Metallic flash sheet of palms, anchors and script

The rain has been coming sideways across the harbour market since Tuesday, and the gulls have given up pretending they can fly. I've sold four of the bronze sheets already, the ones with the palms, to a woman whose husband used to be bosun on the Holyhead run. She wanted something to remind her of the sea without the smell of it. I told her the foil would rub off in a fortnight if she bathed, and she laughed and said most things do.

Your rope braid is still pinned at the top of the stall. Mr Okafor from the fish shed asked if it was a bracelet for his grandson, and I said yes, because I couldn't explain the knot. The infinity loop sits in the middle of the blue strip as though it's waiting for someone to pull it tight. I keep thinking about what you said on the pier, that a knot is only a promise somebody goes on holding.

The anchors sold first, both sizes, which surprised me. People want something to hold them down in this weather. Yesterday a boy of about eleven stood in the wet reading the little words aloud, live laugh love and then hope twice, once in script and once typed like a ticket. He asked whether they were true. I said they were printed in metallic ink and would last about a week on skin, which seems to be how everything worth buying behaves.

Post the next crate to the Dock Street address, not the old one. Keep the bronze dry. I'll write on Sunday if the tide lets me.

Love, Ruth