Secret of Vintage Jewelry

I joined Twitter a few days ago. My details are http://twitter.com/artistofderby. For rivetingness, I can't quite compete with Stephen Fry filming white rhinos, but I did go to a talk earlier this week. It was on surviving the recession and sustainability - so was it the recession or the sustainability I should be surviving?

The talk was aimed at youngsters, but most of us were middleagesters. A sprinkling of younger folk trickled in through the morning, and we were late starting to wait for them. Yet I'd got up at 6.30 to be there on time and set the burglar alarm off in my haste to leave the house, making me a mite unpopular with the folks back home.

Our host was from the Princes Trust (Prince Charles set this up to help disadvantaged youngsters set up businesses). She introduced the speakers, saying that many youngsters feel it was a mistake to set up during a recession (and older people too, missus), and that there are advantages to it (what could these be?) Looking out of the window as I was working on my website today, I noticed the lack of houses for which planning permission had at one time been sought, and resulting pleasant view onto open fields. There you have it - silver lining!

We had three guest speakers, one of whom gave some survival tips, such as make people redundant - well I can't do that, unless it is myself! "Be creative with your business plan" was perhaps more useful. Another speaker mentioned an author who'd captured his interest - Duncan Bannatyne. As a result, I've now ordered his book "Anyone can do it" - and no sniggering at the back there.

I thought the guest speakers were good as far as they went, but with so many countries out of recession now, I would have liked to have learnt something about exporting, for example, and there must have been other angles that they could have covered.

Speaking of which, when will this country be out of recession? Last month, the Bank of England predicted two years with a strong recovery afterwards, only for someone to jump up and say two years with a weak recovery. What next, two years with a famine at the end? Still, our little country has faced worse problems and at least I wasn't around for the war, now that would have given me something to complain about....

All for now,

Jewel