This was how we were. Our huge cheese trailer trundled around the markets, shows and fairs in the Suffolk Coastal area from 2007 to 2010. Three years of mostly fun, meeting different people, from the poor to the rich, people just starting to taste cheese, people who wanted £1′s-worth for a sandwich, people who made cheese and people who just wanted a chat.
And we were happy with any of those things.We sold cheese. And that was all we did.
Then we changed. At the Heveningham Show last summer, 2010, we heard that Yoxford Post Office was going to close and the Post Master was going to retire.
So we took the shop in Yoxford High Street and combined the two things, cheese and Post Office. A lot of our customers had said “Where’s your shop?” When we said “in front of you” that didn’t seem to be an answer they understood, so we got one for them. We haven’t seen them since.
Some of our customers from Woodbridge, 15 miles away from Yoxford still come and see us, but as one said yesterday, it’s a very long way. Then they climbed back into their £30,000 Volvo estate.
So we’re changing again. We’ve just been awarded a Rural Community Grant, so we can buy a coffee machine and a new chiller, get more tables and chairs and get ours back in our house where they belong. And we’re installing two proper, working computers for the village to use, free, if they want to do some email and internet browsing. We’ll be giving anyone who asks for it some basic training too, so not being able to use a computer won’t be a hindrance to using one, at least after the first ten minutes or so.
Whether that will overcome the attitude that sees several current customers boasting that they don’t use the internet and see no reason for knowing about anything outside the village I don’t know. And no, they weren’t joking, at all.
So that’s who we are. Cheese shop. Deli. Internet cafe. Post Office. What else would you like us to be?