Wanna Be Startin ‘Somethin’
By Indira Mahun
I, like the majority of us, have been trying really hard to follow these often bewildering lockdown rules. Having been confined to the four walls of our homes, there are many of us who have taken the opportunity to use this time positively and wisely. Small businesses began to spring up everywhere and social media was full of stories of people who had decided to turn their skills and knowledge into something more profitable. Today, I bring you a few success stories from the results of lockdown.
Graham is a retired police officer who says that he used to do the odd job here and there to keep busy.
“When I was younger, I used to be a joiner. I used my carpentry and building skills to help others”.
Lockdown forced him inside and he could no longer do this. His scheme happened by chance as he started to clear up his own neglected garden.
He says, “my partner and I cut back all the overgrowth and got rid of any waste. We ordered some plants from the local nursery for the rockery. We planted gladioli and lilies which would bring colour in the forthcoming summer months. The garden looked a million times better already”.
He explains that they bought a greenhouse which led them to plant more flowers and vegetables. A light bulb moment prompted the sale of some of these plants online. Graham says, “we were so surprised at how well we were selling our plants. We couldn’t get them in fast enough and now we have made plans for next year to make an earlier start”.
Using the lockdown time to give their garden some much needed love had the unpredicted result of starting up a local business selling plants to customers online.
Tina Moyers came up with a brilliant idea whilst walking along a beautiful beach with her husband and cockapoo. She admits she has always been creative and enjoyed making things for as long as she can remember and says that, “giving up work to help my sister take care of our mum, who sadly has dementia, gave me plenty of time to explore possibilities to pursue my creative passion”.
She came home from the beach and started creating images with little messages that are fun and meaningful. Her daughter came up with the name Pebble Envy for her new venture and so her new business began to blossom. She explains that; “the name Pebble Envy comes from my love of penguins. The males will search for the smoothest and most perfect pebble as a gift to impress their favourite female, causing ‘pebble envy’ amongst other possible suitors”.
She created over fifty different designs using Facebook as a platform to launch them and has been lucky in getting some of them accepted into a craft gallery.
Jess is a work at home mum. Being in lockdown, keeping a toddler entertained and having to work from home is not an enviable task. Not so long ago she also started a business crafting paper flowers for all occasions. During lockdown she decided to use social media in different ways to help others stuck at home.
Jess created a group for all mums to share their experiences and ideas about anything relating to children. The group quickly amassed a huge following and is still going strong, giving parents a platform to vent their frustrations and share what worked for them during this difficult time.
Social media is ideal for engaging the public and Jess found she was able to increase her following by going live with professionals from different fields. Her idea – Covidgotmelearning – led her to interview several people such as professional actors and writers, keep fit enthusiasts and cooking experts as well as others. What a fun way to learn something new!
Learning became a pastime too as many universities and other academic establishments offered free courses on just about anything imaginable.
Claire Hicks from Solihull says she read an article about universities offering free online courses. Having plenty of spare time, she decided to look at what was on offer. She was delighted to find a short 20-hour course about Hadrian’s wall and says that, “this is the most heavily fortified frontier in the Roman Empire and I wanted to find out more about it after I had walked the length of the wall with a friend and our dogs six years ago. It was so interesting to get in-depth information about the various forts we had seen along the route”.
Claire was able to discover how the Romans, using hand tools alone, had constructed the walls and the forts which eventually housed one of the highest concentrations of Roman soldiers, civilians, natives, slaves, merchants and migrants.
These links give more information about free courses:
Supporting local businesses this Christmas has never been more important. With more and more people being forced to provide their services and products from home, so many of us have set up our own websites. Technology has made this a much less complicated process with ready-made platforms and templates to enable the creation of a personalised site.
Staying with the positives of Covid and lockdown, I am sure we all know someone who turned to their kitchen to learn new skills or brush up on old ones.
A resident of Water Orton, Gill, talked about comfort eating saying, “that’s what we have all done. We have cooked our favourite food or ordered it in to console ourselves. We have entertained our children by baking to occupy them and maybe some people have cooked to save money after experiencing the hardship of lockdown. It’s been heart-warming to see people doing acts of kindness and cooking meals for others too”.
A resident of Castle Bromwich, Roger Beebee, shared his lockdown story with us saying that he went to buy some strawberry blancmange for his wife’s birthday. The cashier was quick to tell him that he could only have three packets of blancmange whereby he questioned the number of bottles of whisky he could buy. He was told, “as many as you like!” This jogged my memory of how many empty bottles of alcohol I had seen outside the homes of people on waste collection days. Now that’s definitely something to mull over!
