Free Divas Don't Knit by Gil McNeil

matinée coat if her life depended on it, but she’ll have a go at a poncho, and I know she’s out there somewhere, because all the reps are saying wool sales have gone through the roof recently, especially for the more expensive ranges. So I just have to find out where she lives round here, and keep Doris and her friends happy at the same time. Bloody hell. Still, it could be worse; I could be wearing a multicoloured zigzag cardigan made entirely of man-made fibre, and getting small jolts of static electricity every time I touch anything vaguely metallic. Although I’ve got a horrible feeling it may be only a matter of time.

Chapter Three

Sand and Water
    It’s Friday morning and I’m wedged in the shop window trying to be Artistic with cramp in my arm. I finished knitting the fish last night, with Gran’s help, and now they’re all bobbing around on lengths of nylon thread looking very nautical, especially the stripy ones, which look rather like angel fish, only woollier. I’m stapling some dark-blue net to the pegboard partition on top of the silver net I put up earlier; I’m aiming for an impressionistic wave-like shimmer, but so far it’s all going a bit
Blue Peter.
People keep stopping to wave at me through the glass, which is embarrassing, and I’ve got sand up both my sleeves.
    ‘I don’t know how on earth we’re going to get all that sand out you know. It’ll be a devil to clean up.’
    I think we can safely say that Elsie’s still Not Keen.
    ‘We can use the Hoover.’
    ‘You’ll have a job. That old thing can barely suck up a bit of fluff, let alone a a load of dirty old sand. What are these things meant to be then?’
    She hands me one of the papier-mâché starfish I made with the boys at the weekend, which probably wasn’t one of my best ideas, especially since there are now bits of newspaper glued to the kitchen floor, the side of the fridge, and the soles of my flipflops. I must try to remember that Art With Small Boys is bestleft to professionals, or people with ready access to tranquillisers.
    ‘They’re starfish.’
    She sniffs. ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a purple starfish, but never mind. I’ll make a start on tidying up in the back, shall I? Those pattern books are in a terrible muddle again.’
    ‘Good idea.’
    Christ. Beam me up, somebody; she’s driving me mad this morning, and if she carries on like this I may have to staple her to something to keep her out of my way. I wonder what she’d look like covered in dark-blue net?
    Apart from Elsie and her comments, and being stuck in this bloody window, everything else has been going rather well; we’ve been in the new house for nearly a fortnight, and we’ve got a fully functioning telly now, thanks to Billie turning up in her Sky van, with a special belt for holding all her tools and a relaxed attitude to being trailed round the house by boys watching her every move. Although I think she’d underestimated just how much they’d been missing
Sponge Bob Square Pants,
because she went very red when they both kissed her goodbye.
    The really good news is that Vin’s arrived, with his new girlfriend, Lulu, who’s been a huge success, not least because the boys think her name is completely hilarious. And instead of spending all day lounging about and looking glamorous, like her predecessor did, sipping water and refusing to eat anything with more than three calories in it, she helped me paint the big wall in the hall yesterday, which was good of her, particularly since she got the dodgy roller with the wobbly handle.
    The boys are in seventh heaven in the new house, and if they’re not out in the garden making camps with the clothes horse and most of my sheets they’re on the beach, or campaigning to go fishing in the harbour, where they like to spend hours trying to catch teeny crabs while I lose the will to live. Andthere’s definitely less bickering since they’ve gone all Famous Five; I think all the fresh air is