The holiday started out great...Posted October 8th, 2023
A Memorable Day.
On October 6th, I had just finished a lovely lunch on a beautiful day here in Athens when I received a message from my business partner Angela that began with “I hope you are sitting down”. Now in my experience what usually follows that opening is something very, very good. Not this time. She told me we had had a major incident at the shop and that there was no way to stay open.
The apartment upstairs had flooded, the ceiling on one side of the shop had collapsed and the water from upstairs followed its natural path downward. I set to figuring out what I could possibly do from six times zones away. Turns out the sum total of what I could do was precious little beyond expressing my thanks for all the help I was receiving.
Angela kept me up to date as to what was happening and our exchanges over the course of 10-12 hours expressed a wide range of emotions: our shared disappointment, frustration, gratitude, hope and even humour.
We were lucky in that we didn’t have big inventory losses other than one glass chicken that was felled by a flying ceiling tile. (We will have a memorial shrine to him one day.) I was particularly lucky because the damage including water damage was concentrated in an area away from the apparel. Just the same I needed to get that inventory completely moved and moved quickly before that water on the other side of the shop started to settle and smell.
By end of day that enormous job was complete. As many times as I can say thank you, it will never be enough. Big thanks to Carrie Ness and John Osborne as well as Bruce Hutchison for offering both help and solutions. To my sister Wendy, who (in fact) has cleaned up worse messes of mine but has never let me down, thank you for coming to my aid again even though you aren’t feeling 100%. Same with David Graves who promised he was only packing and driving, not lifting. I have to take him at his word. And Anita, thanks for pitching in with the cleanup. Lastly to Angela - who my sister told me (at 3am Athens time on the 6th) what I already knew and that was that I owe Angela BIG. Thank you Angela and thank you to Brant too; always by your side and in your corner.
We are sad and disappointed to be forced to suspend operations particularly moving into the busiest retail season of the year. We have looked forward to decorating for Christmas and our hope is that repairs can be made quickly and that we can open our doors again relatively soon but it is out of our hands at the moment.
Thank you for the many messages of support and concern. We look forward to welcoming you back just as soon as we can. Stay tuned.
Best from Paros, Greece.
Trudy