I want to start this post by talking about a subject I know is so dear to everyone’s heart. Piles!
Like most itches that get scratched, scratching piles is personal, only it’s more personal than any other itch. I mean, I can talk about scratching my piles but I can’t talk about scratching yours. Likewise you can talk about scratching your piles but won’t go talking about scratching mine even less contemplate such a thing. I mean, it’s not something we’d do for each other, unless we’re really strange people that is. You know the kind. Scratch anyone’s dirt for a good tabloid story, who cares if it’s true. No, we can talk about scratching piles as a general thing. Even philosophise about it or consider it as a medical problem. We can even talk about our own problem but we never talk about anyone else’s. It’s a very private part of your body. The dirty bit, and you don’t want to know about anyone else’s dirty bits. Yours is quite enough thank you very much.
You can do scratching your own arse but scratching anyone else’s? Please leave it out! Someone else’s arse is somewhere you don’t want to be. When you scratch this particular, it’s got to be personal. Till you get a prescription from your doctor that is. Now you need to have an iron discipline not to scratch your piles when they’re pulsating. If you do, it you only make things worse, like taking another drink, but there are some itches you just fancy scratching when there’s no reason you have to. You do it because you want to do it, not because you’re compelled to. But then how true is that? How do you know who’s in control? Is it the itch or is it you? Or are you really the itch and all you are really doing is scratching yourself? I mean scratching your mind. Like giving the thought of doing something outrageous a tickly scratch and seeing where it takes you!
It’s like a little devil’s got into your head. The imp of the perverse has found a way in, if he’s not there already, and he’s all up and running. Challenging you not to scratch him knowing he’s got you so badly riled up that you’re going to teach him a lesson and scratch. Say or do something outrageous. There…You see I’ve done it so f... you. And the little imp smiles back and says Gotcha! Easy… Easy… Easy!
Scratching a personal itch may be something you’ve wanted to do for some time. I mean like having some kind of longing. Telling your boss he’s an arsehole because he actually is and you’ve always wanted to say it but just been too scared. It’s not worth losing your job. Bringing poverty into your life? Yes it is you tell yourself later. I’ve been true to myself. I’ll always know I had the courage to say it, even when you’re eating soup made of grass and water and your wife’s divorced you and taken the kids to her mother. “What happened to me is terrible!” you think. “Why should someone like me have to suffer?”
Why? Well I’ll tell you. It’s because it’s you who’s the real arsehole. You should have found a new job, handed in your resignation and just before leaving, when everyone in the department was lined up to give you a present, for which the arsehole has contributed 99% into the kitty and you’re finishing your farewell speech you turn to your former boss and say Mister Sphincter I think you’re a real arsehole, then walk out triumphant to the sound of thunderous applause in your ears.
That’s what you should have done, but no, you had to go scratch that itch without working out the full consequences!
The scratching of a personal itch often means doing something unpleasant to someone. It’s fun because it often involves someone you really don’t like. But then I suppose there are always those nice little itches. Okay mister nicety-nice. I know you’ve always wanted to climb Everest or swim in a tank with a Great
White Shark, or surf a tsunami or jump out of an aeroplane. There are loads of nice little itches wanting a scratch. Like you always wanted to tell teacher she’s got a moustache. Let’s call them itches for nimbies. Harmless little dares you’ve always wanted to do. Even tinsy-winsy things that may involve punning, you devil you! So you see, there are itches and there are itches!
Now please don’t all write to me at once telling me about all those secret little itches you’ve always wanted to scratch. Or worse, start doing them just because you’ve read this Blog. Why, if everyone began scratching their itch all at once the whole planet would fall into chaos. Our world, society, social class, you name it, is built on order. Everyone doing what they’re expected to do. Can you imagine what would happen if it all broke down just because everyone gave life the finger? Say what they thought. Play the little trick that they’d always wanted to play.
And that, as everyone knows, is how aliens took over the planet. Their ship landed and they got out with a little box called an un-inhibitor that made a humming noise and when everyone heard it they began ignoring orders, telling their bosses to get stuffed and refusing to stand up and put their hand on their heart when the band played God Bless America.
Now wouldn’t it be interesting if such a thing happened. Just consider the consequences!
The consequences of what happened when I scratched an itch of my own recently are integral to this Blog. It occurred at my market stall when two Americans stopped to look at our gear. “Are you guys from America?” I asked in my friendliest voice. “Yes sir,” they responded. My reply was immediate. “Well fuck off.”
They were stunned and I was delighted. I’d achieved my immediate objective.
Now you’d naturally think I was abominably rude and a scoundrel, but just wait a minute before rushing to judgement. It was said deliberately, and for a very real purpose. An experiment in the black arts of selling. In other words it was a ploy. A highly unorthodox sales technique I’d always wanted to try. A kind of itch I wanted to scratch. If it failed the consequences could be dire. Even so I felt confident about it. If it succeeded and I wound up selling them things it would prove a hunch I had about using shock to engage their curiosity before winning them round. You might call it manipulation. I’d call it a tactic. First capture their attention then capture their hearts. It was an idea I’d worked out after reading the work of American social psychologist Irving Goffman who’d developed a perspective called The Dramaturgical Approach. Let me tell you what happened.
American tourists visiting London street markets are known to be notorious talkers. They talk to every trader about the ins and outs of a cats arse till the cows come home without buying a thing. Moving along a row of stalls and going over the same old shit. Yak, yak, yak, yak, yak… And do they buy anything from anyone for all the time spent? No! They tell you how lovely your stuff is but that they’ll never get it home in one piece, even if it’s a metal ashtray. Either that or they’ll definitely call back tomorrow, yak, yak, yak. Traders are there to take money so that said I was determined to try something new.
Right, here was my chance. Americans off the starboard bow! A couple in their mid-thirties had been at the stall next to mine for twenty minutes driving a fellow trader mad with questions. Not about the stuff he was selling but about British politics and the scummy Liberal Democrats. I felt sick. Soon they’d be heading my way. I could either run off or try something drastic. I was overcome by a strange feeling. The little imp was getting busy inside my head. Suddenly I had a full blooded itch, like piles at their best.
They were now in front of my stall, looking at the trees then at me. I could see a question forming on the man’s lips. Would it be about those toss pot Liberal Democrats? I just couldn’t wait. “Are you Americans?” I asked, smiling sweetly. They smiled back. It was a perfect invitation to chat only I had something different in mind! A view to a kill. Getting them ready to happily hand over their cash!
The remark was made and they were stunned. “Don’t take it so seriously,” I purred. “I’m only kidding. I’ve got many friends who are Americans. In fact my wife grew up there. In Dearborn, Michigan, to be precise.”
The mood eased a fraction. Time to put on the show. First shock and awe! They’d understand! I’d reached for a large Willow, one of my araldite specials, which I swung off the table by one of its leaves then held it under the light. “Now watch,” I said quietly, crushing the branches and trunk of the tree flat! “Unbreakable!” They couldn’t take their eyes off what I was doing. “See!” And with that I straightened everything up. Carefully, bit by bit so they could take in every move. Making it look perfect again like the professional I was. All of it right in front of their eyes.
“We don’t make our precious stones gem trees to break,” I said to the lady. I could sense their interest but time to ease up on the sales pitch or they might feel they were being sold to and we couldn’t have that! Soon, after a breather, I’d start to enthral under the lights, casually allowing the amethyst to sparkle. I began by asking them where they were from in America. I got the whole story bit by bit. Chicago, middle class, good jobs. The man was a corporate lawyer, his wife a teacher at an elite school. I sensed a touch of the liberals. Right on! We loved Obama too! He was doing so much for ordinary Americans, joke, joke, only I didn’t say the last bit!
Okay, a bit of togetherness established, now for the family jewels! My wife’s great-grandfather, I said casually, was the Court artist to Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert in the l850’s and sixties. He’d visited the southern states of America as a young man and made some wonderful illustrations while in the slave districts. In fact he’d been the original illustrator for Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The famous drawing of Topsy, the little black girl was his. They were all attention. We were clearly cultured people! Furthermore, I went on, he’d been drawing in Italy and happened to be at the barricades in Rome in l849 during the Revolt when in rode a man on a white horse at the head of an army. The man asked who he was and what he was doing. He turned out to be Garibaldi and the great man asked Louise’s great grandfather to do a painting of him on his horse which he did. “It’s somewhere in Italy,” I said. “It’s very famous. Berlusconi’s probably got hold of it now!”
Berlusconi! The very name was a joke and we all had a chuckle. The artist’s brother, I added, was the founder and owner of the famous Graphic newspaper which many great illustrators were given the chance to work for. “Now Louise’s grandfather,” I casually threw in, “was the private doctor of Queen Mary, George the Fifth’s wife, and attended her at Hampton Court Palace!”
The ghastly insult of twenty minutes ago was completely forgotten. I’d taken hold of them and done most of the talking but it wasn’t really wasn’t about our gem trees at all. It was more about art, fame and royalty. I wasn’t just any old market trader on the make. I was somebody. Selling exclusive art products. “You see, I said knowingly, “art runs in the family. It’s my wife who makes these beautiful jewelled trees. They looked at each other and nodded. Yes, art clearly ran in the family!
By now I was holding a superb green quartz willow under a spotlight. “So naturalistic,” I murmured. “And this willow here is made of the finest Brazilian almandine garnets. Look how rich it is under the light.” And indeed it was, but was it enough to make them get out their cash? I could see them looking at each other and knew exactly what they were going to ask. Like all Americans they wanted a discount. They’d want it even if they were stinking rich. It didn’t matter that we had arty and royal connections. Part of them still saw us as natives selling them bracelets! Them on deck of their cruise ship and us alongside in our canoes.
I explained my reluctance but I’d consider it. It was something I didn’t normally do and anyway, only if they bought a few pieces. One for each of their parents, perhaps another for her sister and one for his grandmother. They could buy them in New York if they liked, but the shops we supplied in Manhattan made a serious mark up. Price however was one thing. Above all they made wonderful gifts. Something artistically original from London. And I’d give them 20% off!
That did it! They bought six altogether and were thrilled as much as anything else by the discount. Naturally I’d raised my price at the beginning but I wasn’t telling them that! We exchanged email addresses, which they do with just about everyone, but in our case so they could keep up the distinguished connection!
So, between scratching an itch, my wife’s illustrious family and its royal connections I sold my American friends half a dozen large willows. Message such as it is? Scratch the itch then take the money. Piles of it if you can!
Alternatively, what comes around goes around. I’d scratched and after the discount they’d itched!
Now if you’ve enjoyed reading this post and others in this series so far may I make a humble suggestion. Why not try reading a novel I’ve written? It’s a highly enjoyable black satire about the English Literary Racket and what unknown writers have to do to try and get their work published. It exposes the whole dirty world of literary agents, celebrity writers, journalists and publishers and it tells you the truth. I know, I’ve been through it all. My novel, A CONSPIRACY OF TRASH is one that Rupert Murdoch’s book publishing company Harper Collins, the largest in the UK refused to publish. You can download it on Amazon and it will cost you $1.99 or around £1.30.
On Amazon, you can read the Foreword for free if you like. Above all I hope you enjoy it and that it makes you laugh because I enjoyed writing it. The rest of the novel has many different characters and one or two heroes. It also has a serious message, about the people who really control publishing and the kind of books they allow you to read. All the publishers refused to give this deadly black comedy a public hearing. They pose as liberals, believers of free speech, but they’re nothing of the kind and the thing they fear most is satire. If you read A CONSPIRACY OF TRASH you’ll understand why.
Saturday 25 February 2012
HARD DAY’S NIGHT : GLASTONBURY, SATURDAY NIGHT TILL SUNDAY MORNING
For market traders who do music festivals the hardest day’s night anywhere is Saturday night at the Reading Rock Festival. That is, if you’re actually stupid or desperate enough to keep your stall open for trade. The longest hard day’s night however is Saturday at Glastonbury.
Saturday night at the Reading Rock Festival best ends early, say within an hour of the last band completing its act on the Main Stage. After that most people buy a chili-con-carne and chips and wander back to their tents. Hundreds of others however, stagger around pissed out of their skulls or high on a wide variety of illegals. More often than not it’s both. It really can’t be a hard day’s night if a trader has any sense. You don’t want your bright well lit stall with all its lovely breakable merchandise shining out into the night as an invitation for serious trouble from outside gangs or inside thugs so it’s best to cover the frame with tarpaulins and turn out all but one light soon after midnight. Even then there’s a strong possibility of violence and thieving. The reality of Saturday night at Reading Rock after midnight is protection not trading. We tried it once like the fools that we were. Never again!
Saturday night at Glastonbury is different. It’s happier. More relaxed. People buy food twelve till two then wander around generally in good mood, looking at merchandise on the many stalls that stay open and chatting to stallholders about the stuff that they’re selling. Quite a few are buying, others just want to talk. It’s all very good natured. Teenagers, students, adults thirty to forty and quite a few oldies. We’ve never had a bad experience which is why we stay open all the way through. I say never but there’s always the chance you’ll take a fake twenty. It’s happened to us more than once.
The night divides into three. The first part is midnight till two a.m., the next two till four, and finally there’s four till six. Each period has its own well defined character, different to the others and interesting in its own way, both for the people it brings and the diversity of experiences along with them.
I’ll start twelve to two. Most people are happy. They’ve heard the main event on the Main Stage and now they can start convincing themselves it really was great, and yes they’ll tell all their mates in the world outside that it was simply fantastic. It has to be fantastic because they paid all that money to see it! They are set to play their part in what is best called the great delusion. The main event, you see, the great star, was crap and well past their prime and somehow the music fan knows it but the reality has to be hidden because they’ve done the thing that’s worth all that mileage in cred. They’ve just come from Glastonbury and can proudly tell the world. Been there and done it. Seen Jimmy Horsefeathers or is it Suzy Kazoo!
