There are things people sell on markets that are awful. Others run from dreadful to crap. Others yet again border on the nasty or the sheer unmitigated cheesy. But you’ve got to go a long way to find something that is so naf that it’s hateful. And interestingly enough the people who sell it are likewise. This post is about one of those products and one of those people.
I want to make one thing clear straight away. Most traders who sell what may loosely be described as craft products, whether genuinely made by themselves or imported from China (which is a truth in most cases that they’ll dispute till the cows come home and swear on every Bible this side of the Orion Nebula was the handiwork of their wife in the studio attached to their rural country cottage in Romford) genuinely believe that their stuff is beautiful beyond all the senses, made strongly enough win an award for engineering and going for a price that barely compensates them for the effort and sacrifice they’ve put in to offering them to an undeserving public. And furthermore is the next best thing to sliced bread and the Crown Jewels.
The majority of craft-type traders really believe their own bullshit. The rest somehow know that what they’re selling is crap yet because they’ve been doing it for so long the line between lying and truth has become so blurred that they’ve become altogether delusional. Rather like Liberal Democrats who’ve convinced themselves that they’re honourable politicians!
And then there are people like us. We’re under no illusion about what we sell. We think our stuff’s great! Excellent value for money. We’re different. Joke… joke!
Above all else there has to be the plain likeability of the stuff that you’re selling and ultimately the only judgement that counts is that of the customer. Traders of course make their own judgements. About customers, about their stock and about things other traders are selling. But throughout it all there is a plain universal truth. Some people’s products are hateful! Even if they sell by the thousand it still doesn’t alter the fact! Added to this are the lard dripping words they use to sell it. Together, product and sales pitch combine to create something extraordinary. An experience so contemptibly cheesy that you can barely choke back the laughter.
We first met Graham, a Scotsman who sold little china dogs in little china bowls by accident. We’d been trading at one part of our main London market for over a year and had an established pitch there, a metal stall we rented on a regular basis four or five days a week. We had regular customers there and were well known. Then one day the management thought they’d do us a favour. Give us a better site on the other side of the market. It was better protected against the elements and our stuff would be more visible to the main through-put of people coming into the area. Besides, we were selling quality gear. We’d be in a much classier spot. We took in the sales crap and looked at it coldly. It had advantages and disadvantages. Different traders around us who might not like us being there and leaving a site that we knew. Making a judgment wouldn’t be easy.
The owners made the decision for us. They wanted to change the market around a little. Make it look different. We had no say in the matter. Sure we’d oblige!
In the coming days we learned to offload and stall up elsewhere. Naturally with our eyes all over the place. Taking in what people were selling, the verbals of each different sales pitch and what the other traders were like. We were friendly, affable you might say, but kept ourselves to ourselves. Above all didn’t tread on anyone’s toes. It’s what market traders are known for, having big toes. After a while they all began coming round on the snoop. How yer doin… Lovely stuff you’ve got there… Make it yourselves… and all the rest of it. Friendly faces hiding natural jealousies and malevolent dispositions. If they could get their nose up your arse they’d be there. We smiled as was required and told them every lie they wanted to know!
Graham was one of the snoop dogs who came wandering. Lovely gear and all that. How much was it all? He wanted to buy something for his wife! As though we hadn’t heard it before? The bastard was so stupidly transparent as his eyes took in our stuff, getting the prices fixed in his head and comparing them with his own. He was two stalls away from us on the opposite side. People would pick up our halogens, get first sight of our goods before his. Our presence was a direct challenge.
We were already getting used to his patter. The stuff he was selling was quaint. All kinds of dogs made out of china and painted. Around three inches long and two to three inches high, standing or sitting in little white china bowls with flowers and grass painted around both sides. Some bowls contained what he called Single Dogs. Others, with two dogs in a slightly larger bowl he called Married Dogs. He sold the Married Dogs as a couple. There were married Scots Terriers, married Boxers, married Spaniels, Alsatians and Poodles. You name it. And there he was rasping it all out… The Married Dogs are… The Single Dogs are… And all about how his wife made them in The Workshop, a hallowed place and part their thatched country cottage in Berkshire. She was naturally a practicing Veterinary Surgeon and only made the dogs in her spare time, more as an artistic side to her work. We had it all now! His wife an artist as well as a scientist. Naturally she had a stall at Crufts, the Chelsea Flower Show and the Badminton Horse Trials. Places no common market trader could get into unless they knew royalty. The Queen herself had once stopped for a while to look at the Married Corgis he told us. Graham the Scots market trader, half way to the stars with his head up his arse. We listened, purred respectfully and came close to pissing ourselves soon as he’d gone.
The first signs of secret enmity came after three weeks with an enquiry from the market manager about the brightness of the halogens we were using. Naturally management never gave any names but someone had complained. It was nothing really but could our lights be less bright? Naturally we knew who it was. Yes, we’d tone them down a little and did. Another two weeks went by. The management again. Didn’t we think our lights were still a bit bright?
Louise and I took it all in. The light was crucial to our display. It made the stones glow only now wasn’t the time. Okay we’d tone down our lights a bit more. We could see Graham listening in. He wanted to get us into a row but we weren’t playing his game. Even so, tone down we did. It would keep him sweet for a week but a man like that wouldn’t let go. Time to prepare an attack. Over the next few days we alternatively stopped at his stall, extra nice, carefully perusing his stuff. Dogs, bowls, sales patter and product design. We soon discovered an astonishing weakness. Something so obvious we couldn’t believe it. Right, the artillery would open up at three that afternoon, when the market was busiest. We checked out our target. A full scale assault on the Married Dogs!
