So, last Thursday evening I trotted off to attend a two hour Christmas craft fair. Richard kindly drove me there, in fact, Richard now drives me everywhere since the retinal migraine attacks that started this time last year. He says he’d rather do that than have me driving. I feel that this has little to do with the fact that he wants to keep me safe and sound and more to do with the fact that he doesn’t want me to smash-up the car.
I’m not an evening person so toddling off to haul boxes into a village community centre and then attempt to display far too many ‘items’ on a six-foot table was no picnic I can tell you. I’m usually up at four/five in the morning and therefore expire rapidly by early evening.
I have to admit to getting really stressed about it all. As I said, the table wouldn’t hold all my stuff and Richard, sensing my stress, became even more useless than usual.
As soon as the boxes were out of the car and he’d attached the back boards to the table I told him to go. He’s lovely actually. He loads up the car, drives me to these event’s, unloads the car and hangs around a bit until I tell him I can manage and then he vamooses – faster than poo off a shovel. He won’t hang around. He hates it. He says he puts people off. This might be true, who knows.
By the time I’d arranged the table – still with far too much stuff – I was expiring like a marathon runner and had a ‘beetroot’ coloured glow to my face.
People trickled in through the entrance and we were away.
I buggered around trying to find labels that had somehow disappeared and only succeeded in upending a large cardboard box of cellophane bags all over the floor. By the time I raised my head, a couple and a small child stood at the table. Now, you have to understand that, as I said at the start of this, I am not an evening person (Lord knows what I was doing there really) so, I find it hard holding a polite, animated conversation in the evenings but . . .
I grinned and said ‘hello.’
The woman/girl, whatever, was turning a large heart over in her hand (that’s a wooden heart by the way, not the pulsing, bloody kind) and looked lovingly at her partner/husband, probably seeking his approval to fork out the £2.50 for the darn thing. In a moment of utter braveness she grinned and said she would like it. Jolly good. I toddled round to the front of the table and took it from her, blabbering on about some rot. She seemed to appreciate the small talk and I even engaged with the small child AND gave him a free ‘Magic Santa Key.’ I tell you, I’m all heart.
It wasn’t until they walked away, and I’d safely squirreled away the £2.50, that I took another look at them. Or, more to the point, took another look at the partner/husband.
There was something about him? That auburn hair curling on his collar. I waited until he turned, at a stall two tables down, and then I saw his face. I recognised that nose. It was a tad bigger – but then, a nose I knew twenty odd years ago would be bigger now, wouldn’t it? And his eyes, smaller, more lidded . . .but twenty odd years would do that, wouldn’t it? He opened his mouth to speak to the child and suddenly I knew. Dear God, it was an old-lover-type-person of mine. I think I actually said ‘shit!’ out loud. Jeez, he’d changed a bit. I hardly recognised him. Well time hadn’t been kind to him, had it? I think I actually giggled at that point.
He’d rounded the end of the room now and was heading back down the other side.
At this point another customer caught my attention and I engaged in conversation regarding my embossed stag pictures. She said her mother LOVED stags. Said her mother had them all over the house . . . so she purchased . . . the Embossed Rabbit.
Now’t as queer as folk.
By now my ex-lover had ridden off into the sunset with my heart – the wooden one.
I rearranged my display still deep in amused thought. I couldn’t believe how much he’d changed and how I didn’t recognise him when he’d stood at the table with his family. And then, suddenly, it occurred to me . . . bummer! I don’t think he’d recognised me either! Evidently I wasn’t the angel-on-horseback that I’d been back then. The two of us jogging over fields, my horse gaily tossing its mane, me gaily tossing my brown locks. Time had been just as crap to me!
This taught me a valuable lesson. Two in fact. One, don’t do evening craft fairs. Two, don’t do them in an ex’s village.
By the time Richard came to pick me up I was shattered. He drove like Lewis Hamilton all the way home with me rabbiting on about whatever – not the ex-lover of course – I’ve always been discreet, sort off.
As soon as my feet touched home the oven went on and we pigged out on oven chips, spaghetti hoops and cheesy scrambled egg.
And this is probably why HE didn’t recognise little porky-pig ME.
Take care x
Just Life - Jennie Orbell 