When Craft was born, her parents, Mr and Mrs Petulengro, had decided to name her Thumbelina. Then Mrs Petulengro was idly glancing through her medical notes the midwife had left on the bed when she noticed the word CRAFT written in bold red ink across the top of the file. She decided this was a delightful name and the idea of Thumbelina was dropped. She was unaware that CRAFT was in fact a medical acronym for "Cannot Realistically Achieve Full Tallness." Baby Craft was taken home to her parents caravan where she spent the first three months sleeping in a lined Swan Vestas matchbox.
From an early age Craft had one ambition - to work in a post office. This was for two reasons - she knew she would enjoy having her own inked stampers, and behind a P.O. counter she would be able to stand on a box and no one would be aware of her shortcomings. Her parents were disappointed that Craft had not followed in the family traditions of peg whittling, gathering bunches of lucky white heather and collecting scrap metal. She duly began her career in the post office as soon as she left school. An early boyfriend who was a banker had advised Craft to start a portfolio as soon as possible. Knowing she could not afford stocks and shares or property, Craft decided to start a portfolio of husbands. Over the years she slowly moved up the chain of command in the post office and gathered an impressive portfolio of seven husbands. These were the legal ones. In addition, there were 15 bigamous husbands. She amassed enough wealth to buy her own shop cum post office in the village of Answerbank under the Wold. She was extremely tight lipped about her portfolio although there was much speculation in the village about the mysterious disappearance of Mr Craft number 7. Should a villager be foolish enough to enquire as to his whereabouts, Craft would draw herself up to her full height of 3'11" and fix them with such a glare that they often scuttled out of the shop without their purchases. In her spare time she was much in demand as a clairvoyant. She was very talented at steaming open letters and from the contents within she was able to make several very accurate predictions. Craft was also a connoisseur of gin and had a whole room filled with bottles from around the globe. Sometimes if she was feeling maudlin in gin (i.e. every night) she would go down to the basement intending to go in the locked room but the smell emanating from the room always put her off. There was a rumour that Mr Craft no. 7 was hidden in there (he wasn't as he had in fact run off with a taller woman of 4'2") but as always, the truth is stranger than fiction. Behind the locked door were 23 tailors dummies wearing Craft's 23 wedding dresses and a huge table on which were 23 partially eaten decaying wedding cakes which were all covered in an interesting variety of moulds. In the corner stood an unused dummy and there was a newly cleared space on the cake table. Craft had decided the time had come to expand her portfolio.
LOL, great stuff mrs overowl. 3' 11'' crafty is taller than I thought she was Who is going to be the next mug, sorry I mean't to say husband, mrs overowl ?.