00:00So in 1999 we was actually sitting across on the beach and a sign went up on this shop
00:14for sale. It was owned by a person called Mr. Pie at that time and his son was running
00:23So anyway we talked about it we'd been in London for in Bermondsey for 30 years and decided times were changing so we'd come down and open up a seaside shop because if you know anything about trades in the summer in town London area trade goes down because everybody comes to the coast for their holidays so we decided
00:53it would be best to cover two items have a seaside shop and a London shop so that is how we eventually ended up in Hastings and from there this shop was associated with the trade we did which was wood it did wood burning pyrography which was a different item that we'd ever done before
01:17So we decided to continue it but then during Covid obviously things got very difficult with spacing and one thing and another so we had to make a decision to either keep going or lose an aspect of the business and the aspect of the business that went was the pyrography side of things
01:41Dennis still does a little bit of it so we then went out into more giftware which gave people more space to be able to walk around the shop rather than be huddled around watching Dennis and Deborah doing wood burning
01:56So and that is how it went the hardest challenge we've got now is actually getting the council to realize that tourism in Hastings is their number one business but they don't seem to want to get tourism as their number one
02:15They make it very difficult the price of the parking low quality signs to tell people there's more shops this way
02:25It's shutting down the toilets they even sold the one at the bottom of Rock and All Road here
02:33Which is all against tourism Hastings is predominantly tourism that's where it generates its most money from
02:43So we as shopkeepers would love the council to come and talk to us to see how they could improve that and
