26th June 2020

We’re open again. After what seems like forever, we’re opening the doors cautiously, and letting the world back in a few people at a time! We’ve all been on a journey and many things have changed along the way. Our personal worlds are smaller, slower, more considered. We’ve spent time at a standstill, thinking. It’s been hard in more ways than we could have ever imagined, but now that we’re walking towards a new normal, it’s time to make sure that the positives that have come from this extraordinary time of change stay part of our everyday lives.

Over the last few months here at Stag and Bow we’ve brushed up old skills and acquired new ones. We’ve stitched for the NHS, made bags and scrubs, hats and masks, turned duvets and scraps of fabric into functional protection for people on the front line. We’ve planted vegetables, discovered how truly difficult growing food is, foraged for our families, learned how to stretch a tin of beans to feed a whole family, repair beloved old clothes, make new ones, recycle everything as many times as possible. We’ve changed our priorities, and come back to basics, reviving skills that have been so easily handed over to big business, given away, forgotten.

Sustainably gathered White sage stick

Neighbours have been amazing, communities have stepped up. Young people have started mutual aid groups, someone cycles up and down the road delivering home made bread, we all put what we don’t need on the drive and post it in the local whatsapp group. Connections have been made that will last forever. Neighbours have been out the front, shouting across streets to each other, sharing. Supporting.

Writing this, I am looking up at blue sky dotted with small white clouds, and I suddenly remember cloud bursting. Lying in a field on my back in the 70s, willing the clouds above me to change shape and truly believing that I was making the clouds change. Back then it made us all think that we could change the world but somehow along the way we forgot about the clouds and let the power to drive our own lives forward get co-opted. We lost the skills we need to do it with, and the compassion to make sure everybody is on the journey together. We’re going to keep on willing the change here at Stag and Bow. Our commitment to environmental improvement through our business practice is as strong as ever. Our support for Black Lives Matter is unequivocal. There is no going back.

Our thanks to all those of you who supported us with online sales. We’re opening with new fabrics, some masks, more wool, lots of love and a lot of excitement. Who knows what will happen, but we are opening, spreading a little white sage love about the shop. Welcome back.

Pia.