Okay, so most people are brimming over with righteous happiness. Now it’s over to the veggie food stalls!
Our stall has always been situated on the main drag to the Main Stage. Its midnight and a thousand kilowatts of halogen light everything up like a Blue Supergiant. A beacon of thousands of semi-precious crystal chips on our gem trees radiates out into the dark. We’ve both already worked hard during the day and we’re continuing on through Saturday night hoping it gives us a bonus. It’s not the kind that bankers and company executives get but that doesn’t matter. They’re the clever ones who contribute so much to the economy and we’re just festival jonnies. Yes of course, but think for a moment about what these other people actually do! I mean really do. They bankrupt companies, award themselves large sums of other people’s money in huge bonuses and salaries for looking smart, talking shit and doing little else, and the shareholders who actually own these companies get a return of close to sweet nothing for their investment.
As for ourselves we know what we do. Use our intelligence to sell people good value commodities.
Midnight till two a.m. Lots of people still walking up the muddy footpath that runs alongside all the stalls on the drag. The stalls are well lit and their traders affable and ready to chat. Most people passing by will go back to their tents sooner or later. Small places, tight spaces. Anything fragile likely to be crushed and broken. We know it and they know it. This is not really a time for buying our gem trees. They look delicate and easily breakable. Roll over one in your sleep or forget where you put it and tread on it on your way out the tent and you’ve thrown away money. It’s the same for the thin, easily breakable agate slices. Anything fragile bought on a Saturday night is likely to go snap, crackle and pop by the morning.
The trees are ‘out’ though we’ve sold them. As this is the best of the three periods during the night the items we sell most are jewellery; earrings we make of semi-precious tumble-stone in silver-nickel fittings at two-fifty a pair, or quartz crystal and other semi-precious pendants such as amethyst or rose quartz, on silver chains or leather thongs at much the same price. Then there are the little resin animals mounted on pieces of polished marble or granite that we customise with gold pen lettering... For Mum from John. Glastonbury 2010, whether rabbits, tortoises or frogs. The small ones two-fifty, adults three quid. All well glued on with araldite. They have to be. Many people try and prise them off with their fingers. See, they don’t come off! I thankfully confirm. Not like you darling, a saucy trollop in fishnets once said with a wink.
Twelve to two its boys and girls. A gift for the lady making a shag certain back in the tent. It’s always a gift for the lady! Girls never buy boys anything this time of night and its rarely guys or girls on their own. Most often a few guys together. School-friends or workmates, and sometimes a married couple of oldies enjoying a warm night’s stroll and taking in the easy ambience with a box of Chinese noodles and veg. It’s a time for sharing and friendly conversation. People often curious to know what it’s like working a stall.
Two till four everything’s quieter and the noise of our generator cuts into my tiredness. Louise will soon bed down in the camper van leaving me to begin toughing it out. I’m done in by three but I don’t fall asleep. Most stalls have shut down but not ours. There are still sales to be made. Not many because people have generally vanished but there’s still money out there if you’re up for it. A hundred quid, maybe more. It helps pay the extortionate rent.
Two till four people are either insomniacs, toilet desperados or people with problems that are often part of the same thing. Can’t find a toilet anywhere! What they actually mean is can’t find a toilet that’s useable! Then there are those who’ve just had a row in their tent. Some otherwise good natured bloke whose girlfriend just had an unheralded period all over his todger and needs to find a water tap fast. Forget about selling him anything and try to be helpful so maybe he’ll remember you in the morning. Come back and buy her some earrings as a burnt offering. The people who can’t sleep are often sad cases. There’s no helping them and no helping you! They just want to talk and you’re the three hour audiotape. They go on and on. There’s no, “and Joe I know you’re getting anxious to close,” and no getting rid of them either, except with really harsh language then you take a chance on them getting nasty so you don’t do it. You just keep yawning but they don’t understand. After telling you their life history they talk about the cat then it’s their fucking pet ant they’ve known for years and what it likes for supper and why it’s called Sibelius and how it once had to be rescued from a pot of Sainsbury’s marmalade. And suddenly you hate that fucking pet ant! Not because you hate ants but because it was stupid and fell into the Sainsbury’s shit.
So you think it’s all over. It’s not! The girl with the period has left her tent and gone looking for her boyfriend who’s washing his willy somewhere, and she’s turned up at the stall and meets the insomniac. And now I’m hearing she’s also got a pet ant. A lady pet ant that she calls The Duchess and how maybe they should get together and start a colony. The ants, she means, and I’m standing there listening to it all and feeling desperate and thinking, there are a quarter of a million stories in the naked music festival… This has been one of them.
The two to four crowd are a drain on just about anything you’ve got left. They may be interesting but they’re a drain nonetheless. They mean no harm. They’re just full of themselves and their problems. Quite a few buy quartz crystals and go for the double terminations. Others buy chunks of rose quartz. The wee small hours are the Comfort Zone, a time of need for loving and healing, of compassionate listening. Listen, okay I’ll listen, I’m a listening person, but I’m also there to suggest how they can help themselves with a crystal. And our stall at four a.m. is an empire of light in the dark. All the other traders are asleep except Mister Toastie who will soon be grappling with a mountain of sliced bread.
And so four o’clock comes round and it’s time for another cigarette to prime my already raking cough. My eyeballs are popping as I stare out of the light into the pitch black dead of night with the halogens roasting a legion of flies. You ping against the glass then you die! So sad! Four till five-thirty is the time for strange unexplained wanderers or sad early risers with bladders on the pop. Talk about strangers in the night! There I am engaged in a deadly battle with my eyelids and some strange female in a tattered dress wearing outsize Wellingtons looms out of the dark towards the stall, clump, clump, clump, asking me for a light. She can’t see anyone there with me, especially a woman, so she’s sizing me up to share her chlamydia and just about anywhere will do. I mean like the grass at the back of the stall! I mention my wife in the van being a mean minded light sleeper, praying she disappears back into the space-time distortion from whence she came and she does. Swallowed up by the night.
Five o’clock and a couple of lads stagger over. We’re the only source of light in an ocean of darkness. I’ve got my Player on low and I’m listening to Buddy Holly. They like that. One buys a large red-eyed frog with blue lips on Aberdeen granite. I customise it for his younger brother. There, three quid. Every little bit helps. Oh, it’s very good. His friend wants the big upright squirrel on marble for his Mum. I customise that too and likewise seal it in bubble wrap. Six quid, it all mounts up. Quarter to five. Still dark but cometh the first faint glimmer of light, electric that is, finding its way out of the wooden shutters of Mister Toastie’s rig. He’s in there all right, fiendishly separating five thousand Kraft slices. Everyone counted in a long running total. His mind just a cheese slices calculating machine. I cannot help feeling a certain admiration. A man whose entire existence is given over single-mindedly to buttering slices of bread and counting cheese slices.
I cannot help contemplating. With such determination Julius Caesar conquered Gaul and the Romans built a whole Empire. And here’s this uncrowned King of the Toasted Cheese Sandwich planning his campaign for Sunday morning.
Time drags on. I feel grey, unwashed and done in. There are slowly more people about. It’s not the dawn that’s waking an army out of its tents but a need to empty its bladders. Definitely not the time to stop at a stall. Could be more expensive than anything on it. Trading is flat. No chance of selling anything till eight or nine. It’s the dead zone. Still dark but with nothing to do. I’ve just got to sit in my chair at the back of the stall with no cup of tea to keep me awake. Louise won’t be boiling the kettle till six.
Five a.m. Sunday morning is the worst time of the long hard day’s Saturday night. It’s often cold so I’m wearing plenty of layers. I’d like to shut the stall down with wrap around tarpaulins for a couple of hours’ shut eye but just can’t be bothered. It needs a quotient of energy and there’s really none left. I’ve pissed behind the van twice and feel bleary eyed. All that’s left is people watching through a dead brain, taking in the famous Glastonbury Trudge through the mud when it’s wet. All those Wellington Boots three sizes too large,
Trudge, trudge, trudge to the toilets, then it’s time to have a fag,
And get back into the tent for a chance that’s heaven sent,
To have yourself an early morning shag.
It’s the poet in me I tell myself but then I’ve really got nothing else to think about. That’s is till my mind turns to the big Sunday morning ahead, ten till two. Four crucial hours of selling, wrapping and taking money. Sales are big. Everything they looked at and didn’t buy in the last three days left till now when there are no big acts and it’s the last full day before they go home on Monday. But that’s still five hours ahead. I’ve got till six to get to before Louise brings me a drink and takes over. Then I go into the camper van and sleep. Meanwhile I’m as close to counting sheep as I’ll ever be and they don’t belong to a farmer. An hour left and what’s left of my mind wanders. I watch the minutes go by on my watch thinking of Albert Einstein! Time slowing down the faster you move only I’m not going anywhere… Suddenly I snap to. I fell asleep! Idiot! My eyes race over the stall. Thank Christ nothing’s been nicked!
From now on I’m sitting there wondering whether it was worth it. Two hundred quid more in my pocket for five hours work. Forty an hour! Stephen Hester eat your heart out! So why did I do it? He wouldn’t have, so why did I? He knows, don’t you Stephen. It’s because you’re smart and I’m thick! Clever people size up a situation in the blink of an eye and do the sensible thing. Arseholes work for nothing. That’s the truth.
Yes it was a hard day’s night and there wasn’t any good reason for doing it either. So why did I? Okay, I’ll tell you… It wasn’t for the money. Not really. I do it because I’m curious. It’s a challenging experience and I never know what’s coming my way. And I do it because it’s hard. When it’s over I know I did it. I had the grit and the stamina. It’s a personal thing. Something for me! You might think it’s a joke, staying up all night at a stall selling a few things in the dark and meeting a bunch of weirdos. Pathetic!
Well each to their own. It was tough and a challenge and it had its moments of interest. I’m that kind of man and it’s my kind of meat. You put on a suit and a tie and persuade people to part with their money and invest in a bankrupt bank. We’re both salesmen of a kind but there’s a really big difference between us. I know you all right and I understand where you’re coming from. But you can never possibly know me.
Saturday night at the Reading Rock Festival best ends early, say within an hour of the last band completing its act on the Main Stage. After that most people buy a chili-con-carne and chips and wander back to their tents. Hundreds of others however, stagger around pissed out of their skulls or high on a wide variety of illegals. More often than not it’s both. It really can’t be a hard day’s night if a trader has any sense. You don’t want your bright well lit stall with all its lovely breakable merchandise shining out into the night as an invitation for serious trouble from outside gangs or inside thugs so it’s best to cover the frame with tarpaulins and turn out all but one light soon after midnight. Even then there’s a strong possibility of violence and thieving. The reality of Saturday night at Reading Rock after midnight is protection not trading. We tried it once like the fools that we were. Never again!
Saturday night at Glastonbury is different. It’s happier. More relaxed. People buy food twelve till two then wander around generally in good mood, looking at merchandise on the many stalls that stay open and chatting to stallholders about the stuff that they’re selling. Quite a few are buying, others just want to talk. It’s all very good natured. Teenagers, students, adults thirty to forty and quite a few oldies. We’ve never had a bad experience which is why we stay open all the way through. I say never but there’s always the chance you’ll take a fake twenty. It’s happened to us more than once.
The night divides into three. The first part is midnight till two a.m., the next two till four, and finally there’s four till six. Each period has its own well defined character, different to the others and interesting in its own way, both for the people it brings and the diversity of experiences along with them.
I’ll start twelve to two. Most people are happy. They’ve heard the main event on the Main Stage and now they can start convincing themselves it really was great, and yes they’ll tell all their mates in the world outside that it was simply fantastic. It has to be fantastic because they paid all that money to see it! They are set to play their part in what is best called the great delusion. The main event, you see, the great star, was crap and well past their prime and somehow the music fan knows it but the reality has to be hidden because they’ve done the thing that’s worth all that mileage in cred. They’ve just come from Glastonbury and can proudly tell the world. Been there and done it. Seen Jimmy Horsefeathers or is it Suzy Kazoo!
Okay, so most people are brimming over with righteous happiness. Now it’s over to the veggie food stalls!
Our stall has always been situated on the main drag to the Main Stage. Its midnight and a thousand kilowatts of halogen light everything up like a Blue Supergiant. A beacon of thousands of semi-precious crystal chips on our gem trees radiates out into the dark. We’ve both already worked hard during the day and we’re continuing on through Saturday night hoping it gives us a bonus. It’s not the kind that bankers and company executives get but that doesn’t matter. They’re the clever ones who contribute so much to the economy and we’re just festival jonnies. Yes of course, but think for a moment about what these other people actually do! I mean really do. They bankrupt companies, award themselves large sums of other people’s money in huge bonuses and salaries for looking smart, talking shit and doing little else, and the shareholders who actually own these companies get a return of close to sweet nothing for their investment.
As for ourselves we know what we do. Use our intelligence to sell people good value commodities.
Midnight till two a.m. Lots of people still walking up the muddy footpath that runs alongside all the stalls on the drag. The stalls are well lit and their traders affable and ready to chat. Most people passing by will go back to their tents sooner or later. Small places, tight spaces. Anything fragile likely to be crushed and broken. We know it and they know it. This is not really a time for buying our gem trees. They look delicate and easily breakable. Roll over one in your sleep or forget where you put it and tread on it on your way out the tent and you’ve thrown away money. It’s the same for the thin, easily breakable agate slices. Anything fragile bought on a Saturday night is likely to go snap, crackle and pop by the morning.
