On a market stall you always get customers asking where a product originates. Like where it was made and who made it. Some people are very fussy. Have what may loosely be described as a conscience. They don’t like the idea of buying the beautiful garment they’ve seen being made by little Asian kids of eight or nine working 14 hours a day in a sweatshop for sixpence an hour, or some gorgeous furry bag from Peru made from the skin of a long nosed, short tailed rat, on an endangered species list.No. They’ll ask first then have a think for a few minutes. Well at least those kids have a job and are bringing in some badly needed cash to help feed the family. Well, those rats… Just one out of circulation can’t do any harm, and it was probably a pest that ate all the crops those poor peasants were growing. Probably on its last legs anyway so turning it into something useful was eco-friendly when all’s said and done.
We also get the same kind of questions. They look at a rock and ask where I found it! If I say Bournemouth or Bognor Regis they don’t want to know. When I tried Manchester, Birmingham or Bristol they said uh-huh or hmm and were still unimpressed. That’s when I learned about the psychology of geography. When I began telling them stuff was from Botswana, Paraguay or the Congo it definitely got better but it still wasn’t enough. They needed somewhere far away and romantic. Some mountain range or desert that was totally inaccessible. Some country at the arse end of nowhere.
My experimenting continued. With increased fascination and results when I went through Uzbekistan, the Sinkiang Province of China and the Aral Sea region in South Central Asia. Then one day I hit the jackpot. Someone asked me where some crusty bit of rock came from and instead of saying out of a sack at the wholesalers I had a moment of divine inspiration. I don’t know what made me think of it but out it came off the top of my head. “It’s from Outer Mongolia,” I said matter of fact.
The look the guy gave me! “Outer Mongolia eh?” he was completely enthralled.
“Did you go there yourself?”
I struggled to keep a straight face. “No, a good friend of mine who was there in the desert brought it back. I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t even think it’s got a name!”
“Mongolian hmm…” Sold for ten quid. It could have come from someone’s back garden for all I knew but from that time on it was Outer Mongolia. Not Inner Mongolia or even good old plain Mongolia. Outer Mongolia had a special kind of ring to it. I mean it was so far away, so inaccessible, that saying it matter of fact, it had to be right. There couldn’t be any mistaking it. Either I knew my stuff and the provenance of the thing I was selling or I was a damnable liar. And would I be such a damnable liar… say that just to take a few quid? No, if the man said Outer Mongolia he knew what he was talking about. Look at the stuff on his stall! So unusual! No. He wouldn’t say something like that if it wasn’t true? If he said Outer Mongolia then that’s where it came from.
Naturally I was conservative in using the ploy. Didn’t flash it around for everything on the table. That would have been stupid. Everyone knew that Amethyst and Rose Quartz came from Brazil like most of the quartz and the agates. Tiger Eye was from Southern Africa, Carnelian and Garnet from India and Malachite from the copper rich Congo. No, Outer Mongolia was only for special occasions. Mainly for mineral specimens I picked up from East Europeans who came to the stall wanting some cash. If they looked good or deadly unusual then it had to be Genghis Khan’s former patch!
Strangely enough it gelled far more with men than with women. Say Outer Mongolia to women and you got a dull stare. Say it to men and it’s different. Somewhere almost impossible to get to. Associated with adventure, horses, camels, trips through deserts, travel, strange people with fur hats who lived in tents, silver daggers… Women don’t want privation or tents. They want sunshine, the hotel pool and a sangria. A glass of something alcoholic with a little umbrella in it brought by a waiter, not a zinc bucket of yak’s milk. So if on a rare occasion a woman saw something unusual she wanted for herself I’d come out with The Congo. If it was for her husband or son, or it was a man who was buying, there was only one place. Outer Mongolia!
That’ll be twenty pounds sir, and yes, were planning to go there ourselves. First stop Ulan Bator for supplies then take the 4 by 4 that we’ve hired deep into the desert on a minerals hunting expedition for the stall. You never know what you’re likely to find.
