Cracked brick wall tattoo on a scalp

The rain has been coming sideways across the market since Tuesday, and I have sold nothing but two chipped chimney pots and a bag of lime to a man who wanted to know if they were haunted. Stall nine is under the old cast-iron roof now, so at least the bricks stay dry. Mum says you should come home before the winter rates go up, but you know what she's like about bricks.

Last Saturday a man came asking for a hundredweight of reclaimed London stock, the soft yellow ones with the frogs pressed in. He didn't want a wall. He wanted to see how the old mortar broke, which bricks came away clean and which took the face with them. He turned each one over in his hands the way you used to test a loaf. I asked what he was building. He said he was taking something down, slowly, and needed to know what was underneath.

I helped him load the van in the rain, and when the last one went in he pulled a folded sheet of tracing paper from his coat and showed me a drawing of a crack running through plaster, with a single red brick showing at the centre of it. He said the brick was the only true thing in the picture. I told him the rain was getting into his paper. He laughed and folded it back up carefully, as if it were the last good sheet in the world.

Come back for the spring fair. Bring your trowel. I have kept the two good bolsters under the counter, and I will sell you the frogged ones at cost.

Love, Ilse