The trees are ‘out’ though we’ve sold them. As this is the best of the three periods during the night the items we sell most are jewellery; earrings we make of semi-precious tumble-stone in silver-nickel fittings at two-fifty a pair, or quartz crystal and other semi-precious pendants such as amethyst or rose quartz, on silver chains or leather thongs at much the same price. Then there are the little resin animals mounted on pieces of polished marble or granite that we customise with gold pen lettering... For Mum from John. Glastonbury 2010, whether rabbits, tortoises or frogs. The small ones two-fifty, adults three quid. All well glued on with araldite. They have to be. Many people try and prise them off with their fingers. See, they don’t come off! I thankfully confirm. Not like you darling, a saucy trollop in fishnets once said with a wink.
Twelve to two its boys and girls. A gift for the lady making a shag certain back in the tent. It’s always a gift for the lady! Girls never buy boys anything this time of night and its rarely guys or girls on their own. Most often a few guys together. School-friends or workmates, and sometimes a married couple of oldies enjoying a warm night’s stroll and taking in the easy ambience with a box of Chinese noodles and veg. It’s a time for sharing and friendly conversation. People often curious to know what it’s like working a stall.
Two till four everything’s quieter and the noise of our generator cuts into my tiredness. Louise will soon bed down in the camper van leaving me to begin toughing it out. I’m done in by three but I don’t fall asleep. Most stalls have shut down but not ours. There are still sales to be made. Not many because people have generally vanished but there’s still money out there if you’re up for it. A hundred quid, maybe more. It helps pay the extortionate rent.
Two till four people are either insomniacs, toilet desperados or people with problems that are often part of the same thing. Can’t find a toilet anywhere! What they actually mean is can’t find a toilet that’s useable! Then there are those who’ve just had a row in their tent. Some otherwise good natured bloke whose girlfriend just had an unheralded period all over his todger and needs to find a water tap fast. Forget about selling him anything and try to be helpful so maybe he’ll remember you in the morning. Come back and buy her some earrings as a burnt offering. The people who can’t sleep are often sad cases. There’s no helping them and no helping you! They just want to talk and you’re the three hour audiotape. They go on and on. There’s no, “and Joe I know you’re getting anxious to close,” and no getting rid of them either, except with really harsh language then you take a chance on them getting nasty so you don’t do it. You just keep yawning but they don’t understand. After telling you their life history they talk about the cat then it’s their fucking pet ant they’ve known for years and what it likes for supper and why it’s called Sibelius and how it once had to be rescued from a pot of Sainsbury’s marmalade. And suddenly you hate that fucking pet ant! Not because you hate ants but because it was stupid and fell into the Sainsbury’s shit.
So you think it’s all over. It’s not! The girl with the period has left her tent and gone looking for her boyfriend who’s washing his willy somewhere, and she’s turned up at the stall and meets the insomniac. And now I’m hearing she’s also got a pet ant. A lady pet ant that she calls The Duchess and how maybe they should get together and start a colony. The ants, she means, and I’m standing there listening to it all and feeling desperate and thinking, there are a quarter of a million stories in the naked music festival… This has been one of them.
The two to four crowd are a drain on just about anything you’ve got left. They may be interesting but they’re a drain nonetheless. They mean no harm. They’re just full of themselves and their problems. Quite a few buy quartz crystals and go for the double terminations. Others buy chunks of rose quartz. The wee small hours are the Comfort Zone, a time of need for loving and healing, of compassionate listening. Listen, okay I’ll listen, I’m a listening person, but I’m also there to suggest how they can help themselves with a crystal. And our stall at four a.m. is an empire of light in the dark. All the other traders are asleep except Mister Toastie who will soon be grappling with a mountain of sliced bread.
And so four o’clock comes round and it’s time for another cigarette to prime my already raking cough. My eyeballs are popping as I stare out of the light into the pitch black dead of night with the halogens roasting a legion of flies. You ping against the glass then you die! So sad! Four till five-thirty is the time for strange unexplained wanderers or sad early risers with bladders on the pop. Talk about strangers in the night! There I am engaged in a deadly battle with my eyelids and some strange female in a tattered dress wearing outsize Wellingtons looms out of the dark towards the stall, clump, clump, clump, asking me for a light. She can’t see anyone there with me, especially a woman, so she’s sizing me up to share her chlamydia and just about anywhere will do. I mean like the grass at the back of the stall! I mention my wife in the van being a mean minded light sleeper, praying she disappears back into the space-time distortion from whence she came and she does. Swallowed up by the night.
Five o’clock and a couple of lads stagger over. We’re the only source of light in an ocean of darkness. I’ve got my Player on low and I’m listening to Buddy Holly. They like that. One buys a large red-eyed frog with blue lips on Aberdeen granite. I customise it for his younger brother. There, three quid. Every little bit helps. Oh, it’s very good. His friend wants the big upright squirrel on marble for his Mum. I customise that too and likewise seal it in bubble wrap. Six quid, it all mounts up. Quarter to five. Still dark but cometh the first faint glimmer of light, electric that is, finding its way out of the wooden shutters of Mister Toastie’s rig. He’s in there all right, fiendishly separating five thousand Kraft slices. Everyone counted in a long running total. His mind just a cheese slices calculating machine. I cannot help feeling a certain admiration. A man whose entire existence is given over single-mindedly to buttering slices of bread and counting cheese slices.
I cannot help contemplating. With such determination Julius Caesar conquered Gaul and the Romans built a whole Empire. And here’s this uncrowned King of the Toasted Cheese Sandwich planning his campaign for Sunday morning.
Time drags on. I feel grey, unwashed and done in. There are slowly more people about. It’s not the dawn that’s waking an army out of its tents but a need to empty its bladders. Definitely not the time to stop at a stall. Could be more expensive than anything on it. Trading is flat. No chance of selling anything till eight or nine. It’s the dead zone. Still dark but with nothing to do. I’ve just got to sit in my chair at the back of the stall with no cup of tea to keep me awake. Louise won’t be boiling the kettle till six.
Five a.m. Sunday morning is the worst time of the long hard day’s Saturday night. It’s often cold so I’m wearing plenty of layers. I’d like to shut the stall down with wrap around tarpaulins for a couple of hours’ shut eye but just can’t be bothered. It needs a quotient of energy and there’s really none left. I’ve pissed behind the van twice and feel bleary eyed. All that’s left is people watching through a dead brain, taking in the famous Glastonbury Trudge through the mud when it’s wet. All those Wellington Boots three sizes too large,
Trudge, trudge, trudge to the toilets, then it’s time to have a fag,
And get back into the tent for a chance that’s heaven sent,
To have yourself an early morning shag.
It’s the poet in me I tell myself but then I’ve really got nothing else to think about. That’s is till my mind turns to the big Sunday morning ahead, ten till two. Four crucial hours of selling, wrapping and taking money. Sales are big. Everything they looked at and didn’t buy in the last three days left till now when there are no big acts and it’s the last full day before they go home on Monday. But that’s still five hours ahead. I’ve got till six to get to before Louise brings me a drink and takes over. Then I go into the camper van and sleep. Meanwhile I’m as close to counting sheep as I’ll ever be and they don’t belong to a farmer. An hour left and what’s left of my mind wanders. I watch the minutes go by on my watch thinking of Albert Einstein! Time slowing down the faster you move only I’m not going anywhere… Suddenly I snap to. I fell asleep! Idiot! My eyes race over the stall. Thank Christ nothing’s been nicked!
From now on I’m sitting there wondering whether it was worth it. Two hundred quid more in my pocket for five hours work. Forty an hour! Stephen Hester eat your heart out! So why did I do it? He wouldn’t have, so why did I? He knows, don’t you Stephen. It’s because you’re smart and I’m thick! Clever people size up a situation in the blink of an eye and do the sensible thing. Arseholes work for nothing. That’s the truth.
Yes it was a hard day’s night and there wasn’t any good reason for doing it either. So why did I? Okay, I’ll tell you… It wasn’t for the money. Not really. I do it because I’m curious. It’s a challenging experience and I never know what’s coming my way. And I do it because it’s hard. When it’s over I know I did it. I had the grit and the stamina. It’s a personal thing. Something for me! You might think it’s a joke, staying up all night at a stall selling a few things in the dark and meeting a bunch of weirdos. Pathetic!
Well each to their own. It was tough and a challenge and it had its moments of interest. I’m that kind of man and it’s my kind of meat. You put on a suit and a tie and persuade people to part with their money and invest in a bankrupt bank. We’re both salesmen of a kind but there’s a really big difference between us. I know you all right and I understand where you’re coming from. But you can never possibly know me.
Saturday 18 February 2012
MISTER TOASTY AND HIS YOUNG APPRENTICE
Mister Toasty was the name we gave to the tall, thin, garrulous old bastard who ran an early morning toasted cheese sandwich, tea and coffee stall at Glastonbury Festival on the same drag as our crystals, frogs on marble and gem trees pitch. He was up and busy at five in the morning for the countless festival-goers and traders alike, desperate to wet their whistle and crunch on anything molten and cheesy. But as much as anything else his stall was one of the first places lit up in the dark and served as somewhere for people to congregate after they’d staggered out of their tents and into the portaloos for a desperate shit. Then it was immediately over to Mister Toasty’s for something equally slidy.
His early morning queues were long despite having his wife, son and daughter in on the act along with a youthful additional helper. He did good business and must have made money because next to his Mercedes was a luxury trailer and we soon learned from those in the know that he had it all worked out. Bread and cheese slices, tea bags and coffee all bought for less than wholesale, the water free and the electricity for toasting there with the rent. With his family in on the job there was almost no cost for labour. Forget fresh milk! We were talking powder at best. With a low cost, fast turnaround necessity product the man was really a genius. Did all the high volume festivals April to October and spent the next six months sunning in Spain.
Approaching his stall you faced a high business-like counter with two or three queues feeding in. Behind it was a blackboard with prices, below which were various tables, some containing urns for boiling water, others piled high with paper plates and cups. The piece de resistance however was a fully automated toasted cheese sandwich making machine. A triumph of engineering ingenuity. Set on a long solid wooden table it consisted of a set of rollers onto which bread smeared with butter was laid. As the bread moved forward thin slices of cheese with a low melting point and high stringiness factor were laid on then another slice of bread stuck on top. This now passed between two thin metal burners with electric filaments above and below, and out the other side came a perfect toasted cheese sandwich. It may not have been homeboy cheddar and tasted plastic at best but oh what a joy to the famished!
The man had it nailed. No bacon, sausage or fry ups. This was a pour and smear rig with the rollers and heat doing the cheesing. Seventy pence for a tea or twenty more for coffee and two quid for the bread and the cheese. Sorry I meant toast! Not much more than ‘any spare change’ only when sold by the thousand it was Bill Gates eat your heart out.
What a joy to see it all work. At four in the morning countless figures wearing army surplus and boots falling around in the dark slamming portaloo doors and waiting for that magic moment of light when Toasty plugged into the electrics. Water up on the boil, crates of loaves dragged out of the trailer with the man himself taking charge of his tried and trusted regime like a fucking field marshal. It was actually a relief, a light in the dark to so many after a night of cider and spliffs. Teas and toasted cheese sandwiches guaranteed five-thirty a.m. just like a Glastonbury orgasm.
We didn’t put our own gear away at night. Just covered the stall with canvas tarpaulins held in place with powerful clamps while Louise or I stayed up watching and guarding, and boy, those nights were long. Then up came the lights of the toast stall on the other side of the drag like a welcome.
We soon walked over early morning. Mister Toasty knew who we were. The people who took all the big money doing the trees and the crystals! Yes, there he was with his wife who we’d christened Toastina and his sullen son the Toastevich. And there it all was. We could hear it. The roll, roll, roll of the rollers… The slap, slap, slapping on of the bread… And on, on, on went the slices of cheese… That could melt a heart made of lead! All of it going on at the back like a Hollywood Musical.
But what was this now? Serious ructions! Something rotten in the State of Danish Blue. Mr Toasty, warned by his wife of an infraction had turned on his trainee. Only one day gone and he’d apparently learned nothing. The youth was taken to one side. He’d been putting too much butter on the bread! This was only just short of being a capital offence. Everything in the toasted cheese sandwich making process had been worked out to perfection. There was no room for additions or additives. The butter had to be spread to an exact thickness or they’d be wasting huge sums of money. Mister Toasty had taken hold of the smearing knife. Now watch! Side run along the surface of the tub like so. Now, turn it across the bread running it smoothly at an angle of exactly thirty degrees. There, you see how it’s done. The Master himself had demonstrated. It was like so. And he didn’t want to have to tell him again! It was either the Toasty Way or the Highway.
The Young Apprentice took it heavily. His Master acknowledged. He was sure he would learn. End of the lesson. The Toastevich’s sullen eyes gleaming. The Apprentice would never last the harsh rigors of cheese application let alone tea making.
We purchased some tea, declining offers of free sandwiches, but wishing the Master all success. Early next morning however, Louise decided she’d try the coffee, though again declined a free offer, while I waited at the stall for some news. She’d been gone twenty minutes then returned to tell me all. Mister Toasty in high dudgeon. His Apprentice temporarily relegated to tea pouring duties for what was little short of insurrection! And so it would have been under the Articles of War had the toasted cheese rig been at sea. His sworn duty had been service at the end of the automated process where the sandwiches emerged through the burners, hot and lip smacking toasted before being wrapped up in cling-film. The wretched youth had apparently taken his eye off the machine and let them roll onto the floor. Dozens of them! All lying there in the sawdust!
Louise, who’d seen it all happen, could barely contain herself. The Toastina in an absolute rage. Was this how he showed his gratitude? Being chosen out of a hundred other applicants after he’d answered the card in the window? And not only being taken to Glastonbury, a privilege in itself, but also being paid. Was this the way young people showed gratitude these days to those who gave them a job? The cost of the sandwiches would be deducted from his wages. Now, could he remember how many tea bags went into an urn and how many cups of medium strong but definitely not strong tea could be made from a dozen tea bags?
