My
modest frontage extends to a rather ample rear, (we are talking shop
proportions here, in case you were wondering), and the whole area is effectively
now my play pen. I am surrounded every day by all the things I have loved to do
previously as hobbies and now I get to play with everything.
I
feel I am in a world where people understand me. Several times a week I get
folk wandering in off the street - honestly, you’d think it was a shop
sometimes - just wanting a ‘fix’. They want to look and feel, pick up fabric
and stroke it and even squeeze the wool and then maybe wander out again feeling
so much the better. Fortunately for my extremely nice bank manager, most people
upgrade and become actual customers and buy things. Mr PDP says I’m like a drug
dealer, encouraging people to feed their crafting habits. “Yes,” I say, “But at
least I supply clean needles!”
I’m
getting very good at my Arkwright impression, (the shopkeeper from ‘Open All
Hours’) and have virtually perfected the art of drawing in unsuspecting members
of the public, who only came in for a reel of black thread to sew a button on
and can’t even knit, and persuading them that they really can’t survive without
the latest new craze of wooliness. They leave the shop clutching their bulging
designer Stitches carrier bag looking rather bemused and confused, having
completely forgotten to buy their black thread anyway but daren’t come back for
it in case they get ensnared by the mad woman once more and won’t be allowed to
leave.
Every
day I have the privilege of meeting the nicest type of customers anyone could
wish to meet. I frequently get complimented on the nice smell in the shop,
(courtesy of an Airwick plug-in),
and hear so many nice comments about my little ‘Aladdin’s Cave’ - very often by
the people who just come in for their fix but don’t buy anything, but we’ll
gloss over that bit - and a favourite phrase is ‘My goodness, you sell
everything here!’ My usual response of
“Well, I’m short of nothing I’ve got and if I’ve not got it, it’s half-price”
is met with varying degrees of understanding and reaction, depending on how
well developed their sense of humour is.
Another
regular occurrence, (yes, honestly), is the abandoned husband who has suddenly
realised that he has either gone deaf or recently misplaced his wife. He
wanders up the high street for a while then decides that the best option of
being reunited with the prospect of his evening meal would be to investigate
the wool shop as that’s where she’s likely to be. He’ll lurk outside for a few
seconds, peer in through the window of the door, then carefully open the door
whilst surreptitiously checking round that he will not be recognised by anyone
who knows him, (because, as everyone knows, no male would be seen dead in the wool shop). “Is my wife in here?” Now
I’m good, but I’m not that good. Unless his wife had previously revealed her
marriage certificate or photo i.d. to me, I’m not going to be 100% certain
which of my customers he married 40 or 50 years ago.
If,
by chance, the shop is empty when he comes in, he will still ask the same question
then walk right to the back and check to make sure I’m not holding her hostage
under the stairs. After craning his neck
to look up the stairs which clearly state ‘Private, Staff Only’, just in case
she’s moonlighting, he will go to leave the shop and with his hand still on the
handle he’ll say, “You didn’t see which way she went did you?”
