It was the jar of Czech glass beads, the ones that are foil-lined. I know I shouldn't really admit it, but Czech glass beads are my very favorite. Some resemble pearls, others you want to taste on your tongue like a fruit ice. The foil-lined ones look quite mystical, they remind me of moon rock or congealed pieces of a forest brook....

Anyway. The jar was out of place: a few millimeters forward in relation to the others.

I did call the police. They weren't very helpful. I swear I heard them say "nutty old lady" as they put me on hold.

I didn't mind the "nutty." The "old" stung. After all, I even have a problem with the adjective "middle-aged" when applied to me, and goodness knows, I've had enough time to get used to that one.

So anyway, I phoned Jade, the boss-girl. She was even less helpful than the police, although infinitely more polite. She may be a young thing, but she knows her manners. Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, they used to say about such girls in my day, so prim and proper is she. Still, in the nicest way possible, she told me to mind my own business. If only. I would love to have my own business to mind!

My name is Suzan Aileen Cottrell and I love beads. If you think it frivolous, then you're forgetting the part trade beads played in the colonization of northern America, you're forgetting the spirituality that goes hand in hand with meditation beads, and you probably don't know about the beautiful origins of glass beads in Egypt. My dream is to own a bead shop one day. Meanwhile, I work in this one, and I look after it whenever Jade feels like a lie-in or like a mini power-break in Hawaii, which is more often than I'd have imagined possible on a bead shop's profits.

I love interacting with clients, too. Today, the most interesting client was a red-haired woman with sharp eyes.

"I'd like to buy some beads," she said.

"Certainly. Anything specific you're after? Glass, horn, wood?"

"Um, glass."

I showed her the Cloisonné range, the Japanese miracle beads, Indian glass, Indonesian glass, Czech.

The redhead spent a long time looking at the contents of each jar. She held the beads to the sun; she tried to look through them, and into them.

"I think I'll take a bit of each," she said at last.

"By a bit, you mean...?"

"Um. A handful?"

"Of each?"

"Yes."

Now that in itself was not unusual. Many amateurs start off vague. If it's your first time in a bead shop, you will most likely feel overwhelmed by the sheer orgy of color, light, and shapes.

This woman, however, was not overwhelmed. She was interested.

"Can you tell me more about these beads?" she pointed at a random batch.

"These are Czech Glass Lamp Work beads, made individually by hand."

"By hand? Really? How?"

I explained the process: cutting a large glass rod into manageable chunks, heating them in an oxygen torch, working the bead, then annealing it.

"And would you be able to do it at home?"

"You could do it at home if you had the right equipment." I sidestepped the question on purpose.

As she was leaving, the redhead pointed at the bead curtain hanging in the door that leads into the back office. "What a clever idea," she exclaimed. "Do the bead patterns mean anything?"

"Well," again, I didn't answer directly. "Bead patterns are used for communication in African societies to express cultural values, rank, religion, and political affiliations."

"You mean, they are a code, understandable only to those in the know?"

I smiled. "I like to think of it as a symbolic language."

The rest of the day I spent in front of the computer.

The computer thing is just something I do in my spare time. Beading is not a profession that pays a lot. With computers, however, even the sky's not the limit.