Up to my ears in Salmon! Plus news of potential new horizons.

Today marks two days before I break up for the Christmas holidays at Tesco ( I have Christmas Day and Boxing day off) and my male work colleagues Paul, Alan and I have been hard at it selling lots of whole salmon, a few carp, various other fish and plenty of half price meat offers. The day has gone by quickly and due to our fun and banter together the whole experience has been rather fun. Plus - making the customers happy through our helpfulness, finely honed knife skills, combined knowledge and professionalism adds to an overall very satisfactory experience.

Paul, Phil and Alan,

This is the fifth year working on the Tesco counters for myself and 2016 may well bring in some major work changes for me as I direct my working life towards writing for and promoting things theatrical in the East Midlands rather than working for a large supermarket corporation. My time at Tesco has mainly been enjoyable but has also been disappointing sometimes in fulfilling my original (perhaps naïve) foodie expectations of working alongside a group of like-minded individuals. Perhaps I am exceptional and didn't ever realise it until later down the line.

Although I have always endeavoured to promote myself as a knowledgeable professional on the meat and fish counters my focus of interest has, of late, increasingly veered towards the theatrical arts and my constant reviewing and theatre writing activities outside of work. Setting up www.eastmidlandstheatre.com in mid October 2015 has furthered my desire to change and follow an entirely different route workwise. Saying that I will always continue to use this blog as a forum to promote my lifelong love of food.

Fresh Scottish Salmon

Kissing Carp

I know that recently I have neglected this blog somewhat in terms of regular content but it is only because I have felt this urgent need to promote my new website and that takes time and lot of effort extra to the 36.5 hrs I work at Tesco plus ten hours a week travelling time. It has been like doing two jobs and at times exhausting. However, every minute spent working and writing for EMT and also for Sardines magazine and reviewing for the Nottingham Post newspaper has been worth it. My two days off each week have been dedicated to pushing myself to add interesting content to the theatre website.

As a friend recently said "You must be constantly at it!" This is true but I believe that no-one else is going to do this writing work for me and to be honest although the actual job of reviewing a play, after returning home from the experience, takes me into the past midnight early hours - sometimes after being on the go at Tesco since 7.30am - I feel tremendous pleasure from doing a good professional writing job to support the production and the theatre involved.

Another time related quote may well be appropriate as I ease myself into full-time dedication to developing EMT and that is the old adage about retirement. "Eee since I retired I don't know how I ever had time for work!" Well, this ambition ain't exactly retirement - quite the opposite - but I hope that the actuality of the proposed new working environment, to be, is equally as fulfilling!