I must be the worlds worst blogger, posting something only once every 2 months. But then on the other hand, I reckoned with myself, at least I only post something when it warrants mention. Like in the case of last week-end when Martha Stewart came cruising into our stand at the Design Indaba, camera in hand. But let me start at the beginning otherwise it won't be such an enjoyable story....
So there we were, in our stand at the Design Indaba, myself and my fabulous friend Cath who was sharing the load of a 14 hour day, 4 days running. But first let me give you some background on Cath. She is the most amazing woman, twice my age, born and bred in the UK now living in Cape Town and a loyal Marzipanist and agent for our company for many years. She has lived and worked all around the world, and has a humour and wit in her second to none. I can't do these shows without her, she is fantastic..So back to the story...there we were in our little 4 m sq when Martha Stewart wandered in, camera ready and buoyed by an entourage of men; bodyguards, press, weapons, the lot. As she started snapping away at our stand, Cath sidled up to her and said politely, 'Madam, if you want to take photographs please ask us permission!' Two things here, clearly Cath had no clue who she was and secondly, visitors are NOT allowed to take photos of the stands. An issue that was already bothering Cath at this stage as anyone and everyone was snapping away and her patience had been slipping.
So Martha replied to her in a very quiet but undeterred voice, 'I am with the press.' 'Oh! replied Cath, '...well if you need some assistance please do not hesitate to ask .' Martha glanced sideways at Cath and continued to take a few more shots. A few seconds later she swept herself away, entourage and all following close behind.
That was when I said to Cath, 'that,!,was Martha Stewart!' to which Cath replied, 'Martha Who?' I collapsed in a heap, it was too funny for words.
It soon got around to our fellow stand holders about Caths innocent meeting with Martha and we enjoyed ourselves immensely at the hilariousness of it all. And to top it all off, we discovered that the talk she had given only hours before had been a total flop. Half of the audience had walked out on her and tweeted nastily across cyber space about her disappointing talk . The whole debarcle of her presentation made it to the front page of the Argus the next day and even the editor of the newspaper clearly didn't know who she was either because her name had been spelt Matha.
To her cred, I believe her second talk a day or so later was brilliant! Go Martha!
