By Lucy

My Saturday technically started on Friday, as I had to stay out after dinner to help Simo pack up the car. As we intended to be out by 7, being prepacked was critical.

My alarm woke me bright and early at 6, having spent most of the night tossing and turning. I dressed in my jeans and sport coat and presented myself at the staff door at 6:55.

Simo was flying around the kitchen. She paused to look at my outfit, “Boy, don’t you look smart?” Then orders started flying; grab this, find that, put such-and-such in the car. She asked me to fill up some thermoses with hot water so we could have tea. She also wanted me to count out a float of change from a change jar, which took an extra moment to do because the coins are all different from Canada’s. I helped Gary pack up the tables and the tent and away we went.

We got a somewhat desirable spot, although Simonetta always gets the same spot by virtue of being a pillar of the community. It’s right by the gate so people see you first on the way in and last on the way out, which is pretty good. That being said, not a lot of people were selling preserves, so there wasn’t much in the way of competition.

She fussed and fussed over the set-up of the table, the placement of things on the table, etc and ad nauseum. She apologized for being so anxious and I said, that’s ok, I’m anxious too. She told me I never seem anxious or even nervous, always cool as a cucumber.

Am I? When did that happen? I suppose I’ve been pretty calm since I settled in here, but maybe I’ve been calm for longer than that. I used to be the most anxious person I know – the way she is seems very familiar to me.

The guy across from us gave us a laugh. He was east Asian, selling those cheap, China-printed “kilts”. No real Scot would be caught dead in one of those things, and I doubt he made a single sale the entire day. I felt bad for him nonetheless, he was probably thrown on a plane by some boss back in his home country and sent here to make a quota, knowing nothing and being scared out of his mind.

The booth to our right was for the Hororata rifle club. For 2 dollars, you could write down a guess for the number of bullets in a jar. I had a thought that since I’m right next to them all day, I could probably text someone the gauge of shell and volume of the jar, and math out how many bullets are in there. But cell service wasn’t working there, so I didn’t.

At roughly 9 o’clock, we were set up and ready to sell!

The only real sticking point for me is that we had no electronic credit card machine. We had this little graphite press she called a “zip-zap”, which I never really got good at using!

After making sure I had a vague idea of what to do, she took off into the fair to take a look at the stalls before the crowds showed up.

I’ve done these sorts of fair lots before, actually. As a seller, but also obviously as a representative of the Soroptimists, and Carpenter’s Union, trying to recruit. The key difference here was that I wasn’t familiar with the goods I was selling. One woman asked me how gingery the Pear and Ginger Conserve is, but I have no idea, I haven’t sampled everything! I gave my best guess based on 2 months of eating Simonetta’s cooking.

We had quite a crowd to start, actually. Simonetta had a notebook to keep rough track of our sales, and we sold about a third of everything in that first hour. I also had a lot of people drop by who know Simonetta or the booth from past years, who expected me to know who they are!

I was emotionally exhausted by the time she got back. After two months of basically just talking to her, Ethan and Gary, it was a lot of social interaction all at once.

Around 10:30 she relieved me so I could do a walk around.

Window shopping is a curious thing. I didn’t want to buy much; 1, I’m broke, but 2, all I have is my backpack. Not much space for souvenirs I’d have to then cart around for a few months, or ship back to Canada at a high rate.

I did end up buying a pack of candies. I figured, a little treat. I got the sour ones so I wouldn’t be tempted to eat the whole pack in one go, at least. I had to laugh, when I mentioned to Simo that I haven’t had candy or alcohol since I got there, she said “That’s good, that means you aren’t stressed!” I also got a small tub of honey. I’m happy with the honey I got from the supermarket, but this stuff is from a place around the corner, and it’s from the black beech trees that I’ve found so darn fascinating, so I had to try it!

