One of the other market traders that Emma and Pete regularly have a pitch next to at several of their markets is Dan the Fishman a rather colourful personality, well known at such events. He has gotten so busy and to coin a rather crazy phrase become a victim of his own success and is losing trade by being so busy serving one customer that the three waiting behind them get bored and wander off so Pete offered the services of Gemma, Amanda’s teenage daughter to help him out at Bideford Market in exchange for £6 per hour plus fish. Gemma however had other ideas once she’d met Dan the Fish man and flatly refused to do it, so Ady was asked if he’d step in. The £40 he earnt was handy as it can cancelled out the cost of having the mechanic out to look at Willow last week (£32), the fish fed us all (9 of us!) tonight for dinner and made a lovely change from sausages and Ady got to add yet another thing to his very long list of new experiences and things he has tried and done.
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So this morning we were all up and ready to go before 7am (urgh!), drove to Bideford, helped set up Dan the Fishman’s stall and Pete & Emma’s stall and then Davies, Scarlett and I left them all to it and had a couple of hours wandering around the town. We had a short list of things we wanted to get (clothes pegs, toaster bags, two camping chairs which having decided against bringing we have now decided we do want after all for sitting outside Willow when the sun shines) so we ticked everything off that, got some paper as the kids want to do some letters to various people and I treated the kids to a small present each – Davies found a Pirates of the Carribean dvd he’d been after for ages and Scarlett chose an activity book about animals – adventure for a year or not, they don’t change much :).
We went back to the quayside where the market was and I offered to help on Pete & Emma’s stall which was pretty busy, so Davies and Scarlett sat on the wall facing us and looked at the animal book while I sold pasties and sausages and Ady sold fish. We all had a good day sales-wise and really enjoyed the banter with customers and between the stalls :).
Back at the farm we tested out the chairs by sitting in the sunshine listening to the thunder rolling around while the kids sat in the van watching the DVD and drawing. We’ve had a nice evening in the house eating fish, drinking wine and watching TV with everyone. Amanda and Zoe go home tomorrow which will no doubt change the dynamic here for our final few days but there are less markets next week and of course no bank holidays so I think we’ll be more involved in animal stuff and D&S won’t need to put up with Zoe.
We now have two days off though – very precious as although we had time off last weekend it was with my parents and so slightly stressy. We’re planning lots of walking and sitting in the woods opposite the farm and some writing letters to various places – promised to Badgers, Wildlife Explorers, the neighbours in our street etc. and not waking up very early :).
We have filled our next two weeks after that too – one with a farm we were supposed to go to but cancelled on us before and after thinking we had a week with a community they have emailed to say one of the members is terminally ill and so they need privacy and time and can’t host any WWOOFers so we have arranged to go back to Jill’s for a week as she is only 10 miles away from the place we go to after that. It means Ady gets to spend his birthday at Jill’s in some luxury and we don’t need to try and find an emergency one week somewhere. Pete & Emma would more than happily have us for an extra week (or 100 extra weeks!) but we feel ready to move on again and we’ll get to spend some time at Paddington Farm that way too, so ticking lots of boxes for us all.
Glad you’ve sorted the spare weeks. Going back for Ady’s birthday sounds nice.
Enjoy your days off 🙂
Comment by Kirsty — 01 May 2011 @ 11:26 am
lol at fish being a lovely change from sausages! 🙂
Hope you have a nice ‘weekend’ – I’ve lost track, are you here for another week?
Comment by Alison — 01 May 2011 @ 5:25 pm
yeah, here til next Monday morning, then off to Jill’s again.
Comment by Nic — 03 May 2011 @ 9:57 pm