The Framers Forum

Have you ever had days when everything that can go wrong does? Discover you don't have quite enough moulding to finish that rush job (it's always the last short that's missing) , can't for the life of you find a customer's job, only to find it 2 hours later where you thought you put it, just on the final quality check before wrapping only to discover a huge splinter has worked its way into the frame? Well, those days we call "having a Wednesday", because usually it happens to be a Wednesday. Today was a "Wednesday". Every frame we made had something go wrong with it and to cap it all, at 4 o'clock we had a shoplifter make off with 2 pieces of jewellery that were part of our window display.
Grahame had been out in the shop all the time the guy was there and hadn't noticed him do anything, though he was close to the window. It was only after he had left that Grahame spotted the gap in the display and realised 2 bracelets, one gold, one silver had gone. He followed the guy and confronted him, but all he got was a threat of violence. Grahame backed off but took a photograph on his phone as the guy walked off, then came back to the shop and phoned the police. They came and took a statement and said that 2 cars had been sent out round the area but nothing had been found. Still, the photo might be recognised by one of the local coppers. Not too hopeful of getting my bracelets back, though. They've probably already been exchanged for drugs. One good thing that has come out of it, though, is that Grahame has finally persuaded me to upgrade our security system from just cameras, to recording what the cameras see. The order is with Screwfix as we speak, and the system will be up and running by this time tomorrow.

Nothing anywhere near as bad as that, Just spent the last two days thinking the forum was quiet and nothing was being posted (no orange new posts symbol on the index page) only to find I wasn't logged in.... a bit of a D'oh! moment.

Wondered where you were. You seemed to have vanished off the face of the Earth , or did you just not have anything to say?

Nowt new to put up, but I may have replied to a few if I had realised things were being posted I can be so dim sometimes.

Bad luck Mary - hope they get the scrote.

Where's Áine?

yes extremely quiet without the wee Irish colleen.

Hope she is that busy and nothing else..

Hi John,

It might be because of her disk drive problems. As you say, very quiet without her. (Aine, we've missing you!)

Hi Mary,

Sorry to hear of your troubles.

Roboframer wrote:Bad luck Mary - hope they get the scrote.

if he comes back in i'll be stapling his balls to the workbench, before calling the police.

just installed a DVR (DIGITAL VIDEO RECORDER) which has simultaneous recording, so we can record all the cameras at once, it also allows me an excuse to upgrade to colour cameras - something i've wanted to do for a while, so i'm trialling some new ones tomorrow, alongside the existing system.

i want a pan zoom and tilt camera somewhere in the system, but they are flippin expensive!

Roboframer wrote:
Where's Áine?

Update - I can't be the only one concerned - well, I know that I'm not - that is I wasn't (the only one) - that's how I found out that Puter Problems is all.

Sort it Áine - if this place were an automobile we'd be calling out the AA - it don't work right without ya!

Yes John,

The greatly missed Moglet is beavering away trying to nurse her invalid computer back to life, and at the same time getting on with a bit of framing.

She has had a bad experience though, with an intruder in her workshop, but I'll leave it to her to tell that story. However, with great spirit, she seems to have taken it in her stride.

John wrote:
She has had a bad experience though, with an intruder in her workshop

Aine, hope you see this and take heart. I too had an intruder in my workshop, a rather nasty experience, a couple of years ago, when I was working on my own. I didn't get hurt, but my purse was stolen. I felt violated at the time, but time does heal and I got over it. I know you have got the strength of character to recover from this and hopefully we will have you back on the forum soon. We all miss you.

Received a nice long text from her today - in reply to my "RU OK?" which took me about 10 minutes!!!

John wrote: She has had a bad experience though, with an intruder in her workshop, …

Man, that stinks! I trust she’s okay? My best to you Àine.

In twenty some odd years, I’ve had nothing really serious happened. I’ve only had one unfortunate incident and that was with a 10 year old punk who wandered into the store looking rather suspicious. I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he boosted a small piano frame (worth, maybe, 8 bucks).

I followed him out of the store where his father was talking to a buddy of his. When I challenged the kid, he got all flustered at which point his father knocked him upside the head, ripped the frame from his pocket and returned it to me with apologies and, quite literally, dragged the kid to the car by his ear as he screamed bloody murder. It is good to see that some parents still take responsibility for their kids.

Again, I hope Àine’s all right.

Last night I sent Áine an emergency aid package. Chocolate to die for.

I toyed with the idea of a crate of Harveys Sussex best bitter, but the shipping was taking the P.....

Roboframer wrote:Last night I sent Áine an emergency aid package. Chocolate to die for.

And then some! Thankyou all for your good wishes and support. Mary, so sorry to hear about your experiences past and current. I, too, find that the sense of violation is definitely the most unsettling aspect. I take heart from the knowledge that things could have been a lot worse, and it is very comforting to hear stories of the heaing power of time.