The Kindness of Strangers
- prettyasapicturebo
- 6 days ago
- 7 min read
It is one of the most iconic films of all times, with the huge talents of Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando, and is the adaptation of the famous Broadway play, penned by the immeasurably talented Tennessee Williams. The play/film tells the story of Blanche Dubois, a fragile Southern woman who moves back to New Orleans to live with her sister Stella and brutish brother-in-law Stanley, ultimately leading to emotional conflict, secrets revealed, and Blanche’s tragic mental collapse. I remember studying the play in secondary school, and whilst I have never seen the film, it is one of those films which has been so prevalent in pop culture and homaged / spoofed, most notably in "The Simpsons", in the classic season four episode "A Streetcar Named Marge"
Well, I wanted this installment of the blog to bring you all up to speed on how we were blessed this weekend by 'the kindness of strangers" and to give them all a much deserved 'shout out' as without them, we would have had a very gloomy weekend.
It all began on Saturday morning at 6am, as my alarm went on my phone as we we needed to prepare to load the car for our trip to St Andrews, where we were scheduled to visit the incredible Artisan Market St Andrews for the 3rd time. As my bleary eyes started to focus on my phone to cancel the alarm, I instantly snapped awake when I saw the following text preview from our son on my homescreen. "I tried to phone a friend to help but they were sleeping, the tyre says it can hold up to 50mph but I'll obviously transfer however much a new tyre costs." I instantly knew this meant that a mishap with the car tyres had occurred and that it was going to have a massive impact on our ability to attend our market.
After waking Shelley with an "oh, for f***'s sake", I started upon trying to problem solve the situation. I couldn't find anywhere in Stirling to change the tyre within the timescale we needed, I couldn't find anywhere in St Andrews to change the tyre whilst we were at the market (so we could drive home on new tyres). So that left the option of hiring a car. After a quick search online, it transpired that Enterprise Stirling opened the earliest, so after a quick call to the incredible IndyCabs, I set about making a reservation. "Fantastic", I thought as I found a Nissan Juke which would do the job admirably and which only cost £34 for a day's rental so I completed all the details and we had solved the problem. Or so I thought. Perhaps in my panic, or possibly owing to how close I was attempting to make an online rental to my intended collection time, unbeknownst to me I had actually reserved a car for Sunday to Monday and not Saturday to Sunday (as we required). My stomach churned as I realised that availability might be limited and what if I get to the branch and they either a) can't amend the booking to Saturday or b) they had no stock. I set off with some trepidation to the branch, hoping that I would be able to charm them into helping us.
I needn't have worried, because as soon as I explained my mistake (and our plight) to the lovely Alex who checked me in, he immediately sought to reassure me and said "no problem, we will be able to sort that out for you" and within what could only have been 3, maybe 4 minutes, he had checked stock online, grabbed a set of keys and took me outside to a Nissan Qashqai, which amusingly had "CEO" in its registration (as Shelley is definitely the CEO of our incredible business, as without her creative talents, there would be no business)
We had messaged Kelly and Susan to advise them about what had occurred, and they said that for Health and Safety reasons we needed to have our table set up by 10am (or at least have brought all of our items in from the car so as to avoid mingling with customers). They moved our location so that we would be immediately outside the lift and Kelly said she would help us bring things up from the car to assist us (we had suggested we would arrive around 9.40/9.45 which is exactly when we did arrive). Lisa was also there and was so helpful, carrying things up for us and agreeing to walk Bob (whom we had brought with us to offer Shelley some emotional support after a difficult week) which was so so kind and generous of them, and which really touched us both.
The market was quieter than usual (perhaps on account of the start of the Easter school holidays) however it was successful as we sold just enough to cover the cost of our table. Speaking to the incredibly friendly and helpful Yakup from the amazing 3D Dundee gave us, and Shelley in particular, some valuable words of encouragement. He recalled that when he and his partner had started their business a couple of years ago, they had attended market after market after market without making any sales. Finally, they made a sale of around £20 and they were elated, so much so that it restored Yakup's faith and belief and as we have been fortunate enough to have made an average of around £40 on three out of our four markets, this puts things into context about just how good we have done in the 6 months the business has existed.