Ah! No reply. Mister Toasty had waved a finger. So he’d forgotten all he’d been taught! And he’d seemed so promising a youth. It was all so simple. He was supposed to be good at mathematics at school wasn’t he? Well it could all be calculated by the inverse square law. Isaac Newton had done it. The more tea bags that went into the urn the less strong the tea got because you had to keep increasing the water. It was the same thing with buttering the bread. The more you put on the soggier it got until it became unreceptive to the cheese sitting on it. There, you see, Mister Toasty turned to his wife. The lad thought that making a toasted cheese sandwich was simple and easy when it was really full of complex technical problems that took years to understand. Which is why he needed to listen. Appreciate that what he was being taught came from someone with years of experience. Be invaluable for him throughout later life.
The young man had stayed silent, only nodding his head on occasion. There, he’d been given a good talking to. He could pour the tea for the next hour then go back to putting slices of cheese onto the bread. As Louise noted, this was extraordinary! Mister Toasty showing what might best be described as his softer side. It didn’t last. Half way through the morning we were startled to hear a high pitched voice shouting across the drag and next thing we knew the Young Apprentice appeared at our stall. He’d been banished! Sent away in disgrace! It hadn’t been his fault. The tea urn had fallen off the table after he’d put in the ladle to stir up the brew. It was only what he’d been told to do.
We commiserated. The best thing he could do was go back and apologise. Tell Mister Toasty he was sorry. Seen the error of his ways and that it would never happen again. The Apprentice smiled. Mister Toasty… He liked that!
We heard nothing more all day. By next morning all had been forgiven. The toasted cheese sandwich making process was running like clockwork with the Young Apprentice now back in charge of buttering the bread. This was a remarkable turnaround. The Apprentice fully back in favour at the head of the operation while the Toastina laid on the slices. The early morning clientele thronged. We heard it all later. The Apprentice had apparently contributed a brilliant new innovation into the process. Instead of the packets of cheese being left in the trailer fridge, he’d suggested that they be removed and placed close to the burners, thus ensuring that the slices were softened before being laid on the bread. This had resulted in a more rapid toasting process. The Apprentice, it seemed, had a genuine aptitude for the business and was beginning to take his duties altogether more seriously. Could it be that he might one day become a fully-fledged toasted cheese sandwich maker? Clearly the skill ran strong in him. He’d come close to falling off the edge into the dark side but now everything was different. His training was almost complete and with it would come his own personal knife for butter application.
Late Sunday morning with sales at our stall in full swing we looked up to see a wonderful sight. There, crossing the green, walking stick in hand and wearing his cape was Mister Toasty purposefully hobbling towards us accompanied on one side by the Toastina and on the other by his Apprentice. I bowed as he arrived saying we were honoured by his visit. It was of course to have a nose or maybe hope we might offer him something. I did! Would his wife like one of our beautiful amethyst miniatures? He could forget anything bigger! Wrapped and into a carrier bag it was passed to the youth. “Sales very brisk?” Mister Toasty enquired. Well he could see all the dosh flowing across the stall and was adding it up in his head. “Nothing like yours,” I said with the required deference. One junior Master to another more senior!
“The boy’s good,” he said briskly, giving his charge a wan toothless smile. “Though there’s nothing like a bit of experience.” And then, with a quick glance around, muttered, “you must be taking a shilling.” Nosy fucker, I thought. “Yeah, it’s been very good for us this year,” I said referring to the takings. “We’ll need a bodyguard to help us get it into the bank.” Like we take notes while you only do toasted cheese coinage!
It was the last we saw of him that year as he turned away and hobbled back to his stall, one of his arms on the Apprentice’s shoulder. Maybe he was lining him up for his pimply daughter, Louise and I joked later.
We didn’t see the Young Apprentice again. With the aptitude he shown for buttering bread he was a prime candidate for recruitment to the Financial Services Sector and was by now probably running a bank!
His early morning queues were long despite having his wife, son and daughter in on the act along with a youthful additional helper. He did good business and must have made money because next to his Mercedes was a luxury trailer and we soon learned from those in the know that he had it all worked out. Bread and cheese slices, tea bags and coffee all bought for less than wholesale, the water free and the electricity for toasting there with the rent. With his family in on the job there was almost no cost for labour. Forget fresh milk! We were talking powder at best. With a low cost, fast turnaround necessity product the man was really a genius. Did all the high volume festivals April to October and spent the next six months sunning in Spain.
Approaching his stall you faced a high business-like counter with two or three queues feeding in. Behind it was a blackboard with prices, below which were various tables, some containing urns for boiling water, others piled high with paper plates and cups. The piece de resistance however was a fully automated toasted cheese sandwich making machine. A triumph of engineering ingenuity. Set on a long solid wooden table it consisted of a set of rollers onto which bread smeared with butter was laid. As the bread moved forward thin slices of cheese with a low melting point and high stringiness factor were laid on then another slice of bread stuck on top. This now passed between two thin metal burners with electric filaments above and below, and out the other side came a perfect toasted cheese sandwich. It may not have been homeboy cheddar and tasted plastic at best but oh what a joy to the famished!
The man had it nailed. No bacon, sausage or fry ups. This was a pour and smear rig with the rollers and heat doing the cheesing. Seventy pence for a tea or twenty more for coffee and two quid for the bread and the cheese. Sorry I meant toast! Not much more than ‘any spare change’ only when sold by the thousand it was Bill Gates eat your heart out.
What a joy to see it all work. At four in the morning countless figures wearing army surplus and boots falling around in the dark slamming portaloo doors and waiting for that magic moment of light when Toasty plugged into the electrics. Water up on the boil, crates of loaves dragged out of the trailer with the man himself taking charge of his tried and trusted regime like a fucking field marshal. It was actually a relief, a light in the dark to so many after a night of cider and spliffs. Teas and toasted cheese sandwiches guaranteed five-thirty a.m. just like a Glastonbury orgasm.
We didn’t put our own gear away at night. Just covered the stall with canvas tarpaulins held in place with powerful clamps while Louise or I stayed up watching and guarding, and boy, those nights were long. Then up came the lights of the toast stall on the other side of the drag like a welcome.
We soon walked over early morning. Mister Toasty knew who we were. The people who took all the big money doing the trees and the crystals! Yes, there he was with his wife who we’d christened Toastina and his sullen son the Toastevich. And there it all was. We could hear it. The roll, roll, roll of the rollers… The slap, slap, slapping on of the bread… And on, on, on went the slices of cheese… That could melt a heart made of lead! All of it going on at the back like a Hollywood Musical.
But what was this now? Serious ructions! Something rotten in the State of Danish Blue. Mr Toasty, warned by his wife of an infraction had turned on his trainee. Only one day gone and he’d apparently learned nothing. The youth was taken to one side. He’d been putting too much butter on the bread! This was only just short of being a capital offence. Everything in the toasted cheese sandwich making process had been worked out to perfection. There was no room for additions or additives. The butter had to be spread to an exact thickness or they’d be wasting huge sums of money. Mister Toasty had taken hold of the smearing knife. Now watch! Side run along the surface of the tub like so. Now, turn it across the bread running it smoothly at an angle of exactly thirty degrees. There, you see how it’s done. The Master himself had demonstrated. It was like so. And he didn’t want to have to tell him again! It was either the Toasty Way or the Highway.
The Young Apprentice took it heavily. His Master acknowledged. He was sure he would learn. End of the lesson. The Toastevich’s sullen eyes gleaming. The Apprentice would never last the harsh rigors of cheese application let alone tea making.
We purchased some tea, declining offers of free sandwiches, but wishing the Master all success. Early next morning however, Louise decided she’d try the coffee, though again declined a free offer, while I waited at the stall for some news. She’d been gone twenty minutes then returned to tell me all. Mister Toasty in high dudgeon. His Apprentice temporarily relegated to tea pouring duties for what was little short of insurrection! And so it would have been under the Articles of War had the toasted cheese rig been at sea. His sworn duty had been service at the end of the automated process where the sandwiches emerged through the burners, hot and lip smacking toasted before being wrapped up in cling-film. The wretched youth had apparently taken his eye off the machine and let them roll onto the floor. Dozens of them! All lying there in the sawdust!
Louise, who’d seen it all happen, could barely contain herself. The Toastina in an absolute rage. Was this how he showed his gratitude? Being chosen out of a hundred other applicants after he’d answered the card in the window? And not only being taken to Glastonbury, a privilege in itself, but also being paid. Was this the way young people showed gratitude these days to those who gave them a job? The cost of the sandwiches would be deducted from his wages. Now, could he remember how many tea bags went into an urn and how many cups of medium strong but definitely not strong tea could be made from a dozen tea bags?
Ah! No reply. Mister Toasty had waved a finger. So he’d forgotten all he’d been taught! And he’d seemed so promising a youth. It was all so simple. He was supposed to be good at mathematics at school wasn’t he? Well it could all be calculated by the inverse square law. Isaac Newton had done it. The more tea bags that went into the urn the less strong the tea got because you had to keep increasing the water. It was the same thing with buttering the bread. The more you put on the soggier it got until it became unreceptive to the cheese sitting on it. There, you see, Mister Toasty turned to his wife. The lad thought that making a toasted cheese sandwich was simple and easy when it was really full of complex technical problems that took years to understand. Which is why he needed to listen. Appreciate that what he was being taught came from someone with years of experience. Be invaluable for him throughout later life.
The young man had stayed silent, only nodding his head on occasion. There, he’d been given a good talking to. He could pour the tea for the next hour then go back to putting slices of cheese onto the bread. As Louise noted, this was extraordinary! Mister Toasty showing what might best be described as his softer side. It didn’t last. Half way through the morning we were startled to hear a high pitched voice shouting across the drag and next thing we knew the Young Apprentice appeared at our stall. He’d been banished! Sent away in disgrace! It hadn’t been his fault. The tea urn had fallen off the table after he’d put in the ladle to stir up the brew. It was only what he’d been told to do.
We commiserated. The best thing he could do was go back and apologise. Tell Mister Toasty he was sorry. Seen the error of his ways and that it would never happen again. The Apprentice smiled. Mister Toasty… He liked that!
We heard nothing more all day. By next morning all had been forgiven. The toasted cheese sandwich making process was running like clockwork with the Young Apprentice now back in charge of buttering the bread. This was a remarkable turnaround. The Apprentice fully back in favour at the head of the operation while the Toastina laid on the slices. The early morning clientele thronged. We heard it all later. The Apprentice had apparently contributed a brilliant new innovation into the process. Instead of the packets of cheese being left in the trailer fridge, he’d suggested that they be removed and placed close to the burners, thus ensuring that the slices were softened before being laid on the bread. This had resulted in a more rapid toasting process. The Apprentice, it seemed, had a genuine aptitude for the business and was beginning to take his duties altogether more seriously. Could it be that he might one day become a fully-fledged toasted cheese sandwich maker? Clearly the skill ran strong in him. He’d come close to falling off the edge into the dark side but now everything was different. His training was almost complete and with it would come his own personal knife for butter application.
Late Sunday morning with sales at our stall in full swing we looked up to see a wonderful sight. There, crossing the green, walking stick in hand and wearing his cape was Mister Toasty purposefully hobbling towards us accompanied on one side by the Toastina and on the other by his Apprentice. I bowed as he arrived saying we were honoured by his visit. It was of course to have a nose or maybe hope we might offer him something. I did! Would his wife like one of our beautiful amethyst miniatures? He could forget anything bigger! Wrapped and into a carrier bag it was passed to the youth. “Sales very brisk?” Mister Toasty enquired. Well he could see all the dosh flowing across the stall and was adding it up in his head. “Nothing like yours,” I said with the required deference. One junior Master to another more senior!
“The boy’s good,” he said briskly, giving his charge a wan toothless smile. “Though there’s nothing like a bit of experience.” And then, with a quick glance around, muttered, “you must be taking a shilling.” Nosy fucker, I thought. “Yeah, it’s been very good for us this year,” I said referring to the takings. “We’ll need a bodyguard to help us get it into the bank.” Like we take notes while you only do toasted cheese coinage!
It was the last we saw of him that year as he turned away and hobbled back to his stall, one of his arms on the Apprentice’s shoulder. Maybe he was lining him up for his pimply daughter, Louise and I joked later.
We didn’t see the Young Apprentice again. With the aptitude he shown for buttering bread he was a prime candidate for recruitment to the Financial Services Sector and was by now probably running a bank!
I CAN'T TELL YOU HOW I GOT THEM BUT I KNOW ABSOLUTELY THAT THESE CRYSTALS ARE FROM MARS: aka I'VE GOT CONNECTIONS WITH NASA
This post is about telling a downright lie with an absolutely straight face and making people believe it.
Okay, you think that I’m joking do you? That I’m one plain ugly son of a bitch who’s quite prepared to contravene the Trades Description Act on a regular basis without blinking an eye? Well excuse me precious! Hold on a minute! Exactly what is it you think politicians do? You know, the ones who knock on your door before an election and promise they’ll get rid of student tuition fees and bankers’ bonuses. Make the rascals who caused the economic crisis pay for it and fight hard to lower your energy bills. Well there’s a difference between them and me. I only tell a whopper occasionally and choose the moment. They do it all the time and can’t help themselves. Their whole life is a contravention of the Trades Description Act! You’d better believe it!
There are many times that crystal healing enthusiasts come to my stall bubbling with faith, with an absolute belief that quartz crystals and others have mind boggling powers and can do amazing things for them. They really want to believe. I mean badly. They need their belief. If I fail to confirm this and tell them what I know to be true they find it unpalatable. It’s just about impossible for me to get through and sometimes they hate me for trying. One cannot fight such faith so who bother? It makes them unhappy.
