Keep it local

We are champions of local produce, obviously, it goes with being a smallholder. So today, as we toiled away on a project behind the green door (which is now a very fetching shade of black) we needed a large promotional poster to cover a large blank wall. Just down the street is a printers, an old fashioned looking place (imagine fairy tale cobbler shop) so I took the small poster we had to be scanned and printed into a much larger version. Communication difficulties immediately made this a huge task. I was definitely speaking English, but trying to get the printers wife to understand the concept of take this picture and make it bigger was straight from Monty Python. Eventually we settled for almost A1 size, providing its no bigger than a half glazed door window. They would phone and let us know when it could be done by. The shop, ancient on the outside was crammed with hi tech scanners and a printer gizmatron that could do transfers for buses. I left feeling good about keeping the trade local and supporting local businesses.
They phoned.
£36
Ouch!
Plus VAT.
Ok when can we have it
Thursday
We need it tomorrow
Hang on I'll ask(muffled voices, tell them no) He says £36 plus VAT and you can have it Thursday.
I'll get back to you. Now call me old fashioned but if we are paying £36 plus VAT for a large picture we should be able to say when its going to be done by. And lets face it, scan, print, not exactly asking for much, I mean in 48 hours you can get a pretty decent oil painting done.
I sat and seethed. And Googled.
So we will have our picture when we need it, tomorrow. Costing £12. 24 hour delivery an extra £6. Its coming from Manchester way. If we had ordered it from Belgium it would have been £4.50 and £22 for delivery in 48 hours.
Keep it local.
Usually.