At the appointed time Louise wandered over to his stall just as he was getting into his stride with a group of Americans. Oldies, already goggle-eyed with tales of how some of his dogs came from the Highlands! Yes, and the Married Dogs in this particular bowl were the ones who’d helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape from the English! Louise saw they were Boxers and got in soon after he’d ended his sales pitch. She really liked them herself but was a little confused. If they were Married Dogs as he said, then which one was the boy? She couldn’t see anything to tell! There was a deadly silence. She’d opened up a whole chasm. The ‘boys’ all had something missing. There was a little smooth patch where his things ought to be and you couldn’t see a bitch anywhere!
As she reported soon after, the man’s face turned ashen. You couldn’t have Married Dogs in a bowl if you didn’t know who did what. Dogs had to be dogs and bitches had to be bitches! The American geriatrics muttered among themselves then just wandered off. Louise told him how much she liked them again then returned to our stall. You could already hear the death rattle! He’d have a problem now using Married. He’d know where customers might look and what they might think.
A week or so later we were called in by management. Queering another trader’s pitch… There’d been a complaint! We were nonplussed. We’d always got along so well with people. We were entirely at a loss to know who we might have offended. It couldn’t have been the Dogs man, our friend Graham? We got a wry smile by what of return. “It’s those Married Dogs,” I said sadly. “He keeps on telling people they’re married and the punters are beginning to twig.” The man laughed and so did we. The anomaly was infectious, even so we had to go easy. He was there to make a living same as everyone else.
And that’s where it stayed for another few weeks. He must have had a really bad Friday because late in the day he let it all out on Louise then called me some names and threatened to personally boot me out of the market. Yes, he’d do it as well. He was a hard boiled bastard. They knew what to do with people like me up in Glasgow. Ate four letter words like me up there for breakfast and he’d do the same. I couldn’t help smiling. If he thought I was quaking he was badly mistaken. I’d never got into that kind of thing but he shouldn’t even think of it or he’d get hurt. We were both there to make money. Nothing else counted so cool it.
I knew that he wouldn’t. Our stuff was selling well over there and undoubtedly harming his trade. It must have been busting his gut. Whenever we passed his stall we gave him a smile and I held my nose. After that we got talking loud in the vicinity. Who’s cleaning up all that dog shit… Christ, those dogs really stink. His wife should come down and check… You don’t know who’s shagging who in them bowls, or which one’s got the tits… And worst of all… two married dogs in a bowl, sounds like a gay couple. It was the last that really got under his craw. Even the traders round us were laughing. Graham and his gay dogs! You just never knew with traders these days!
When he passed us in turn we were silent but the epithet stuck and went round the market. He was middle-aged with grey black hair and a furious temper. He hated us and it showed. We didn’t hate him. It was just those dogs he was selling, all with ludicrous expressions on their faces. Strangely offensive and in the end, quite frankly hateful. And what made it worse was that he was so deadly serious about them. Our stuff was good but we couldn’t get worked up about it. The gem trees were just decorations and the crystals things people believed in. Live and let live. If they wanted to believe let them get on with it as long as it did no-one harm. It was just a means to an end. Paying for Louise’s studies and occasionally buying me time to write. It wasn’t a religion, just a way of earning a shilling. Graham on the other hand had given his dogs the status of icons. And then there was all that stuff about him getting the china clay on trips down to Cornwall and his wife the vet doing all that work with a kiln in a garden shed somewhere in Berkshire. Most traders had husbands or wives who one time or another put in an appearance but no-one ever saw Graham’s. Maybe she was all part of the lie. A vast construct waiting to have a pin stuck into it.
His increasing irritation badly affected his temper which in turn affected his sales. As they continued to drop he became morose. Caught in a downward spiral. He became his own worst enemy and took it all out on us. And all he got back was cheerfulness and laughter. It began driving him crazy. We just couldn’t take him or his stuff seriously. We couldn’t even take our own stuff seriously. It may have looked good but it was a job not a bloody vocation. Life was more than the markets while he and his gear came straight out the bible.
In the end he turned into a joke and we helped it along. Made up a song which we sang that outraged him. He soon got to know it. “The Married Dogs are three, the Single Dogs are two… A Married Dog for me and a Single Dog for you…” Sung in a merry Scots accent that sounded slurred and ended in a cacophonous roar of laughter. He was outraged and ordered us to stop. We responded by begging him not to turn his dogs on us! And even after we stopped we kept on humming the tune.
It must have initiated some kind of moral collapse. A month later we were back at our old stall and Graham had to face a new and far deadlier challenge. Someone nearby selling Dancing Flowers, the latest craze. They were an ultra naf novelty item. An upright flower with a face on it sitting at the top of plastic stalk that shook, twisted and swayed in time to music while sitting in its pot! Now the Dogs weren’t three quid or two. We’d only stuck that in because it rhymed, but the Dancing Flowers, for the novelty they were, came seriously cheap and the guy selling them didn’t have too much to do. They must have done him in because when I passed his stall later that month to give him a smile he wasn’t there anymore. Someone selling teapots had taken it over.
No-one ever saw Graham again on any market nor his Dogs. His face is a memory but the concept he sold remains unforgettable. The Dogs had gone only to be replaced by something even more hateful and not just to us. We were entering into the era and hegemony of The Dancing Flowers. A time that drove so many traders on markets all over London into a frenzy! They became a hate object unlike any other and made a fortune for many. Bless their little electrical connections.
