Rethinking Eliza Doolittle

You remember her - the flower girl from My Fair Lady. There she is, all waifish in the market trying to get a few pence to eat and find a place to sleep that night. Okay maybe she's more cheeky than waifish but she's a pretty young thing just begging to be rescued by her knight in shining armor and turned into a proper lady.

Forget that story. This is the alternate version of Eliza's story - the one where she makes it on her own. You've heard of Shakespeare's Seven Stages of Man? Well the parable of the flower seller is about the evolution of Eliza.

So picture her there, sitting in the busy London square offering her daisies. If she's lucky someone will buy a few. She's calling out to passersby from her corner, encouraging them to buy her flowers.

Because she's pretty and young and works hard and sings a lovely song, people buy from her. Plus she's got these unusual daisies. They stay bright and strong and beautiful for exactly one week and then they disintegrate. So people come back every week and she starts to build a regular customer base.

But there's lots of competition in the square because lets face it, it's easy to get and sell flowers, the square is busy with wealthy people, restauranteurs and funeral directors and so she's getting crowded. She needs to find an easier way with a more reliable revenue stream.

So she takes a look at her business and makes a few decisions. She:

• decides to go door to door - or kitchen door to kitchen door in St. James since a lot of her buyers have been the housekeepers of the wealthy

• decides to try to reach a standing agreement with the restauranteurs, funeral homes and churches for regularly weekly orders

• uses the money she's managed to save to rent a stall in the flower market and installs her pretty younger sister there so people always know where to go to find her daisies

How do you think she'll do?