We have our next market in three weeks in Aberdeen, thanks to Craft & Flea and Yakup also told us that the demographic in Aberdeen is largely one of retirees, from 60-80 who are relatively wealthy and who he believes will absolutely love our product, so we are rather excited (well I am at least, Shelley is always a bit more circumspect) to see how we go there, as the inaugural market there in February did exceedingly well and many traders reported phenomenal takings.
Yakup finally gave us another incredible tip, which was to ensure we bring items in the £1-£5 range, as in a market with large footfall (such as Aberdeen in a few weeks), if lots of people come past our stall and buy just the £1-£2 items, it can be easy to make a lot of money just from those items. Indeed, he told me that in Aberdeen he made around £150 from selling just his £1 items alone, notwithstanding the leads he generated for his 'bread and butter' items of their 3D printed lampshades and vases and sales of those products on the day. This came out of our decision to bring scrunchies (which Shelley and our daughter Ellie had made in December ahead of our soft launch market visit at Killearn, but which we decided looked too 'random' or out of place with our main product) as a free giveaway to engage with customers who lingered around our table.
The scrunchies proved so popular that it ended up being a valuable 'real world' market research exercise - one woman even refused to take them for free and insisted on giving us £5 for two. So Shelley is hard at work making scrunchies in not only our latest patterns from the Spring Collection, but from other offcuts of fabric as well. She is also making bunting and keyrings to bring to market (we are also going to add these on our website) and you can have a sneak peek at these in the images below
So all in all, Saturday was (despite the stressful beginning) an enjoyable day. Our friend Jo (after whom the JoJo is named) and her daughter Grace, paid us a visit, having taken the train up from Edinburgh, so it was lovely to see them and we tried a new approach to our table arrangement which worked really well and we are going to evolve further for our three upcoming markets in May, in Aberdeen, St Andrews and Blantyre.
Finally, to close out the tale of our weekend and how we were touched by how people still have the capacity to be helpful to one another, I have to describe something which will doubtless stretch my credibility as this almost seems too comical to be true.
So we are relaxing on Saturday evening watching Celebrity Masterchef Australia (seriously, watch this show, especially 2020-2024, it is incredible), and in our own personal version of Groundhog Day, the seminal comedy film starring the amazing Bill Murray, in which a cynical weatherman relives the same day—Groundhog Day—over and over in a small town, eventually transforming through self-improvement, kindness, and love to break the time loop and find happiness, we receive a text from our son who sheepishly confesses to having locked the car keys inside the car 🤦♂️.
He says he is coming home to get the spare key (not realising that we already knew that we have somehow managed to lose the spare key in the house somewhere and despite our repeated attempts, our latest being on Saturday evening, can still not locate).
So upon waking on Sunday morning, I looked online for a car locksmith and found The Key Man who said he could pick me up within the hour and drive me to the car, which had been left at our son's friend's house. He reassured me that he had yet to find a car he couldn't get into and after some pleasant chat (not least of which was about the latest developments in SEO on account of him having his own business and need to be found by customers), he managed to get into the car by ultimately using some specialist balloons to prise the doorseal open just enough to be able to use a telescopic rod to first activate the power button in the vehicle, then depress the central locking button to open the doors
So I want to thank Alex, Kelly, Lisa, Yakup and Iain for all of their hard work and kindness this weekend, it truly was a pleasure to meet you and be the recipient of your generosity, your kind words and encouragement (and in the case of Alex and Iain) your amazing customer service.
Hopefully you get to experience the kindness of strangers soon in your own lives and the best way to tap into this amazing feeling and to bring some light into our world is to show kindness to others (and lo and behold) you will become someone else's 'stranger' showing kindness and knowing that you have helped out someone less fortunate than you is surely something to feel good about!
Thanks for reading and we can't wait to see you at a market in Scotland very soon!
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