Dragon silhouette design

The rain has been coming off the canopy of the Wednesday market since Monday, and the cloth over my stall sags like a wet sail. I have sold nothing but umbrellas and one brass cat. Mrs Okafor from the fish stall says it is the river wanting its share, and she may be right, because the gutters outside the Corn Exchange are running like the Thames in March.

Yesterday a man came under my awning with a small iron dragon he had bought from me in the summer. He did not want a refund. He wanted to know which way the tail was meant to curl. I told him the foundry never said, and he laughed, then showed me his own version, sketched on the back of a bus ticket: the head held high, the wing swept back as if it were catching a wind nobody else could feel, and the long thin tail doubling under the body until it ended in a loop no bigger than a thumb. He said he had been looking at the thing every night and it kept looking back at him.

I told him to keep it. I told him dragons are not meant to be sold twice.

He left the ticket on the counter, and I have pinned it above the till now, beside the price list. I suppose I am writing to ask whether you still have the old pattern book from the Kettering days, the one with the dragons drawn in ink. Send it if you find it. The man's drawing has the wing exactly right, and I want to copy it before the damp gets to the paper.

Keep your boots dry. The weather here is not going to change its mind.

Ada