November 29, 2011Dear Sir,While paying my last visit to The Barn earlier today, prior to my scheduled departure tomorrow evening, I happened to notice on a display case a framed copy of Mrs Augustinovic’s letter in reply to my original letter of some two months ago and, as I hadn’t previously seen it, I read it while waiting in the queue to pay for my purchase.I do see her point of view, and I understand what she’s trying to say, and I think we have the same ultimate objective in view (ie; raising money for KEMH), and I think that we’re simply approaching the same problem from different viewpoints. She, not unnaturally, wants to raise as much money as possible from sales at The Barn: I also want the staff to raise as much money as possible from sales at The Barn, but I happen to think that the best way to do it is simply to drop the prices to a level where people are once again encouraged to shop there instead of being frightened off by the Hamilton-like prices, which I feel was previously the case. If the prices are at “bargain” level, more people will come and take advantage of the “bargains”.Incidentally, I noted in her letter that Mrs Augustinovic had counted the people in the waiting-to-pay line on that particular day, and had reached a grand total of 31. That’s good, and I’m glad for her, but we were obviously there on vastly different days: when I was there I was third in a queue of three, and I must have spent a good three minutes listening to the two ladies in front of me discussing their purchases with the lady behind the counter. However, as I now operate on “pensioner time”, I was not seriously inconvenienced!I also noted that the prices do indeed appear to have gone down somewhat, so maybe an acceptable compromise has been reached. If the staff can find the balance between enough revenue coming in to satisfy the Top Brass, and prices being held low enough to encourage people to shop there again, that’s fine by me: I wish The Barn and its staff every success, I still think they’re doing a grand job, and I’ll be back next year to check the prices!DAVIE KERROn way back to Scotland