Happy New Year, and some news re the online store....

Hi all, just posted the following to the front page of the store and
the news page of the GZG website, thought I'd re-post it here so you
all get to see it:

.........................

IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ: THE STORE IS STILL CLOSED TO NEW ORDERS!
The original plan was for the online store to re-open on the 2nd of
January - however owning to various things outside my control (mainly
family matters and other Real Life issues) I didn't manage to get as much work
stuff done over the Christmas break as I'd hoped, thus I
still have a fairly large pile of pre-Christmas orders to cast and
pack. I have therefore taken the decision to delay re-opening the
store to new orders until I have cleared the existing ones. This won't
actually affect you, the customer, because even if you could place a new order
I wouldn't be able to deal with it until the
backlog is cleared - and by doing things this way I don't have the
added stress of more orders piling up while I'm trying to deal with those I
already have. I am hoping that it won't take more more than a week of
concerted effort to clear the remaining pile of orders, so I
would hope to be able to re-open the store just after next weekend
(probably Jan 9th), but I will update you all on this as the week progresses
and I see how fast I am getting through the orders. Please keep checking back
here for further updates. Please also note
that the store is not completely offline - you can still browse all
the categories, and it will also let you put items into the cart -
what you CANNOT do is complete the checkout and make payment on an order,
because the payment gateways have been switched off.

Thanks for your understanding and patience - things will be back to
normal ASAP, but I'm trying to avoid the kind of backlog I got last year which
wasn't cleared until well into the Spring. If you placed an order in the last
few days before we closed up for Christmas, and haven't yet had an email
notification that it has shipped, then rest assured that I will be dealing
with it as quickly as possible in the
coming week. As soon as the store re-opens, all the New Year Discount
Vouchers we have been sending out will become live - and this year
you have plenty of time to redeem them, as they remain valid until the end of
March.

Oh, and a HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone, let's hope it is a safe and successful
one!