Sold Something You Don't Have? The Cricket Tea Hatch

2026-10-27

The tea urn is hissing and there are eleven cheese sandwiches left on the tray when your phone buzzes against your hip.

You are volunteering at the village cricket club, because your brother-in-law asked and you said yes. You are wearing someone else's apron. A man in a sun hat is asking whether the flapjacks have nuts.

"No nuts," you say. You glance at the screen.

New order: Olive green dog lead, medium.

Your stomach does a small, quiet drop.

You know that colour. You made the last olive-green lead on Tuesday. It went to a woman in Leeds. You remember wrapping it. You also remember thinking, I should note that down, and then the kettle boiled, or the phone rang, or something else got in the way.

The shop did not know. The shop happily took the money.

The sum you do in your head

You hand over the flapjack. You smile. Behind the smile, you start counting.

There is a roll of olive leather in the workshop, but it is the narrow one, not the wide one. The brass clips are somewhere in the second drawer, or maybe the third. Perhaps you have enough. Perhaps you don't. You honestly cannot say.

That is the part nobody warns you about when you start making things for a living. It is not the making that wears you down. It is the not-knowing. Every order is a small bet that the shelf in your head matches the shelf in the workshop.

Most days, it does. Some days, it doesn't, and you find out from a stranger's name on a screen.

The email you start writing between sandwiches

During the quiet bit between innings, you lean on the hatch and open your email.

Hi Karen, thank you so much for your order. Unfortunately…

You delete "unfortunately." It sounds like a parking fine.

Hi Karen, I'm so sorry, I've made a mistake…

Too much. You are not a criminal. You are one person with a workshop and a very full head.

You try again. Then again. The tea queue builds. Someone asks for oat milk, and there is no oat milk, and you apologise for that too, because apparently today you apologise for everything.

The thing is, Karen will probably be fine. People usually are, if you tell them early and kindly. It is not really Karen you are worried about. It is the small voice that says: A proper business would have known.

It is not true. But it is loud on a Saturday afternoon with a tea towel over your shoulder.

What it quietly costs

No one adds up the price of these moments.

There is the refund, of course. There is the awkward email. But there is also the afternoon you half-spent somewhere else, the way you check the shop on your phone every hour "just in case," and the mild dread of a good sales day, because a good day is also the day most likely to run you out of something.

And there is the other side of it: the thing you didn't order in time, because you didn't see it running low. So the next sell-out is already on its way, quietly, while you're busy apologising for this one.

You have been doing it with a notebook, a few sticky notes, and your memory. Your memory has been loyal. It is also, you are beginning to admit, only one person's memory.

The moment it shifts

At the end of the match, while you stack the cups, your brother-in-law asks how the shop is going.

"Busy," you say. "Which is good. And also a bit of a mess."

He laughs. "Do you know what you've got in the workshop right now?"

You open your mouth to say roughly. And you stop.

Because roughly is the problem. Roughly is what got you Karen's order. Roughly is why you are standing in a cricket pavilion writing an apology on a phone with tea on the screen.

It doesn't have to be roughly. It could be one page you open on Monday, a list of what you have, what is getting low, and what to reorder before it becomes an email. Not a grand system. Just the shelf in your head, written down where it can't forget.

You don't need to solve it tonight. You just notice, for the first time, that it can be solved.

An ordinary Monday, a few weeks on

Picture it. Monday, 8:40. The workshop smells of leather and cold coffee. You open the file, and it takes four minutes.

Olive green: low, and flagged. You order the roll before the kettle has finished boiling. The clips are fine. The brown is fine. Nothing is sneaking up on you.

When an order comes in on Saturday, you can check it with a glance, or you don't need to check at all, because you already know. You can hand over the flapjack, say "no nuts," and mean it. The phone buzzes, and it is just a phone.

The small voice that says a proper business would have known gets quieter. Because now you do know.

If you recognise yourself in the hatch

If you have ever found out about a sell-out from the customer, you are not careless. You are a person running a whole shop from your head, and heads were never meant to be warehouses.

If you would like a calmer way to keep track, there is Never Sold Out by Surprise – Inventory & Reorder Tracker. It is an Excel file with automatic reorder alerts, stock value and a simple dashboard. It comes as a sample version to look at and a blank template to make your own, plus a PDF guide. There is no subscription, and a 30-day money-back promise: if it doesn't help, you get a full refund, no questions.

No rush. Just a thought for the next time your phone buzzes at the wrong moment.

An illustrative story, written with AI assistance.