Ups and downs

I was expecting to give you a view of the market through torrential rain and storms today, but we were all relieved to be out in almost perfect sunshine, so I am showing my new lime and coconut fairy cakes instead!

Unusually for me I arrived early at the market and so was ready to set up before my friendly veg man had turned up. Not wanting to block his parking space, I piled up all my stuff; table, parasol, cool box etc, and waited for him to arrive, fending off potential usurpers of his pitch and eventually apologising to his habitual early-bird clients for his late arrival, blaming it on possible flooding from the torrential rain storms of the previous night. Having given up on his arrival I set up my stall, and went to join the other traders for our early morning coffee and croissant in the cafe, that is where I learned the real reason for the friendly veg man's no-show. It seems that my friendly veg man has been a little more than 'friendly' with a certain lady for some time and that the night before his wife had confronted him about his mistress. After the inevitable row, he left to spend the night with his mistress and so of course there was no-one to get up at 5am to pick and prepare the vegetables for the market! I don't know what made me think that life in the country was all simplicity and innocence, It seems more complicated than 'desperate housewives' at times! Of course as you can imagine there were plenty of barbed comments relating to the relative sizes of cucumbers and the voracity of the live lobsters on the fish stall today!

Because of the uncertain weather we were quiet on the market today which left us all feeling a little strange, what with the absence of our friendly veg man, the wine and foie gras couple having decided that business isn't good enough to spend the time traveling to our market, and the sausage seller still on a three week spell on the Paris market circuit, where they make more money than in three months here; our little family felt quite diminished. The tourist season hasn't yet started properly and our little spa town has little to offer out of season visitors, so customers are hard to come by at the moment, hence my delight at being approached by the manager of the town's most chic hotel. She passed by a few weeks ago and was tempted by my lavender cakes. Having tried them, she came back for more and asked if I would be interested in supplying her hotel and it's associated health spa with cakes for their bar and cafe, of course I jumped at the chance and was even more pleased to be told that the hotel would be starting a series of early evening music and 'aperitif' evenings, and would like to add English tea and cakes to their repertoire. It seems that my infiltration of French tastes has started at last. Now, can I sell them some pretty pink cupcake coat hooks too do you think?

Feel-good moments

Today I had a real feel-good moment on the market. After a superb bank holiday weekend with temperatures hitting 30 degrees, we had the inevitable thunder and rain storms for two days, so I was relieved to wake up to dry and warm weather for my market morning! The story starts on my last market, where an acquaintance came by and decided that she would like to buy cakes to offer as a gift for some friends who had invited them for supper. I knew this was a big thing as she has been out of work for at least three years and the family has been surviving on her husband's very poorly paid job in a phsyciatric hospital, and an enormous vegetable garden, so when she said that she wanted four of every kind of cake on the table I felt very privileged. This morning she arrived on the market again and was so pleased to tell me how much the gift was appreciated; apparently each fairy cake was cut into slices so that all the guests could taste every thing, and pass judgement on 'English patisserie'! The stars of the show were my new Lavender cakes and chocolate meringues ( how you slice a gooey meringue into eight, I don't know!)

So today I suddenly became not only her cake provider, but also by default her friend and confidante. It seems that the poor thing has had a really rough time since her childhood, with a mother who used her as a scapegoat for all her own inadequacies, saying that she never wanted her daughter to succeed and succeeding in raising a daughter with no self-confidence whatsoever. After moving to this region from Marseilles to be with her husband she has never managed to find a new job, and has had numerous phsycological difficulties. A mutual friend is a healer and yoga 'guru' ( although she hates that word) and 'La petite Marseillaise' has been working with her on her inner strength and self confidence. Over the past six months she has transformed her outlook on life and is ready to start facing the world again. Today I was privileged to help her a little way along the road because while we were chatting she said that she didn't think she could ever do what I am doing, selling direct to the public, talking with strangers, dealing with money etc, so I said, "Of course you could, if you believe in the product then you can sell it to people" and taking a leap of faith, suggested that she should be the one to sell on my market stall today. Off came the dowdy anorak and on went the smile! La petite Marseillaise' came into her own, talking to complete strangers, albeit with a quavering voice at first she extolled the virtues of my fantastic lavender cakes, speaking with the authority of a 'southerner', muddled up Victoria sandwiches with lemon butterflies, and still managed to recover and sell a selection of cakes to a lady who was adamant that she didn't eat cake! La petite Marseillaise' phoned her husband to say that she was going to be late home for lunch, and really got stuck in. By the end of the market she was a transformed woman, and even suggested to my friendly veg man that she could help him out too if he needed her! So my leap of faith paid off, I had a good sales figure and a new friend who said that the experience was priceless!