There are many whacky people who arrive at the stall with strange beliefs and it’s so easy to see that they want to be lied to. Hey, those are strange looking crystals… I’ve never seen anything like those in the books… They’re really weird… Where are they from? To this I reply with an absolutely straight face, “sorry, I can’t tell you how I got them but I know absolutely that they’re from Mars.”
At first it was meant as a joke but when I realised they actually believed it, I added, “I really shouldn’t be telling you this but I’ve got connections with NASA,” to which their response is invariably, no, you’re kidding me, connections with NASA eh!
It’s then that I realise no-one is joking here. Because of their beliefs they perceive nothing wrong or ludicrous in my statement. That’s because the spaced out lie I’m telling fully accords with their spaced out belief system so that the cognitive relationship between us is entirely normal! Either we’re two sane people in a mad world or two crazy people in a sane one. Whatever the case it doesn’t matter, not when we’re really brothers under the skin! Look at it like this. If I told a customer the truth and said crystal healing was crap they’d call me a crystal fascist! If on the other hand I said my rose quartz could help them find love they’d call me a pal. But then would I be a real friend if I told them a lie? A friend maybe only what kind of friend? And if I told them the truth? Suddenly I’d become a non-believer, someone who can’t play in your yard because I’m telling you things you don’t want to hear.
To me, you’re the one in a fantasy world and you don’t know it, but there’s no way I can bring you out of it so what do I do? Okay, I become a friend. I keep a straight face and tell you that I know absolutely that those crystals are from Mars.
From Mars eh? You don’t say! I didn’t know we’d got that far…
“Yes, an American lander brought a quantity back some years ago.”
Well how did you get hold of them? Suspicion!
Time to confess! Before I worked on the markets I was a scientist. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough money in teaching or research so I had to give it all up. I can’t tell you how, exactly, but I’ve still got connections.
You don’t say! How much are those crystals?
What I really want to say to them now is sorry I can’t tell you, or sorry they’re only for display purposes or something equally silly. You see what I’m actually doing is conducting an exercise in self-control i.e. not completely laughing my head off. Instead I usually reply, if I sell you one you mustn’t tell anybody. You’ve got to promise me first.
Is this request to share a secret likely to arouse suspicion you may ask? On the contrary, the creation of secrets and a trader’s willingness to share them makes him a confidant and undoubtedly increases his credibility. By making a customer understand his trust, what he’s actually doing is enlarging the customer’s self-esteem and strengthening their faith. In such a psyche, you have become the human personification of a piece of rose quartz! An instrument of love and support!
Please don’t laugh! This is a serious thing for so many people. I mean, it’s a bit like looking at the face of Nick Clegg when he’s being sincere and all that. You just can’t help can’t help cracking up!
But hold it. Hold it! You’ve got to keep a straight face when you tell an outrageous lie to a crystal healer- believer. So how do I do it when I know what I’m saying is ludicrous? Totally insulting to anyone with a shred of intelligence. Quite frankly, being a contortionist with iron control doesn’t help. A split second of thought and you’ve lost it and the sale along with it so you need something else. And that something is special, indeed the whole point of this post. In order to come across genuinely sincere and maintain it, you need to be able to believe your own lie, much the same as politicians or psychopaths. For some it’s a mental health issue, for others a matter of philosophical outlook no less.
It works this way. You go along with the lie by temporarily abandoning the truth. It’s not that it’s forgotten. By no means! You just let it slide into the pending tray at the back of your mind. It’s like giving yourself a dentist’s anaesthetic, a mild knock out drop. You don’t care so much for the truth anymore when you’re talking to a crystal customer. You’ve numbed yourself so the lie you’re about to tell or go along with is painless! You can tell it. It’s not so ridiculous anymore and won’t jar on your moral nerve. You can keep a straight face because you’ve injected yourself against the truth. You’re still you but you’re not quite the same you. You’re partly one of them now.
So what did you do not so long ago? Well I’ll tell you. They looked good on television didn’t they? They said all the things you wanted to hear so you went and voted Liberal Democrat. Then after a year of them shitting all over you the injection wore off and you realised that you’d been lying. To yourself more than anything!
It’s the same principle at work, telling an outrageous lie to someone who prefers to be lied to than told the truth. David Cameron doesn’t lie to you. The Tories tell it as it is. They’re going to be shitting all over 90% of the population while they’re in power. He’s able to keep a straight face without even trying. People like that. Appreciate his honesty. They’re going to have their standard of living endlessly attacked on behalf of the rascals in the money markets, credit rating agencies and bank directors. Like Captain Spalding in the Marx Bros film, Animal Crackers, David Cameron is a very moral man!
The real issues here are purpose and integrity. How can you actually allow yourself to tell someone a lie like crystals on your stall coming from Mars you may ask?
In response I’ll begin by asking you to consider this fact. How can the Bank of England, the key financial player in the British economy, allow billions of pieces of paper to be printed with a number on them along with the Queen’s head and pretend they mean something when they’re supported neither by a reserve of gold nor a successful export led booming economy? There’s simply nothing to underpin their numerical value! They’re just stylised pieces of paper with a dirty great big hole of Government debt currently running to the tune of a trillion underneath them. In short, the worth of these pieces of paper is an illusion, a confidence trick that must be maintained because if people stopped believing in them the whole economic system would collapse. In much the same way, saying that some of the crystals on my stall come from Mars is a thing people want to believe. An assurance doesn’t have to be a lie but a lie often has to be an assurance, otherwise people would stop believing that money has any real value or that crystals can heal or come from another planet!
So how can I do it? Where’s my integrity, my sense of honour? Okay, don’t go on! For one thing I don’t tell that many lies. Just the occasional few and only to absolute arseholes. And unlike many other market traders I always know when I’m telling them. Where the big ones are concerned I simply inoculate myself and participate in the party spirit of crystal fantasy. Crystals from Mars is a lie but it’s harmless. Furthermore, no-one has ever come back to the stall requesting a refund. Whether it’s crystals from Mars or a piece of glassy rock shot out of a volcano in the Peruvian Andes, it’s too small to be a big deal. Something I need to stay up at night worrying about. Do you think M.P.’s ever did that with their claims for expenses? If you do, come to my stall and let me sell you a Martian Crystal!
That leaves us with questions. Should we stand up for the truth against liars? Believe in men of God and their preaching, or cosmologists who tell us the Universe started with a Big Bang, or multi-millionaires who own media empires and say whatever they like?
Virgins who have kids? Men who come down from heaven? Miracles, resurrections, visions, and of course Rupert Murdoch! Please, leave it out!
Ultimately the message is this. There’s a difference between truth and lies. Always. But small liars and their lies, outside of human relationships, are generally harmless. Inside, they can be devastating. It is these emotional psychopaths we need to worry about along with the really big liars who have power over so many. The first cause harm to individuals, the latter to millions. The biggest most dangerous liars are best recognised by the small scale duckers and divers who are reasonably well practiced themselves and may spot some incipient Goebbels. We may have need for such men and women, to cackle like geese when the time comes.
This post, about selling crystals from Mars on a London street market, was supposed to be about telling a lie with an absolutely straight face and making people believe it. As it turned out it became something more. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Okay, you think that I’m joking do you? That I’m one plain ugly son of a bitch who’s quite prepared to contravene the Trades Description Act on a regular basis without blinking an eye? Well excuse me precious! Hold on a minute! Exactly what is it you think politicians do? You know, the ones who knock on your door before an election and promise they’ll get rid of student tuition fees and bankers’ bonuses. Make the rascals who caused the economic crisis pay for it and fight hard to lower your energy bills. Well there’s a difference between them and me. I only tell a whopper occasionally and choose the moment. They do it all the time and can’t help themselves. Their whole life is a contravention of the Trades Description Act! You’d better believe it!
There are many times that crystal healing enthusiasts come to my stall bubbling with faith, with an absolute belief that quartz crystals and others have mind boggling powers and can do amazing things for them. They really want to believe. I mean badly. They need their belief. If I fail to confirm this and tell them what I know to be true they find it unpalatable. It’s just about impossible for me to get through and sometimes they hate me for trying. One cannot fight such faith so who bother? It makes them unhappy.
There are many whacky people who arrive at the stall with strange beliefs and it’s so easy to see that they want to be lied to. Hey, those are strange looking crystals… I’ve never seen anything like those in the books… They’re really weird… Where are they from? To this I reply with an absolutely straight face, “sorry, I can’t tell you how I got them but I know absolutely that they’re from Mars.”
At first it was meant as a joke but when I realised they actually believed it, I added, “I really shouldn’t be telling you this but I’ve got connections with NASA,” to which their response is invariably, no, you’re kidding me, connections with NASA eh!
It’s then that I realise no-one is joking here. Because of their beliefs they perceive nothing wrong or ludicrous in my statement. That’s because the spaced out lie I’m telling fully accords with their spaced out belief system so that the cognitive relationship between us is entirely normal! Either we’re two sane people in a mad world or two crazy people in a sane one. Whatever the case it doesn’t matter, not when we’re really brothers under the skin! Look at it like this. If I told a customer the truth and said crystal healing was crap they’d call me a crystal fascist! If on the other hand I said my rose quartz could help them find love they’d call me a pal. But then would I be a real friend if I told them a lie? A friend maybe only what kind of friend? And if I told them the truth? Suddenly I’d become a non-believer, someone who can’t play in your yard because I’m telling you things you don’t want to hear.
To me, you’re the one in a fantasy world and you don’t know it, but there’s no way I can bring you out of it so what do I do? Okay, I become a friend. I keep a straight face and tell you that I know absolutely that those crystals are from Mars.
From Mars eh? You don’t say! I didn’t know we’d got that far…
“Yes, an American lander brought a quantity back some years ago.”
Well how did you get hold of them? Suspicion!
Time to confess! Before I worked on the markets I was a scientist. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough money in teaching or research so I had to give it all up. I can’t tell you how, exactly, but I’ve still got connections.
You don’t say! How much are those crystals?
What I really want to say to them now is sorry I can’t tell you, or sorry they’re only for display purposes or something equally silly. You see what I’m actually doing is conducting an exercise in self-control i.e. not completely laughing my head off. Instead I usually reply, if I sell you one you mustn’t tell anybody. You’ve got to promise me first.
Is this request to share a secret likely to arouse suspicion you may ask? On the contrary, the creation of secrets and a trader’s willingness to share them makes him a confidant and undoubtedly increases his credibility. By making a customer understand his trust, what he’s actually doing is enlarging the customer’s self-esteem and strengthening their faith. In such a psyche, you have become the human personification of a piece of rose quartz! An instrument of love and support!
Please don’t laugh! This is a serious thing for so many people. I mean, it’s a bit like looking at the face of Nick Clegg when he’s being sincere and all that. You just can’t help can’t help cracking up!
But hold it. Hold it! You’ve got to keep a straight face when you tell an outrageous lie to a crystal healer- believer. So how do I do it when I know what I’m saying is ludicrous? Totally insulting to anyone with a shred of intelligence. Quite frankly, being a contortionist with iron control doesn’t help. A split second of thought and you’ve lost it and the sale along with it so you need something else. And that something is special, indeed the whole point of this post. In order to come across genuinely sincere and maintain it, you need to be able to believe your own lie, much the same as politicians or psychopaths. For some it’s a mental health issue, for others a matter of philosophical outlook no less.
It works this way. You go along with the lie by temporarily abandoning the truth. It’s not that it’s forgotten. By no means! You just let it slide into the pending tray at the back of your mind. It’s like giving yourself a dentist’s anaesthetic, a mild knock out drop. You don’t care so much for the truth anymore when you’re talking to a crystal customer. You’ve numbed yourself so the lie you’re about to tell or go along with is painless! You can tell it. It’s not so ridiculous anymore and won’t jar on your moral nerve. You can keep a straight face because you’ve injected yourself against the truth. You’re still you but you’re not quite the same you. You’re partly one of them now.
So what did you do not so long ago? Well I’ll tell you. They looked good on television didn’t they? They said all the things you wanted to hear so you went and voted Liberal Democrat. Then after a year of them shitting all over you the injection wore off and you realised that you’d been lying. To yourself more than anything!
It’s the same principle at work, telling an outrageous lie to someone who prefers to be lied to than told the truth. David Cameron doesn’t lie to you. The Tories tell it as it is. They’re going to be shitting all over 90% of the population while they’re in power. He’s able to keep a straight face without even trying. People like that. Appreciate his honesty. They’re going to have their standard of living endlessly attacked on behalf of the rascals in the money markets, credit rating agencies and bank directors. Like Captain Spalding in the Marx Bros film, Animal Crackers, David Cameron is a very moral man!
The real issues here are purpose and integrity. How can you actually allow yourself to tell someone a lie like crystals on your stall coming from Mars you may ask?
In response I’ll begin by asking you to consider this fact. How can the Bank of England, the key financial player in the British economy, allow billions of pieces of paper to be printed with a number on them along with the Queen’s head and pretend they mean something when they’re supported neither by a reserve of gold nor a successful export led booming economy? There’s simply nothing to underpin their numerical value! They’re just stylised pieces of paper with a dirty great big hole of Government debt currently running to the tune of a trillion underneath them. In short, the worth of these pieces of paper is an illusion, a confidence trick that must be maintained because if people stopped believing in them the whole economic system would collapse. In much the same way, saying that some of the crystals on my stall come from Mars is a thing people want to believe. An assurance doesn’t have to be a lie but a lie often has to be an assurance, otherwise people would stop believing that money has any real value or that crystals can heal or come from another planet!
