So here’s the thing.
A week or two before I was due to move from my temporary lodging back to Glastonbury, I sold the Fortune Teller’s Table. It sold to a customer in New York. I had a million things to do, so I raced down to the post office first thing, sent it off tracked and signed for, as usual, pocketed the receipt and went off to get on with some of those jobs.
You’ve guessed, haven’t you? When I came to mark the item sent on my Etsy site, the receipt – with that all-important tracking number – had vanished. I turned out my bag, all pockets and looked inside anything I’d used that day, but it was nowhere to be seen.
“Well,” I thought to myself, “Let’s just hope the parcel doesn’t go missing.”
The day I moved – while I was actually on the journey, in fact – a message came through from the buyer. Where was the table? Why hadn’t I sent the tracking number? It hadn’t turned up.
I went cold and clammy all over. Never before had a parcel been lost in the post, so why this one? All those lovely five star reviews would be worth nothing if just one customer posted a rant about what a careless and unreliable supplier I was.
I came clean, apologised profusely and asked her to wait another week, just in case it was languishing in customs. After that, I promised, I’d either send her a full refund or attempt to make a close copy as a replacement. ‘OK,’ she agreed – one week, and she’d prefer to have a replacement to a refund.
So, with suitcases and packing boxes still unopened, I hunted through my 12th scale furniture stash and – I could hardly believe my luck – found an identical sized desk. It was brown, rather than black and, unlike its predecessor, it still had some drawers. Over the following days I studied the photos and worked to reproduce the dowsing pendulum, the tiny pack of cards, the candle, dream divination book, aged scrolls, tray of crystals and fortune telling boards.
It was nearing completion, when another message from the customer arrived. “It’s here!” she said. “I haven’t even opened it yet, but it was delivered today!”
Phew.
So I looked at the replica I’d been working on, decided the table top didn’t look mysterious enough, and covered it with a deep blue velvet cloth. And now, there is another Fortune Teller’s Table for sale in my Etsy shop.
You can take a look at it by clicking this link.
Steampunk - Shrunk! 