431. The haberdasher

Miss Muddy Boots is home. Her exams results have common and everyone is happy and congratulating her on her being an engineer. Silly jokes keep coming.

'This is impossible! You need a degree in engineering to load this dishwasher. Muddy Boots? Can you come down?' Baby is screaming towards the top floor.

But Miss Muddy Boots (the nickname has never been so perfect) is upstairs, emptying my old printer's tiny cartridge. The printer rattles so much, it echoes along the floor and we can hear it from downstairs.

'What on earth is she printing?' I mutter under my breath.

My husband is moaning about the poor traffic system around the town square and before a joke comes along I rush outside with MB. We're off to what could be called Ali Baba's Cave. A tiny shop, with a narrow window and one door to the side of it, and when you push that door the shop is long and narrow and you hear a voice from somewhere which says 'bonjour' and you keep walking and you think did I hear a voice? Then to the left you see a counter and hidden behind rolls of cloth and racks of ribbon and thread and wool and needles and who knows what else.

If you are expecting an old lady with glasses perched atop her nose you are disappointed because it is a young bright energetic woman who greets you. 

'Bonjour!' She sings towards you and smiles brightly. You are in a different - better - world when you are in here. 

You just want to come in again and again and when you are here you want to buy everything. Miss Muddy Boots and me her mum both fall for the haberdasher's charm every time.

The 15 pages MB that were churned out of the family printer were part of yet and other sewing project by MB. The sewing machine she got for her 12th birthday still going strong up there and rattling just as much as the printer and heard also on the floor below.

'This might be a little light weight ... I need something quite sturdy. It's just that I'm going to wear it probably for most of my trip, I'll wash it in the rivers and maybe hang it from the trees for it to dry and my straps of my ruck sack will be rubbing on it for the whole three weeks ...'

'Oh!' Said the bright cheerful young woman. 'You're not off on holiday, you're away on an adventure!'

'Yes, I'm taking a boy along with me, just to make my parents happy.'

She laughed, a loud, musical peel of a laugh. Delightful.

'Ha Ha! I did the same two years ago. I went to South China for two months and I also took a boy along so my parent sowed agree, and you know what? He was useless!' 

For once she was not laughing and her face looked so surprisingly serious.

'Typical!' Miss Muddy Boots quipped and the girl burst out laughing her communicating laugh, she was not only back to her cheerful self and she laughed and laughed and laughed.

Miss MB came home with very sturdy linen I thought would resist even she had to wrestle an angry lion.

'If a lion was to grab hold of you, I'd rather you wore something a little more flimsy so it would give in and you could run off, ok with no shirt on, but ... you know ...'

Seeing MB's look I was as useless as the token guys taken on trips by daughters of worried parents.