So how can I do it? Where’s my integrity, my sense of honour? Okay, don’t go on! For one thing I don’t tell that many lies. Just the occasional few and only to absolute arseholes. And unlike many other market traders I always know when I’m telling them. Where the big ones are concerned I simply inoculate myself and participate in the party spirit of crystal fantasy. Crystals from Mars is a lie but it’s harmless. Furthermore, no-one has ever come back to the stall requesting a refund. Whether it’s crystals from Mars or a piece of glassy rock shot out of a volcano in the Peruvian Andes, it’s too small to be a big deal. Something I need to stay up at night worrying about. Do you think M.P.’s ever did that with their claims for expenses? If you do, come to my stall and let me sell you a Martian Crystal!
That leaves us with questions. Should we stand up for the truth against liars? Believe in men of God and their preaching, or cosmologists who tell us the Universe started with a Big Bang, or multi-millionaires who own media empires and say whatever they like?
Virgins who have kids? Men who come down from heaven? Miracles, resurrections, visions, and of course Rupert Murdoch! Please, leave it out!
Ultimately the message is this. There’s a difference between truth and lies. Always. But small liars and their lies, outside of human relationships, are generally harmless. Inside, they can be devastating. It is these emotional psychopaths we need to worry about along with the really big liars who have power over so many. The first cause harm to individuals, the latter to millions. The biggest most dangerous liars are best recognised by the small scale duckers and divers who are reasonably well practiced themselves and may spot some incipient Goebbels. We may have need for such men and women, to cackle like geese when the time comes.
This post, about selling crystals from Mars on a London street market, was supposed to be about telling a lie with an absolutely straight face and making people believe it. As it turned out it became something more. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Saturday 11 February 2012
MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE
Have you ever wanted to be recognised as the Master of the Universe? Now please don’t get me wrong! I’m not being facetious and I’m definitely not taking the piss. As far as I’m concerned it’s a very fair question. I’ll ask it again. Have you ever wanted to be recognised as the Master of the Universe, or better still, have someone address you as such?
Maybe, just maybe, there’s a small part of you, just a tinsy-winsy part that likes the idea. Alright then, just the tinsiest part. You’re English and you do everything in moderation, but go on, relax! Let yourself go just a bit. The thought must have crossed your mind for just a split second! No more of course. You know you can’t be getting any funny ideas. It isn’t respectable! But it’s true isn’t it? Admit it! The idea crossed your mind for a moment and you let it go, but while it was there for you to reflect on you loved it, and that was because you imagined what you could do to that little shit who’d been rude to you in the supermarket. As Master of the Universe you could have raised your little finger and he’d have been stuffed into a can of tomato soup.
Having that kind of power, I mean the ability to do whatever we like to anyone, and it’s nearly always a personal thing, is a notion that most of us have. Just a notion. No more. Of course, there are people who get it in spades, like Dictators, Presidents, Prime Ministers and Popes. Some even get to be Chief Executives of banks or run newspaper groups that shit all over innocent people, but then I’m not talking about that kind of thing. I’m talking of real power! The power to see into the future, to control the movement of planets and the destinies of billions… or even of a single individual. To make people do things without knowing they were going to. Now that’s real power.
But please, don’t get me wrong. I’m not writing this Blog in a small room with bars on the window! Indeed, the power I’m considering here is that which is sometimes ascribed to those recognised as Crystal Healing Masters and Wizards by their rapturous disciples, and let me assure you, I know what I’m talking about because it once happened to me. Recognition! Worship! Belief that I had supernatural powers. You name it. And all on a London street market stall on a sunny day in September.
Or was it a long time ago in a Galaxy far away? Or simply in another dimension!
Now I ask you to imagine my feelings. Here was I, actually being acknowledged by some crystal healing disciple to be Master of the Universe, the guy having fallen to his knees in front of me and calling me Master. I mean, okay, you might think he was some sort of nutter. It’s all too easy to point a finger, but in reality he might have been an entirely respectable member of the community doing responsible and valuable work, like a computer engineer, a doctor in an outpatients department or a policeman, but in this matter of crystal healing he was a true believer, a disciple of the faith, who recognised me as a Crystal Healing Wizard or ultimately, the spiritual master of all Wizards, aka the Master of the Universe.
Okay then, so how does that make me feel? I supposed I could have raised a finger, magicked him away and finished the coffee I had waiting, or better still thought of a large pile of fifties and turned the stack into reality. But how about something seriously juicy? Turned back time to before the election and got all the Liberal Democrats to confess they were lying toe-rags and made Gordon Brown come out on television and tell everyone he was a wanker.
You want to talk of power? Now that’s real power. And we’d all like some of that!
But before turning to discuss my experience more fully I want to briefly explore certain aspects of this strange notion in the context of everyday life. For example, the belief that many people have in their power to do good. Politicians are prime candidates. There they are, doing their thing and earning a good screw because they think they want to make people’s lives better. They really believe that they can. If they’re elected by the people, then they’ve definitely got the right policies to help the country out of a crisis. Yes, and they’ve got the power to do it. Never mind that they’ll put millions of people out of work and make life miserable for pensioners and kids. That’s their belief on a personal level. Or take the men of religion. Make people believe, through the faith that they have, that they’re helping people to see the light. See things in a better way through The Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The Father, of course, is the real Master of the Universe who sees everything and can do everything, only just not now cos he’s away doing the business in the Orion Nebula.
Politicians, priests, sex gurus… They’ll tell you things or sell you things that will help you. Make you feel better. There are so many people doing this kind of stuff these days. Making people believe they have the power. Could it be because so many people want to believe in one thing or another? Tie their lives into just so many passing fancies and give up their birth-right to be free. I mean, Father, Son and Holy Ghost is bad enough, but Cameron, Clegg and George Osborne? Please, leave it out!
Okay, so what happened to me and how did I get to be Master of the Universe? On the day in question my pitch had been shifted to a stall on the outer row of the market closest to the pavement where the light was strongest. The crystals and minerals displayed were brightly lit by the sun and a guy, somewhere in his early thirties, had stopped. I noted his silver earring and the quartz crystal pendant round his neck on a leather cord. He was looking at our stuff and I took in his interest. Something about him conveyed intense curiosity combined with a funny kind of nervousness.
“It’s difficult making decisions,” I cut in on his thoughts. “Especially when you feel yourself being tugged one way then another. It makes it hard to concentrate.”
He looked at me with astonishment. “How on earth did you know that?”
I didn’t. It was a cold reading at best but I knew I was right. “Too much going on in your head,” I replied. “A lack of being centred and balanced.”
He was staring hard at me now. “I suppose you know all about crystals and healing?”
I nodded sagely. Enough to tell him many things! Especially help him sort out his life and give it more balance. I was of course thinking about bloodstone possibilities and my little basket of yin-yang specials that I kept under the table only events were to take a very different turn.
“How do you know all these things?” he said, staring at me with a gaze close to wonderment. “You… you know so much.”
“I know everything,” I said confidently, in what I thought might be a slightly imperious tone. I wanted to come across knowledgeable. It would help me make the sale. Just a little bit of imperiousness, even regality to clinch it. What I hadn’t realised was that for so many, knowledge is such a potent symbol of power.
“Yes, I know everything,” I repeated, and then it just seemed to come out of me… “All those troubles afflicting the human spirit, though set against a background of time and space into which all things are measured, they are so small. We must therefore rise, and with help take ourselves in hand and go forward. Carve out our destiny.”
I could hear myself saying it. The effect however was startling. It was like he was overcome by a rapture because suddenly, right there in front of me, he fell to his knees and took my hands in his. “You’re a true Spiritual Master,” he said meekly. “A Master of All Things.”
I was completely taken aback. I didn’t know what to say. My thoughts raced. I realised in the moment, almost to my horror, that a fair part of me was actually enjoying it. That I’d been recognised! That I had real power! For some reason I thought of Star Wars and heard a sinister cackling in my head.
“Rise my friend,” I said in a lispy old voice, lifting him up. Christ! I’d turned into the Emperor!
But he still wouldn’t get up. With eyes raised he mumbled something about acknowledging me as The Master. “You have the power to do anything,” he said adoringly.
“Then I command you to rise,” I repeated. Things were beginning to look dodgy. People passing the stall had stopped to watch. I mean multiply the numbers and things could get biblical! Whatever was happening to me I had to fight it. Don’t get delusional… Don’t get delusional… the quiet voice of reason murmured inside my head. Only I could still hear his words, addressing me as Master of All Things. Yes, yes… Master of the Universe!
By this time he’d risen but I was still speechless. There was too much going on in my head. I felt a horrible confusion. Was it me? Was it him? No, please! I didn’t want to be Master of the Universe, and yet, just for a moment! I mean, with that kind of power! Just think if it was possible. I mean, you got up in the morning and saw the envelope that came through the door. There was only one winning ticket and it was yours! The dirty great big mansion you’d always wanted… The E type Jag… With the envelope you had the power. Master of the Universe! The idea was just too good to put down.
“Command me!” The voice came again only this time it was followed by another. “Got the rent, mate?”
I snapped to. It was the round ruddy face of the market manager, eyes full of merriment. “One of your disciples?” he jovially enquired. I pulled out a note and handed it over. Reality had intervened. My authority gone with a pop along with my powers! And in that moment I felt diminished. Smaller. I couldn’t be Master of the Universe anymore even if I wanted to. The pleasurable little delusion I had up in smoke. I was standing there at my market stall sussed! I looked over at my ‘disciple.’ He was smiling strangely at me now. Looking at the crystals on the table and humming a tune that sounded familiar! La, la, la… upon a star, makes no difference… I finished the words in my head. Makes no difference where you are… And there was the dog from the stall next to me rubbing my ankle.
“Time to get up darling!”
I shook my head. The sun was still strong only it was coming through the blinds and Louise was tugging at my foot. “Time to get up!”
What the hell! I wasn’t in the bloody market. You’d better believe it! And I did so even less under the shower. It had all been so vivid. So real. It just didn’t seem possible. I didn’t do spliffs or that kind of thing. I dried off and dressed. Tea waiting in the kitchen with an egg on toast and my packed lunch for the day. I went over it all. All the detail so real in my mind. Louise carefully listening.
“I saw that packet on the table this morning,” she said accusingly. “You must have gone through half the Danish Blue you bought yesterday. Guzzled it like a pig before coming to bed.”
Those words and the way that she’d said it! So what if I’d done half the box?
“There’s the whole answer,” she said triumphantly. “Master of the Universe!”
I took in her cynical laugh. Yeah Master of the Universe! I really fucking deserved it! Right, tea and egg walloped down, I was in the van and off, chuckling to myself on the drive. I’d got what I deserved. A taste of my own crystal bullshit. Some fantasy straight out of a packet of cheese. Yeah I deserved it all right. Danish Blue was supposed to have that kind of effect and there was me, doing whole mouthfuls before midnight.
I drove into the market and stalled up. Unexpectedly the manager had given me a new site for the day and the crystals looked much better here on the outside. I was up for a real cynical laugh. Well wasn’t that just me all over? Master of the Universe and being worshipped like that. What an absolute arsehole. Oh yeah I’d make the guy forget the rent! And as for David Cameron, I’d get him to kiss Merkel’s arse. Or better still Sarkozi’s! I could do all kinds of stuff but come to think of it why bother. Wouldn’t it be better using my power to make a much fairer world. Pensioners getting decent treatment and jobs for teenagers. Young and old treated with the respect they deserved, but then I was only a market trader trying to earn a shilling. That was the truth of the matter.
Just then a shadow fell over the stall. Someone in the sun looking across at our gear.
“Nice crystals those,” I heard a voice say. “I suppose you know about crystals and healing.”
I liked it. A perfect opportunity for taking money. I knew a thing or two I said, coming out with confidence and wisdom. I’d try to answer any questions he had. The stones were for healing. They helped people sort out their lives.
I caught myself saying it. But then how did I know it was a man there in the sunlight?
Because we’ve met before, the voice continued, a tall figure stepping out of the shadows. My eyes took in the silver earring then the quartz pendant. I was dumbstruck. It had to be him. Thin, lean… Exactly the same person only the earring was on the left side during the dream.
He looked at me all amused. “You’re having a Brian Cox moment,” he chuckled. “Don’t worry, you’ll be alright here. We’ve brought you into a parallel universe! Louise will still be there when you get home!”
“Parallel universe? I don’t want to be in a fucking parallel Universe,” I yelled. “I want to be in the market selling my gear.”
“But look around you,” the man insisted. “You are selling stuff on the market, only there are hundreds of markets and hundreds of you. Each one in a different dimension. There are hundreds of you and Louises You can be any Laurence you like, and do anything you like anywhere you like. You were only too happy with the idea before. Don’t you remember, when you wanted to be Master of the Universe? Now, with Brian Cox helping you out you can do just about anything. Be anyone you like! I mean, we’ve got our own special Brian Cox here. You can meet him if you like!
I threw up my hands in horror. Jesus, the idea of meeting that guy! I’d do anything, anything if I didn’t have to listen to him going on and on about everything. No, please, anything but Brian Cox!
“So you don’t want to be Master of the Universe then?” the man looked at me straight.
“No, I don’t,” I said coldly. “I’ve had enough with that kind of power!”
“You mean you just want to sell your crystals on the market and tell people lies. Well that’s alright then. You can talk as much healing bullshit as you like. Just as long as you leave the real bullshit to others, like physicists who talk about parallel universes, Higgs bosons and black holes. Those guys have really got their heads up their arses.”
The figure vanished and I carried on talking crystal healing for the rest of the day. It was harmless enough and made people feel happy. And so I’d been left realising the truth and with it learned a real lesson. I won’t pretend anymore or even think about being what I’m not. As for the rest of you, politicians and judges, media executives and journalists, bishops and creationist Big-Bang cosmologists, you can be whatever you like. Masters of the Universe or Wizards, no-one believes you anymore. You just strut your own stuff and everyone knows it. You can say what you like and sound like you mean it but you’re well past your sell by date. You’ve got your own agenda and everyone knows it. Too bad you’ve been sussed. You can keep on being Masters of the Universe but the truth, as everyone knows, is that you’re all just as deluded as each other.
