It is a total success.
I conclude this, even before 8am when I stagger towards the car carrying 25 hand-made notebooks, all bagged, tagged, and touchy-feely delicious, precariously held in a cranky wicker basket which also doubles as my stall's shonky visual aid.
But I tell the children this day is one of triumph, yes it is, of epic proportions.
For the first time since completing a design qualification in the fourteenth century and acquiring a speeding ticket on the way to display my end-of-course work, I have managed to create something other than a mess.
I bring together zillions of small parts, an old curtain, plus a great deal of willpower, to amalgamate into one glorious burst of design, all prettily located in a cold barn at the back of a destroyed abbey next to the London-Birmingham railway line in the drizzle. This is triumph indeed.
If I sell not one book, the day is not lost. I prove to myself that I can bring events together in a co-ordinated fashion even though everything else about me is dropping to bits.
It is an interesting experience, sitting behind a wobbly table in the middle of nowhere while the Christmas shoppers file by.
I quickly realise I need do absolutely nothing, apart from slump behind it with the ipad. I do not need to perform come hithering if I am to sell you a notebook. I can see whether or not you'll buy one. First, as you clap eyes on the exquisite sueded and leathered offerings, an expression like recognition passes over your eyeballs. It is with urgency that you then head straight over to them, lift one up, feel the weights and textures, then put it down quickly as if there is a bodily necessity you must attend to. That is my sale. Making the book which matches your desires, weaknesses and proclivities. Stitching into it a fragment of your soul, for want of a better word, then you only have to find it to be reunited with it, and for hard cash, it's yours.
I can even try and fatally undermine my stall by perching behind it the formidable Tiger, who can rip your face off
if she takes a dislike to you. It makes not a jot of difference to the final results.
Mind you, the competition's not up to much.
This is Squirrel, bored out her skull, propped behind a table displaying only the number 7.
She didn't sell it. (Neither did I, but I had a go.)
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