to this newsletter email.
12. Now some bad news. Shop takings for January and February were down on previous years. This is not disastrous, we are talking about a few per cent but it is the first time that we have seen a monthly decline on equivalent months since 2008. Hopefully a good Daffodil Weekend will see March being back on track, although our takings last year were truly excellent. To balance this bad news out, 2012 as a whole was 14% up on 2011 and February is always a poor month but obviously we don’t want to see the shop decline.

That’s all for now....

TVSA