The Return of the Craft Market: Episode One

'Durrrrr,' he said pointing at himself. 'Does this face look like I sold anything???'

I took his money and shrank back. 'Sorry,' I mumbled apologetically.

It was the end of the first craft market of the year and sales had been low. I was collecting money from the stall holders to pay for the rental of the hall. Clearly one or two people were not happy. I could hardly blame them. Despite advertising in the local rag, wallpapering the area with posters and Facebooking the event to death, still no one came. A lot of the die-hard stall holders are very philosophical about this lack of foot fall and take the rough with the smooth, although since the recession bit, it has mostly been rough. But still, most enjoy themselves. Clearly this guy wasn't one of them.

'This was probably the most depressing day of my life,' he continued to bleat as I thanked him for his money and apologised for the lack of customers.

Of course, it didn't help that one stall holder had brought music to end your life with. Determined that we were not going to have a repeat of last market's 'Yellow Submarine' fiasco when it was played on a loop all day, nearly sending everyone mental, they decided to bring classical.

So while it was a lovely day outside. The sun shining. The sky blue. Inside the vast and somewhat chilly hall, we had to endure a depressing bout of Puccini blasting out the speakers. It was then I began to notice that some of the stall holders had started to look as if they'd lost the will to live. I began to mentally run through any jokes I had in my head in an effort to cheer them up. But the only one I could up with was: 'don't let depression ruin your life. That's what relationships are for' I didn't think it would help, particularly when one of the regular stall holders noticed that an ex-boyfriend of hers was sitting at a table across the room.

'Listen,' she whispered - well to be truthful she was actually giggling. 'For future reference. Anyone in this post code XXXXXX asking for a stall. Check them out with me first.'

'From this entire post code,' I boggled. 'Just how many guys have you dated?'

'Let's just say it was a few,' she replied, dryly.

Then the stall holder with a penchant for music to slash your wrists to suddenly had a change of heart, hot-footed it to the CD player and we were subjected to the William Tell overture on full blast (the Lone Ranger music for those that don't know.) I'm quite sure hearing it, any potential customers must have felt the overwhelming need to charge off into the sunset. I was having lunch at the time. Cranberry and Brie sandwich from the cafe. Before I knew where I was, I was chewing in time to the music and bit my tongue. I wouldn't have done that with Yellow Submarine!

And then I found a purse on my table. As an American lady had managed to collapse a clothing rail of mine when she was rifling through and sent out a distress signal as she went down with the contents of one of my wardrobes, we assumed it was hers. One of the lady stall holders grabbed the purse and went in hot pursuit. Five minutes later the American lady wandered back in and we said 're-united with your purse, then?' She looked at us like we were one table short of a craft market and told us she hadn't lost it. Meanwhile our lady was lapping the building looking for her. Turned out it just belonged to a fellow stall holder all along. Our lady stall holder returned eventually with the purse - and an empty coffee mug - it didn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out she'd gone via the cafe in her hunt for the American. I then managed to knock the empty mug clean out of her hand and sent it crashing to the floor, echoing around the empty hall. It was probably the most exciting thing that happened all afternoon.

Anyway, I had a bit of good news when I got back home. An email from 'That's Life' Magazine asking for my husband's name and age.

'Oh, noooo. What have you got me into this time?' my husband worried.

He should be grateful. The last time I wrote a letter about him (Take a Break) he had his mug shot on the page right next to a photo of Tony Blair. Okay, okay so it was under the heading 'Aren't men daft.' But still -- famous or what?

This time I'd written to That's life. This is the letter:

My husband went to the hairdressers and while he was there the electricity went off. The hairdresser had to cut his hair in the dark and it was rather short, to say the least.

'What kind of hair cut is that?' I exclaimed when he came home.

'A power cut,' he replied dryly.

Boom! Boom!

Julie Driscoll stole my eyebrows!

Julie Driscoll has a lot to answer for. Julie Driscoll? Iconic 60s singer with short, short hair, needle thin eyebrows and painted lashes. Back in the 60s me and my school friends idolised her. Weekends found us vigorously plucking brows, razor cutting hair and practising painting on those incredible black lashes which inevitably, on us, looked as if we'd had a head on collision with a couple of tarantulas.

Years past. Julie Driscoll faded from popularity and we got on with growing up.
But we were forever left with Julie Driscoll's legacy -- those infamous needle thin eyebrows, because they never quite grew back.

I lost interest in make up. I'd slap some on if I was going somewhere special but being so busy with work and children my make up routine was usually a hurried swipe of Lypsyl before I swept out the door on the school run. As the years went on and the family grew up I had more time, besides which, my face seriously began to need more attention.