TRYING TO GET PEOPLE TO BUY ALL YOUR SHIT BY PRETENDING TO BE WHAT YOU’RE NOT.
Maybe, just maybe, there’s a small part of you, just a tinsy-winsy part that likes the idea. Alright then, just the tinsiest part. You’re English and you do everything in moderation, but go on, relax! Let yourself go just a bit. The thought must have crossed your mind for just a split second! No more of course. You know you can’t be getting any funny ideas. It isn’t respectable! But it’s true isn’t it? Admit it! The idea crossed your mind for a moment and you let it go, but while it was there for you to reflect on you loved it, and that was because you imagined what you could do to that little shit who’d been rude to you in the supermarket. As Master of the Universe you could have raised your little finger and he’d have been stuffed into a can of tomato soup.
Having that kind of power, I mean the ability to do whatever we like to anyone, and it’s nearly always a personal thing, is a notion that most of us have. Just a notion. No more. Of course, there are people who get it in spades, like Dictators, Presidents, Prime Ministers and Popes. Some even get to be Chief Executives of banks or run newspaper groups that shit all over innocent people, but then I’m not talking about that kind of thing. I’m talking of real power! The power to see into the future, to control the movement of planets and the destinies of billions… or even of a single individual. To make people do things without knowing they were going to. Now that’s real power.
But please, don’t get me wrong. I’m not writing this Blog in a small room with bars on the window! Indeed, the power I’m considering here is that which is sometimes ascribed to those recognised as Crystal Healing Masters and Wizards by their rapturous disciples, and let me assure you, I know what I’m talking about because it once happened to me. Recognition! Worship! Belief that I had supernatural powers. You name it. And all on a London street market stall on a sunny day in September.
Or was it a long time ago in a Galaxy far away? Or simply in another dimension!
Now I ask you to imagine my feelings. Here was I, actually being acknowledged by some crystal healing disciple to be Master of the Universe, the guy having fallen to his knees in front of me and calling me Master. I mean, okay, you might think he was some sort of nutter. It’s all too easy to point a finger, but in reality he might have been an entirely respectable member of the community doing responsible and valuable work, like a computer engineer, a doctor in an outpatients department or a policeman, but in this matter of crystal healing he was a true believer, a disciple of the faith, who recognised me as a Crystal Healing Wizard or ultimately, the spiritual master of all Wizards, aka the Master of the Universe.
Okay then, so how does that make me feel? I supposed I could have raised a finger, magicked him away and finished the coffee I had waiting, or better still thought of a large pile of fifties and turned the stack into reality. But how about something seriously juicy? Turned back time to before the election and got all the Liberal Democrats to confess they were lying toe-rags and made Gordon Brown come out on television and tell everyone he was a wanker.
You want to talk of power? Now that’s real power. And we’d all like some of that!
But before turning to discuss my experience more fully I want to briefly explore certain aspects of this strange notion in the context of everyday life. For example, the belief that many people have in their power to do good. Politicians are prime candidates. There they are, doing their thing and earning a good screw because they think they want to make people’s lives better. They really believe that they can. If they’re elected by the people, then they’ve definitely got the right policies to help the country out of a crisis. Yes, and they’ve got the power to do it. Never mind that they’ll put millions of people out of work and make life miserable for pensioners and kids. That’s their belief on a personal level. Or take the men of religion. Make people believe, through the faith that they have, that they’re helping people to see the light. See things in a better way through The Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The Father, of course, is the real Master of the Universe who sees everything and can do everything, only just not now cos he’s away doing the business in the Orion Nebula.
Politicians, priests, sex gurus… They’ll tell you things or sell you things that will help you. Make you feel better. There are so many people doing this kind of stuff these days. Making people believe they have the power. Could it be because so many people want to believe in one thing or another? Tie their lives into just so many passing fancies and give up their birth-right to be free. I mean, Father, Son and Holy Ghost is bad enough, but Cameron, Clegg and George Osborne? Please, leave it out!
Okay, so what happened to me and how did I get to be Master of the Universe? On the day in question my pitch had been shifted to a stall on the outer row of the market closest to the pavement where the light was strongest. The crystals and minerals displayed were brightly lit by the sun and a guy, somewhere in his early thirties, had stopped. I noted his silver earring and the quartz crystal pendant round his neck on a leather cord. He was looking at our stuff and I took in his interest. Something about him conveyed intense curiosity combined with a funny kind of nervousness.
“It’s difficult making decisions,” I cut in on his thoughts. “Especially when you feel yourself being tugged one way then another. It makes it hard to concentrate.”
He looked at me with astonishment. “How on earth did you know that?”
I didn’t. It was a cold reading at best but I knew I was right. “Too much going on in your head,” I replied. “A lack of being centred and balanced.”
He was staring hard at me now. “I suppose you know all about crystals and healing?”
I nodded sagely. Enough to tell him many things! Especially help him sort out his life and give it more balance. I was of course thinking about bloodstone possibilities and my little basket of yin-yang specials that I kept under the table only events were to take a very different turn.
“How do you know all these things?” he said, staring at me with a gaze close to wonderment. “You… you know so much.”
“I know everything,” I said confidently, in what I thought might be a slightly imperious tone. I wanted to come across knowledgeable. It would help me make the sale. Just a little bit of imperiousness, even regality to clinch it. What I hadn’t realised was that for so many, knowledge is such a potent symbol of power.
“Yes, I know everything,” I repeated, and then it just seemed to come out of me… “All those troubles afflicting the human spirit, though set against a background of time and space into which all things are measured, they are so small. We must therefore rise, and with help take ourselves in hand and go forward. Carve out our destiny.”
I could hear myself saying it. The effect however was startling. It was like he was overcome by a rapture because suddenly, right there in front of me, he fell to his knees and took my hands in his. “You’re a true Spiritual Master,” he said meekly. “A Master of All Things.”
I was completely taken aback. I didn’t know what to say. My thoughts raced. I realised in the moment, almost to my horror, that a fair part of me was actually enjoying it. That I’d been recognised! That I had real power! For some reason I thought of Star Wars and heard a sinister cackling in my head.
“Rise my friend,” I said in a lispy old voice, lifting him up. Christ! I’d turned into the Emperor!
But he still wouldn’t get up. With eyes raised he mumbled something about acknowledging me as The Master. “You have the power to do anything,” he said adoringly.
“Then I command you to rise,” I repeated. Things were beginning to look dodgy. People passing the stall had stopped to watch. I mean multiply the numbers and things could get biblical! Whatever was happening to me I had to fight it. Don’t get delusional… Don’t get delusional… the quiet voice of reason murmured inside my head. Only I could still hear his words, addressing me as Master of All Things. Yes, yes… Master of the Universe!
By this time he’d risen but I was still speechless. There was too much going on in my head. I felt a horrible confusion. Was it me? Was it him? No, please! I didn’t want to be Master of the Universe, and yet, just for a moment! I mean, with that kind of power! Just think if it was possible. I mean, you got up in the morning and saw the envelope that came through the door. There was only one winning ticket and it was yours! The dirty great big mansion you’d always wanted… The E type Jag… With the envelope you had the power. Master of the Universe! The idea was just too good to put down.
“Command me!” The voice came again only this time it was followed by another. “Got the rent, mate?”
I snapped to. It was the round ruddy face of the market manager, eyes full of merriment. “One of your disciples?” he jovially enquired. I pulled out a note and handed it over. Reality had intervened. My authority gone with a pop along with my powers! And in that moment I felt diminished. Smaller. I couldn’t be Master of the Universe anymore even if I wanted to. The pleasurable little delusion I had up in smoke. I was standing there at my market stall sussed! I looked over at my ‘disciple.’ He was smiling strangely at me now. Looking at the crystals on the table and humming a tune that sounded familiar! La, la, la… upon a star, makes no difference… I finished the words in my head. Makes no difference where you are… And there was the dog from the stall next to me rubbing my ankle.
“Time to get up darling!”
I shook my head. The sun was still strong only it was coming through the blinds and Louise was tugging at my foot. “Time to get up!”
What the hell! I wasn’t in the bloody market. You’d better believe it! And I did so even less under the shower. It had all been so vivid. So real. It just didn’t seem possible. I didn’t do spliffs or that kind of thing. I dried off and dressed. Tea waiting in the kitchen with an egg on toast and my packed lunch for the day. I went over it all. All the detail so real in my mind. Louise carefully listening.
“I saw that packet on the table this morning,” she said accusingly. “You must have gone through half the Danish Blue you bought yesterday. Guzzled it like a pig before coming to bed.”
Those words and the way that she’d said it! So what if I’d done half the box?
“There’s the whole answer,” she said triumphantly. “Master of the Universe!”
I took in her cynical laugh. Yeah Master of the Universe! I really fucking deserved it! Right, tea and egg walloped down, I was in the van and off, chuckling to myself on the drive. I’d got what I deserved. A taste of my own crystal bullshit. Some fantasy straight out of a packet of cheese. Yeah I deserved it all right. Danish Blue was supposed to have that kind of effect and there was me, doing whole mouthfuls before midnight.
I drove into the market and stalled up. Unexpectedly the manager had given me a new site for the day and the crystals looked much better here on the outside. I was up for a real cynical laugh. Well wasn’t that just me all over? Master of the Universe and being worshipped like that. What an absolute arsehole. Oh yeah I’d make the guy forget the rent! And as for David Cameron, I’d get him to kiss Merkel’s arse. Or better still Sarkozi’s! I could do all kinds of stuff but come to think of it why bother. Wouldn’t it be better using my power to make a much fairer world. Pensioners getting decent treatment and jobs for teenagers. Young and old treated with the respect they deserved, but then I was only a market trader trying to earn a shilling. That was the truth of the matter.
Just then a shadow fell over the stall. Someone in the sun looking across at our gear.
“Nice crystals those,” I heard a voice say. “I suppose you know about crystals and healing.”
I liked it. A perfect opportunity for taking money. I knew a thing or two I said, coming out with confidence and wisdom. I’d try to answer any questions he had. The stones were for healing. They helped people sort out their lives.
I caught myself saying it. But then how did I know it was a man there in the sunlight?
Because we’ve met before, the voice continued, a tall figure stepping out of the shadows. My eyes took in the silver earring then the quartz pendant. I was dumbstruck. It had to be him. Thin, lean… Exactly the same person only the earring was on the left side during the dream.
He looked at me all amused. “You’re having a Brian Cox moment,” he chuckled. “Don’t worry, you’ll be alright here. We’ve brought you into a parallel universe! Louise will still be there when you get home!”
“Parallel universe? I don’t want to be in a fucking parallel Universe,” I yelled. “I want to be in the market selling my gear.”
“But look around you,” the man insisted. “You are selling stuff on the market, only there are hundreds of markets and hundreds of you. Each one in a different dimension. There are hundreds of you and Louises You can be any Laurence you like, and do anything you like anywhere you like. You were only too happy with the idea before. Don’t you remember, when you wanted to be Master of the Universe? Now, with Brian Cox helping you out you can do just about anything. Be anyone you like! I mean, we’ve got our own special Brian Cox here. You can meet him if you like!
I threw up my hands in horror. Jesus, the idea of meeting that guy! I’d do anything, anything if I didn’t have to listen to him going on and on about everything. No, please, anything but Brian Cox!
“So you don’t want to be Master of the Universe then?” the man looked at me straight.
“No, I don’t,” I said coldly. “I’ve had enough with that kind of power!”
“You mean you just want to sell your crystals on the market and tell people lies. Well that’s alright then. You can talk as much healing bullshit as you like. Just as long as you leave the real bullshit to others, like physicists who talk about parallel universes, Higgs bosons and black holes. Those guys have really got their heads up their arses.”
The figure vanished and I carried on talking crystal healing for the rest of the day. It was harmless enough and made people feel happy. And so I’d been left realising the truth and with it learned a real lesson. I won’t pretend anymore or even think about being what I’m not. As for the rest of you, politicians and judges, media executives and journalists, bishops and creationist Big-Bang cosmologists, you can be whatever you like. Masters of the Universe or Wizards, no-one believes you anymore. You just strut your own stuff and everyone knows it. You can say what you like and sound like you mean it but you’re well past your sell by date. You’ve got your own agenda and everyone knows it. Too bad you’ve been sussed. You can keep on being Masters of the Universe but the truth, as everyone knows, is that you’re all just as deluded as each other.
TRYING TO GET PEOPLE TO BUY ALL YOUR SHIT BY PRETENDING TO BE WHAT YOU’RE NOT.
THE UNNECESSARY DEATH OF A PIG: A CAUTIONARY TALE FROM THE READING ROCK FESTIVAL
This is a blog about people who get funny ideas in their head. Such people fall into various classes. On the one hand you get guys with political ambitions. At the top end its ruling the world and maybe having to kill a hundred million people to get there. Half way it’s running a country. In most places it means killing a few million and screwing everything up so that there are far more hungry people than there were before. Those are dictators rather than megalomaniacs. At the bottom end it’s a whole lot sweeter. You just tell people you’ll see them alright if they let you represent them in Parliament and earn a seriously good screw for the privilege. Then you claim expenses for doing them the favour and use the money to get your dick into whatever you fancy.
Alternatively you’ve got people with business ambitions. They get hold of other people’s money so that they can use it to make even more for themselves. At the top end they get to run banks, spend billions buying tens of thousands of wooden shacks on the American prairie then retire in haste to a luxury lifestyle when their little mistake is discovered while the people who loaned them their savings lose the lot. A bit further down you’ve got people who call themselves company directors. Their function should be to develop policy and strategy, acknowledge the shareholders as the ultimate owners and leave the managers to manage. Instead they turn into jack the lads. Vote themselves executive directors with gigantic salaries then usurp the control and ownership of the company and do whatever they like irrespective of the wishes of investors who put up the money. It’s what you might call swindling on a grand scale. Finally, at the bottom end there are people who think they’ve got a great idea for making money at music festivals. Firstly they buy a pig, take it home and roast it, then they purchase ten thousand bread rolls and five hundred sandwich loaves, put the pig on a truck, drive to Reading Rock Festival and set up a stall to sell roast pork rolls to the revellers in the certain knowledge that they’ll make a real killing!
