Who am I?

I'm often asked how all the started and how Halton Village Silver came to exist, and of course there's a tale to tell!

A fair few years ago now, I was sitting at home one afternoon watching day time tele (which I love by the way but that's a different story!) and was watching Money for Nothing, one of my favourites. The presenter on that day salvaged some metal, which she then passed to a very talented blacksmith who created the most lovely garden bench with it. He melted it down and created the legs, back and arms of the bench from it, creating tree branches and acorns and oak leaves with it, all set off beautifully with a slab of oak for the seat.

My darling husband came home from work, and the first thing I said was that I wanted to be a blacksmith. Now you have to understand the context here, my lovely but long suffering husband supports practically all of my mad cap ideas and when ever I start a conversation with the words "I've been thinking . . . ." smiles, takes a deep breath (sometimes rolls his eyes a little) and starts making plans for how he is going to make my latest, greatest plan work. So when he doesn't approve of one of my bright ideas, I have to listen and take it seriously as he probably has good reason. So on this occasion, when I said I want to be a Blacksmith, he suggested that it was probably a bit "big".

Obviously I didn't give up entirely at this point, and a bit of a google search found silversmithing - much smaller!

So off I went to some classes, then lock down hit. As I take immunosuppressants to control my inflammatory arthritis, during lock down I was fully shielding and had to stay home. During this time I saved a huge amount of money, no petrol bill, no shop bought lunches at the office, no pub teas because I've only got home form the office at 6pm and cant be bothered cooking. and all of it got spent on tools, many of which didn't even get unwrapped until months later. I watched hours of you tube, and practised daily - Mr Andrew Berry is a great source of you tube tuition.

After we all came back into the world again, I was delivering some earrings to one of our very talented local florists for her daughters birthday when I saw a unit on the site she was based on was up for rent. I mentioned it to her, and she basically gave me no choice but to go with her to meet the site manager, and having viewed the unit I knew it was going to be mine.

Obviously, I would never make such a big move without checking with Mr HVS, who that day was in the office. So I sent him a little text suggesting that we got the unit. He didn't answer, so I sent another. Still he didn't answer, which is most rude and not like him, so I sent another. Turns out that he been to head office and was driving back down the M6 with the car reading out the eight, increasingly determined text messages without being able to type a response. My eighth message said something like "Stop ruining my life and say yes!" - Its a good job he knows me!

He arrived home, walked through the front door shouting "Yes! Of course!" and drove me back to see the manager to confirm that we would have it. Deposit sent that night, contract signed within the week. Done.

Except it wasn't done. I adored my new little workshop, and where it was based and all my new neighbours. but very quickly I realised that it was actually too small. One day I spotted an advert for some space in the next town, and rang to enquire. It had already gone but the very lovely manager (she has continued to be ace ever since) showed me another space to rent, and it was perfect. When viewing I really wanted to just jump on the floor and roll about, the space was so huge! And that's it - I didn't bother asking Mr HVS this time, just sent him the one text saying I've signed a new contract and off we went, and moved in.

Nine months later I had the amazing opportunity to take voluntary redundancy and give Halton Village Silver my full attention, so lets see what happens next,

The irony of it all, is that Mr HVS had reservations about blacksmithing being a bit "big", then look what happened - Halton Village Silver is now enormous and taking over all of our lives! Lol! Couldn't get bigger! (I bet he sometimes wishes that he just bought me a mini forge for the garden now!).

I was looking for a photo of me and Mr HVS together and the only ones I can find are really old, so I've plumped for this one. It's now 15 years old but we are both looking smart, and smiling - we had got dressed up for something!