I'd put on my makeup, but it never looked quite right. Until one day when I walked past the bakery and it hit me. No, not the bakery, the mirror outside the bakery. For some inexplicable reason there is a mirror near the entrance to the bakery. Not exactly a good marketing tool - who wants to see their figure when they are going in to buy a cream bun?

I stared at my face. Why didn't I look right?

Ah! There it was. No visible eyebrows. Over plucking a la Julie Discroll style, my brows had never really grown back and my eyebrows were now so faint you could hardly see them and boy, do you need eyebrows. Just check out these celebs without theirs.

www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/celebrities-without-eyebrows-cg3

'Why didn't someone tell me I hadn't any eyebrows,' I bleated to my family.

'We thought you knew,' replied one of my sons.

They were there when I put my makeup on in the morning. Well, faintly there. I saw them in the magnified mirror. But when I looked in photos, it was true. You couldn't see them. And to make matters worse the Daily Telegraph then did an article entitled: 'Plucked eyebrows may reveal a personality disorder'

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2275331/Beware-of-the-narcissist-Plucked-eyebrows-may-reveal-a-personality-disorder.html

Not only did I not have any brows to speak of, apparently I'd got a distinct, diagnosable malady into the bargain!!!

So now, whenever I see a woman my age with two crayoned arches where her brows once were. I think 'Beware. Julie Discroll fan'

Let me leave you with a kiss

I have seriously got to stop ending my emails with a kiss a.k.a 'X'

I email friends and sign off with an X. But last week I signed off with an 'X' on emails quoting a cleaning job and ordering a banner off eBay -- both to blokes. My best hope is they think that's my name, y'know like 'Malcom X' or 'Jessie J' After all, plenty of surnames begin with X...um...like...Xavier?

At worst they'll think that I'm some kind of online floozie who sits at her computer in an animal print dress prowling the net, throwing out random 'Xs' to see who takes the bait. 'Oy, missus. Was you offering me a smacker at the end of that email?'

Maybe I'm reading too much into it? I should get out more.

And while I'm talking about getting out more. I spent a fabulous day at Caernarfon Castle on St David's day. I love castles. I can't help but try and imagine what they would have looked like in their day. I know castles were pretty much a masculine environment and women were few but there usually was a lady and her staff present. Whenever I wander around a castle I picture myself swishing around the towers and turrets in a long, woollen gown, edged in linen, bit of embroidery on it to make it look pretty. But, knowing my luck I'd probably be the castle cleaner!

Funerals

One of my favourite bloggers 'Inspired by Caffeine & Nicotine' has just written a piece about where he'd like his body to go after his funeral. I really like his idea of sending half of his ashes around the world in a chain letter while the other half are to be blown in the eyes of his enemies.

I was having a little 'Grrrr' moment at the time and, morbid as it might seem, it set me thinking about gravestones. What words would I like on mine? I decided on:

'She was never taken seriously'

My 'Grrr' moment was because I'd mentioned the cupcake business I have recently started (which I hope might one day be enough to get me out of the world of cleaning while I wait to be 'discovered' by a fabulous literary agent -- I can dream, can't I?) to a family member. Rather than give me a few well chosen words of encouragement, they said what I should be doing is making brownies because they had read of a woman who had made squillions out of her brownies. The point is my cupcakes are really lovely and scrumptious, I've set up the business and if I'd wanted to sell frigging brownies I would have made frigging brownies! Why do people always start sentences with 'what you should do?' As if they have just got to give you advice.

Of course, the other reaction I usually get to my cupcake business is: 'Well, I know a woman and she makes the best cakes in the entire universe.'

It's almost as if they are saying 'you can't possibly be any good at this?'

It's the same with my writing. Fortunately, I am blessed with a few wonderful supporters and you know who you are. The rare, few people who have championed my pursuit to be a writer and for those people I say thank you so much because generally speaking the reaction to my writing is somewhat different. For example, when I won the first short story competition I had ever entered people told me to enjoy the moment because it was beginners luck and probably wouldn't happen ever again. And if they didn't say that they said 'Yeah, well. I could write I just don't have time.'

Even now, when I sell a short story, people invariably say: 'Oh, are you still writing those little stories of yours, then?' Or 'haven't had any success with your book though, have you?'

One person actually said: 'Oh, you're not still banging on about wanting to be a writer, are you?

I have come to the conclusion that people have put me in a nice little box marked 'cleaner' and it wouldn't matter if I brought peace to the world, eliminated hunger and cured every known disease they still wouldn't take me seriously.

Before I became a cleaner (I became a cleaner so that I could be a full time mum) I was a P.A to a board of directors in London and then Office Manageress at a Japanese shipping company in Vancouver.

But that's a long time ago. Now I'm only a cleaner. That's how people describe me when I'm in their homes. 'Oh, it's only the cleaner,' I hear them say to their friends on the telephone.

And that is why I want 'She was never taken seriously' on my gravestone!