I GET THE CHRISTMAS ITCH AGAIN

Every year ,about this time, I get it into my head that I can make money by running a stall either at a shopping Centre or Christmas markets selling non food items. Last year , I put my thesis to the test by bulk buying ladies fashion items like handbags , jewellery and scarves.I made no money. In fact I still have a giant suitcase filled with all and sundries that I could not shift from last Christmas occupying a much needed space in my flat and I am sure they are so last season now. My daughter has taken to helping herself to the fashion jewellery and scarves .In the last couple of months ,she has helped herself to  two sets of hat and scarves for her friend,s birthday presents. You know your business plan needs serious reviewing when family members begin to help themselves to your  stock without any qualms.Despite this, I have been going through the catalogues sent to me by wholesalers I purchased from last year and wondering if I could perhaps make a better go of it this year. The boyfriend has already made it clear he would not be helping me sell these under any imaginative circumstance.Suffice it to say that I am on my own here. I quite rightly decided to ignore the urge until my my baby toddler, whilst playing with my phone, inadvertently phoned  continental markets.  A couple of years back, I had a successful stall at their Christmas market at Ealing shopping centre but I sold food.I am superstitious. I take this to mean that a higher power is  keen for me to run a Christmas market or stall "Who is this ?" the voice at the other end barked probably pissed at being called so early in the morning. I sought to perform some sort of damage control and put my best voice forward. "How are you Shar sorry for ringing this early in the day but are you  running any Christmas markets this year?" No absolutely none at all this year came the reply.Perhaps I should organize one myself I thought. Oh but for the very high financial risk involved in paying to hire a shopping centre space for  weeks in a row and pay the fees upfront. Thing is, hard up street traders are reluctant to pay all that money in advance even for an established market and  less so for an untested Xmas themed one.I decided  I won,t be seeing my bank manager any time soon to discuss the  possibility of borrowing to fund one. "Fool" my entrepreneurial alter ego taunted in my head . I ignored the naughty little voice.
But the hypothetical profit I can make from  making a killing as it were, has refused to leave my thoughts. I find myself browsing through the latest catalogue I have received , of a job lot of  100 assorted ladies shoes for the price I paid recently for 2 pairs of winter boots at TK MAXX  and before you think it is a job lot of substandard rubbish,methinks  not so. The pictures and the quality guarantee tells me they are sourced from a reputable high street retailer which has gone bust. So by my calculation if I bought 10 lots of these and sign up to one of the promising Xmas markets currently flooding my inbox,and decorate my stall cheerily and price my items right,I might just kill it. Easier said than done though. The reality is that I am rubbish at selling anything else but my food.  I am my own most severe critic and I know that I  have not taken any stellar retailing course to buck the trend  and it is hard for me to be passionate about something unless I genuinely believed in it. And perhaps that may be partly to blame for my inability to shift last years gear. But like one friend said when I lamented my dilemma to her. What has passion got to do with it? It,s Xmas . Everyone has got to buy a present for someone .Now if only that was true of my experience last year.
The shops are not letting up. The season of unrelenting Xmas ads have begun and the trader in me find it impossible to just sit there and make merry.I,ve got to get in on the action. There,s got to be something I can sell  to partake in the festive windfall. I need inspiration before all the Xmas markets get fully booked. As I write this ,my phone pings. It is Busy bee candles advising me to take advantage of the 10%extra offer on Xmas orders. Now there,s an idea!

I AM PUSHED TO WRITE A RECIPE BOOK

So the boyfriend wins. We have fought and debated.Him pulling his hair out trying to understand why I choose not to write a cook book. Our customers have since long tired of asking if and when a  recipe  book will become available. "Sometime in the near future" was always my hazy reply. If the truth be told , the reason I haven,t done so in the past can be attributed to ill discipline. In all the years that I have cooked for this street trading business,and weddings and huge parties and festivals and ran my own restaurant, I have never measured anything. All the ingredients that I have used in my recipes and the quantities are neither measured nor written down. I suppose this attitude  stems from coming from a large family and a culture where you never really know how many people you are cooking for but must ensure that food is available should a guest arrive. Woe betide you if it be known that an unexpected guest arrived your home and  left on an empty stomach!"How can I write a recipe book without first determining what quantities of ingredients the readers will need"? I,d fired back at the boyfriend who,d been on my case  from the moment we met.Lately I,d taken to telling him he was putting undue pressure on me.A case of the best defence being  attack and attack even if unfairly. So let me be fair.  Without my miserable Angel, I would still be struggling to understand why and how the goldmine that was Camden lock market came to disappear before my very eyes and my nostalgia clinging thoughts would still be  holding me prisoner in that  now desperately conditioned market. I would still be trading there stooped and draped in clothes best suited for the North pole in the winter and praying for the summer to last long enough to recoup all the losses we had incurred during the cold weather.Camden had become an albatross but I refused to acknowledge it. I summoned the courage to leave after many months subsidizing its existence with takings from Greenwich market only because the boyfriend forced me to do the unpalatable maths."Wake up and smell the coffee"  he continuously nagged.  The heartache and high blood pressure inducing stress that I have suffered from being removed from first, Greenwich Market,then Shephereds markets (more on all these removals in later blogs) and lately UCL has meant that the  the boyfriend has taken the brunt of my misplaced anger but he has also been a constant reminder of the futility of trading at individual run markets.According to him,I should only now trade at my own self organized markets or festivals.  I finally agreed to start writing my recipes down and to work out what quantities after I received a letter from Her majesty,s court services,advising that a charlatan market organiser I am suing for a return of the exorbitant fees my company paid to attend an event he fraudulently misrepresented is contesting my claim. Such is the nature of London street trading now that a new age market organiser can call a lunch time market a festival and refuse to return the fees paid by traders even when it is so obvious that he was pulling a fast one and blatantly ripping traders off .On the same day, I receive an email advising that It had not been possible to refund a payment I made to cater at the cancelled Ring Master festival at Hopton Court. The life lesson here is always to pay for purchases especially those of not immediate consumption with credit and not debit card.My bank assures me it will try to get me a refund from paypal if the event organizer won,t cough up.
You might wonder dear reader why if I have such wonderful recipes and street trading is such a fuss, do I not open a restaurant?. Thing is, been there, done that. Would not now touch it with a barge poll. Then,  I  was younger and had only a teenage daughter to mummy but yet the stress of  running  it made my hair fall out in clumps . Currently, as you are aware, I have 2  blessed toddlers who demand all of my sleep deprived attention. Therefore, I must cook and perhaps write but with a   flexibility that  curls around their routine.
So, no rest for the wicked then. I must not only keep trading at markets this winter, I will also be diligently working on my first recipe book. Now if only I can find that  measuring jug!