TINY FLAGS ON A STRING, REALLY

When you manufactured and sold bunting, like he did, you learnt to get your bunting up in the quickest possible time at the shortest available notice. You couldn't just sit around when people asked for bunting. If your bunting wasn't up within an acceptable time to the person who just asked about it, then you just plain would not sell any bunting. And to not sell bunting you could have sold, as a bunting manufacturer and seller, is in fact completely contrary to what you, as a bunting manufacturer and seller, would hope to achieve in your business.

So he was always ready. Sometimes, when he had spare time on this hands, he manufactured more bunting than was needed at the time, because sometimes you actually needed more bunting than you thought. Sometimes, someone would need a little bit of extra bunting because they had underestimated their need for bunting, or perhaps someone had a bunting emergency—either something had happened to the bunting they already had, or needed some almost straight away, for whatever reason. He never pressed his customers for specifics. He just gave them the bunting they needed. He found, from experience, that if you pressed your customer too much about why they needed a certain amount of bunting at very short notice, they were liable to become offended and perhaps take their business elsewhere. And that was the last thing he needed.

Bunting was a cut-throat business. You sank or swam by the quality of your bunting. That was just the way it was.