There was a small petting zoo type area, with live sheep shearings’ on the hour. The usual midway. There was also an antique car show, which I thought was awesome! We had a whole bunch of those down at the Simcoe County Museum, but they mostly aren’t functional and are just rotting in a field. No idea if anything like that exists in Thunder Bay, but I think the answer is no.

The games themselves are not interesting to me. I know highland games are technically war games, but these days it’s like watching sports; they hold no real interest to me. I went and watched a few of them. They had women competing, which is great! I kept wandering back to the booth out of boredom, and Simonetta kept trying to shoo me away and tell me to go watch the events.

For lunch, she had a regular burger and fries. I hunted around the booths and found a booth selling ramen, which I was really tempted by. I can’t even get good ramen in Thunder Bay! What I really wanted was some genuine haggis, but none was on offer for some reason! I got a “haggis burger” that was acceptable. I should have just gone back for the ramen.

I cracked again. A booth across the way was selling filled “rope” candies and I bought a half-strap for 2$. They were nice and chewy.

We make such a good team, though. I’m good at reeling people in, social engineering and all that. Catch peoples’ eye and say hello. If they hesitate, keep talking. I find it’s better to trick them into engaging by asking about something other than what you are selling, like what event they really want to see. If you seem to display genuine interest in what they are doing, they’ll usually feel obliged to reciprocate by asking about your booth!

Since we were writing down all our sales on a little notepad, I noticed I’m better at convincing hesitant people to buy one or two things, but Simo is better at convincing people to spend 50 bucks. When combined, we turbocharged sales.

“You should go watch the pie eating contest. Maybe you could compete!” She said teasingly.

“Hah hah. Don’t you want to go see any of the events?”

“Nah, I’ve seen some of them here and there. And I’m not doing this again after this year, so I can see it next year. I’m just glad to have a competent assistant this year, so I can run to the toilet.”

“Are people usually that hopeless?”

She rolled her eyes. “You have no idea!”

I did end up going to see the pie eating contest, since it was around the corner. I regret not competing, actually. You only had to eat one hand pie, not even a full dessert pie size, which I could do, especially since there was no rule against vomiting afterwards. The trick is to take bites of a size that you can swallow without chewing, cuz chewing is where you lose the most time. The winner ended up being the guy who has won two years in a row – now three – but he was given a run for his money by some random 18 year old Italian tourist who has never eaten a pie before!

There was also an older gentleman there who gave it a good go – he got second in his heat – wearing a shirt for the Hornby Rotary club, so I was rooting for him!

Afterwards, I went to watch the Kilted Mile, which sounds interesting. They have to eat a pie, chug an IRN BRU, then run a mile in a kilt. In practice, unless you can get a good view of the eating and drinking bit, you’re just watching a bunch of people run in a kilt.

We were expecting a rush around 4 as the games wrapped up. People usually come back to buy eggs on the way home, cuz who wants to carry around a carton of delicate eggs all day in the heat? The rush never materialized, however, and we were among the last to start breaking down our booth. Gary showed up to grab the tent and the tables; he had been volunteering to direct traffic and was clad in the bright green volunteer shirt!

And then we were done. Later on Sunday, Simo tallied up what we made for the day and gave me a portion of it.

It makes me laugh, there are people out there who will try to claim that I’m so full of myself and I need to be humbled. I could be in Christchurch, working 10 hours a day scaffolding for 30 bucks an hour, and sleeping at the hostel. But I much more enjoy it here, tending to the chickens, being gifted small bottles of homemade jam and pocket change, and puttering around on my motorcycle when the weather is good.

I’ve changed up my exercise routine. My core is the problem, as it has been for 7 years. The doctors told me not to work my abs if I can feel burning or tearing around the tumor, but I keep hitting a wall where there is no further progress I can make without that sensation. So I’ve just been pushing through it. I broke up my work outs into half hour chunks, one at 2 when I get off work, and one at 7 before dinner. I hate eating dinner so late at night, but I figure a short work-out should boost my metabolism so it processes better.