The Reading Rock Festival annually occupies a site just outside the city. It’s basically a kind of showground comprising of a number of fields with woods round them and set in a shallow depression which, after it rains, turns into a gigantic mud-bowl. Onto this site drive thousands of vehicles owned by stallholders and festival goers alike. Stages are set up for live performances by rock groups and there are large numbers of stalls selling a wide variety of clothes, craft and hash smoking accessories. From the time we drove onto the site it rained and turned cold. We were in a flat grassy field right in the middle of the Thames Valley where at the end of September the nights were freezing after eleven o’clock and a thick icy mist hung over the whole area till seven next morning. The stalls were all mixed together. It wasn’t a case of craft in one place and food in another. Next to us was a strange kind of rig with a dirty great roasted pig stuck on a spit behind tables full of paper plates, napkins and jars of apple sauce.
The people who come to the Reading Rock Festival are a curious mixture. Most are fans of hard rock music. No jazz or Cliff Richards Bachelor Boy stuff thank you very much and no Rap or Iggy Pop. There were Country and Western characters. Seventy year old women in rhinestone made up to look twenty and act it at night in their tents with their geriatric husbands in jeans and Roy Rogers hats. There were heavy metal rockers with their ladies in carefully ripped black fishnet tights on Speed and Vodka along with loads of middle-aged leather. Every class of music fan had its associated uniform.
Late afternoon of the first day two drunks high on amphetamines threw one of our paste tables up in the air which meant us having to pick up hundreds of crystals, earrings and trees scattered all over the grass, clean them up and put them back on the stall. That night some merry fellow smashed a glass cider bottle on my head without having the slightest provocation. Lucky I was wearing a thick Donegal Tweed cap, but then that was the Reading Rock Festival. Hard core trouble never far away!
Meanwhile our halogen lights were revealing a pretty grim picture next door. There’d been a few shallow cuts in one of the legs of pork. Despite the proximity of a cider stall no-one seemed to be buying. Well that night its owners would be eating better than us.
The following day passed slowly. Sounds of guitars and drums from the Main Stage in the next field. Our sales moved slowly. Mainly personalised frogs glued on marble… From John to Mum, Reading Rock Festival and the date! Next door little was happening. The occasional roll going but no great queue at lunchtime and the first appearance of seriously long faces. His wife already looked badly fed up and by six that evening rather cross We could hear raised voices coming from their caravan that night. It was difficult to understand… People needed to eat and there were lots of hungry people on site. They couldn’t all be eating veggie burgers and flapjacks. It wasn’t that kind of place. Rather-more pie and mash, jacket potatoes and chilli. So why weren’t the roast pork rolls moving?
We took turns wandering around on the second day. Checking out the craft stalls and thinking of food. That roast port really smelled good so why hadn’t we bought anything yet? It was a fair question. There were only three other food stalls in the next field and four further on. The roast pork man must have checked it out for himself. Why wasn’t anyone buying his stuff? The arguments that night in the caravan sounded desperate, the poor fellow taking serious stick from his wife… She’d told him not to do it… They shouldn’t have gone there at all… Next morning, the Saturday, we were struck by a singular phenomenon. Large numbers of people heading our way from the big Entrance Gate at the end of the field holding bulky Sainsbury’s carrier bags. This was certainly of interest. There were simply too many of them to ignore. One passed close to our stall. “Been to Sainsbury’s?” I asked affably. And sure enough he had. Sainsbury’s, bless their grubby little socks, had opened a new supermarket just a few days ago only ten minutes’ walk down the road. Their charcuterie did just about everything including whole roast chickens, racks of Chinese pork ribs, pies, sausages, samozas, you name it. Then there were the plates of sliced roast pork, turkey and ham at the deli. Did they also do packs of rolls and baps we wondered?
A new Sainsbury’s just down the road! The man, his wife and the pig had travelled all the way down from Newcastle and unbeknown to the living they were doomed before they even set out. Desperation! That lunchtime the price of a roast pork roll went down from two-fifty to a quid. The owner of the dead pig must have picked up the tale. Little George Washington with big ideas was facing a multinational!
By three that afternoon the procession of Sainsbury’s carrier bags had turned into a regular flow. An endless stream of festival goers returning through the gate, bags packed with cooked food, walking straight past the roast port entrepreneur without giving his stall so much as a glance. Entirely oblivious to the smell in the air of porcine succulence. Ever had a leg of pork for Sunday lunch? You know what it’s like when the oven door’s opened and coming out of the kitchen is that wonderful odour. That promise, with roast potatoes and parsnips, of something touching the divine. The cider’s been in the freezer and now it’s on the table along with the cork mats and plates. In it comes on a platter and your wife carves off the best roasted end especially for you. Your reward for being a loving husband and a good father. Well, they were walking past that smell, that dream, without even turning a hair. You couldn’t beat a whole roasted chicken for two-fifty!
Sunday lunchtime the roast pork rolls went down to eighty pence. We could check the success of his gambit from behind our stall. The pig still had four legs though one looked a bit chipped. Desperation! Only twenty-four hours left to do the business. Turn the great idea into a killing that would make even The Dragons consider investing. Eighty grand for 200 roast pork stalls! Taking the whole thing nationwide! Two hundred cardboard cut-outs of Deborah Meaden looking fetching in a little white chef’s hat smiling encouragingly down the leg of a pig as she cuts off a slice! Twenty-four hours to sell out and tell the Dragons about your brilliant idea. Today the television studio, tomorrow the world!
The roast pork man’s wife was becoming increasingly bitter. The recriminations flowed thick and fast and it wasn’t confined to the caravan anymore. It was out in the open. Poor roast pork man. Whistling a happy tune down the Great North Road all unsuspecting.
Happy is the Man who Begins His Journey on Wings... Ancient Chinese Proverb… No, I just made it up! And it’s a load of old bollocks anyway. Wasn’t there some Greek guy called Icarus who got over-ambitious? Never mind. The supermarket had to close its doors some time or other. And then…
It didn’t! Not till four that afternoon anyway and by that time supplies of nosh bought earlier in the day were still awaiting consumption in the tents. The man came over occasionally to talk to us. He was mid-thirties. His wife a teacher, he a civil servant. Was this our first time at Festivals? They’d never done markets before. Louise and I looked at each other and felt a real pang of pity. I picked up a fine garnet willow and gave it to him. A little gift for his lady, from myself and my wife. Yes, we were market traders. Regulars at Festivals, but my wife was also a student. Writing up her doctorate. I wrote novels whenever I could. The markets helped finance both. He was as astounded as we were. Reading Rock was a bad place to start and the lesson was always the same. If you get an idea, check out the competition before you do anything else.
That night things went a little better for them. Half a leg gone. As for ourselves we’d run out of frogs but the crystals and earrings were shifting. Pack up time was Monday midday. He was still there early afternoon doing whatever he could. Rolls down to fifty pence, any takers? There were a few late munchers but by this time the pork was stone cold and the fat congealed something nasty. We heard his wife muttering something about dumping it on the motorway. Pork didn’t reheat well, that was for sure. If they didn’t the cats up in Newcastle would be licking their chops, or rather the pigs! Meeeow!
They pulled out just before we did, pig on its back with three legs in the air. Before leaving the lady came over to thank us. Selling food on a market was tough, we commiserated. They should just write it off to experience. Maybe they did. We never saw them again, anywhere.
It took us two hours to pack up and join the queue of vehicles leaving the site through deep mud, searching for any sign of a pig over the next three or four miles. It was probably floating down a river somewhere that night. Funny that! On the way home I really fancied one of those roast pork rolls and somehow I’d just never bought one. Missed your chance now! … Louise said with a twinkle.
Some people have really funny ideas. A life is a life so thank God it was only a pig… That is considering the history of the world and what some funny ideas have led to.
Alternatively you’ve got people with business ambitions. They get hold of other people’s money so that they can use it to make even more for themselves. At the top end they get to run banks, spend billions buying tens of thousands of wooden shacks on the American prairie then retire in haste to a luxury lifestyle when their little mistake is discovered while the people who loaned them their savings lose the lot. A bit further down you’ve got people who call themselves company directors. Their function should be to develop policy and strategy, acknowledge the shareholders as the ultimate owners and leave the managers to manage. Instead they turn into jack the lads. Vote themselves executive directors with gigantic salaries then usurp the control and ownership of the company and do whatever they like irrespective of the wishes of investors who put up the money. It’s what you might call swindling on a grand scale. Finally, at the bottom end there are people who think they’ve got a great idea for making money at music festivals. Firstly they buy a pig, take it home and roast it, then they purchase ten thousand bread rolls and five hundred sandwich loaves, put the pig on a truck, drive to Reading Rock Festival and set up a stall to sell roast pork rolls to the revellers in the certain knowledge that they’ll make a real killing!
The Reading Rock Festival annually occupies a site just outside the city. It’s basically a kind of showground comprising of a number of fields with woods round them and set in a shallow depression which, after it rains, turns into a gigantic mud-bowl. Onto this site drive thousands of vehicles owned by stallholders and festival goers alike. Stages are set up for live performances by rock groups and there are large numbers of stalls selling a wide variety of clothes, craft and hash smoking accessories. From the time we drove onto the site it rained and turned cold. We were in a flat grassy field right in the middle of the Thames Valley where at the end of September the nights were freezing after eleven o’clock and a thick icy mist hung over the whole area till seven next morning. The stalls were all mixed together. It wasn’t a case of craft in one place and food in another. Next to us was a strange kind of rig with a dirty great roasted pig stuck on a spit behind tables full of paper plates, napkins and jars of apple sauce.
The people who come to the Reading Rock Festival are a curious mixture. Most are fans of hard rock music. No jazz or Cliff Richards Bachelor Boy stuff thank you very much and no Rap or Iggy Pop. There were Country and Western characters. Seventy year old women in rhinestone made up to look twenty and act it at night in their tents with their geriatric husbands in jeans and Roy Rogers hats. There were heavy metal rockers with their ladies in carefully ripped black fishnet tights on Speed and Vodka along with loads of middle-aged leather. Every class of music fan had its associated uniform.
Late afternoon of the first day two drunks high on amphetamines threw one of our paste tables up in the air which meant us having to pick up hundreds of crystals, earrings and trees scattered all over the grass, clean them up and put them back on the stall. That night some merry fellow smashed a glass cider bottle on my head without having the slightest provocation. Lucky I was wearing a thick Donegal Tweed cap, but then that was the Reading Rock Festival. Hard core trouble never far away!
Meanwhile our halogen lights were revealing a pretty grim picture next door. There’d been a few shallow cuts in one of the legs of pork. Despite the proximity of a cider stall no-one seemed to be buying. Well that night its owners would be eating better than us.
The following day passed slowly. Sounds of guitars and drums from the Main Stage in the next field. Our sales moved slowly. Mainly personalised frogs glued on marble… From John to Mum, Reading Rock Festival and the date! Next door little was happening. The occasional roll going but no great queue at lunchtime and the first appearance of seriously long faces. His wife already looked badly fed up and by six that evening rather cross We could hear raised voices coming from their caravan that night. It was difficult to understand… People needed to eat and there were lots of hungry people on site. They couldn’t all be eating veggie burgers and flapjacks. It wasn’t that kind of place. Rather-more pie and mash, jacket potatoes and chilli. So why weren’t the roast pork rolls moving?
We took turns wandering around on the second day. Checking out the craft stalls and thinking of food. That roast port really smelled good so why hadn’t we bought anything yet? It was a fair question. There were only three other food stalls in the next field and four further on. The roast pork man must have checked it out for himself. Why wasn’t anyone buying his stuff? The arguments that night in the caravan sounded desperate, the poor fellow taking serious stick from his wife… She’d told him not to do it… They shouldn’t have gone there at all… Next morning, the Saturday, we were struck by a singular phenomenon. Large numbers of people heading our way from the big Entrance Gate at the end of the field holding bulky Sainsbury’s carrier bags. This was certainly of interest. There were simply too many of them to ignore. One passed close to our stall. “Been to Sainsbury’s?” I asked affably. And sure enough he had. Sainsbury’s, bless their grubby little socks, had opened a new supermarket just a few days ago only ten minutes’ walk down the road. Their charcuterie did just about everything including whole roast chickens, racks of Chinese pork ribs, pies, sausages, samozas, you name it. Then there were the plates of sliced roast pork, turkey and ham at the deli. Did they also do packs of rolls and baps we wondered?
A new Sainsbury’s just down the road! The man, his wife and the pig had travelled all the way down from Newcastle and unbeknown to the living they were doomed before they even set out. Desperation! That lunchtime the price of a roast pork roll went down from two-fifty to a quid. The owner of the dead pig must have picked up the tale. Little George Washington with big ideas was facing a multinational!
By three that afternoon the procession of Sainsbury’s carrier bags had turned into a regular flow. An endless stream of festival goers returning through the gate, bags packed with cooked food, walking straight past the roast port entrepreneur without giving his stall so much as a glance. Entirely oblivious to the smell in the air of porcine succulence. Ever had a leg of pork for Sunday lunch? You know what it’s like when the oven door’s opened and coming out of the kitchen is that wonderful odour. That promise, with roast potatoes and parsnips, of something touching the divine. The cider’s been in the freezer and now it’s on the table along with the cork mats and plates. In it comes on a platter and your wife carves off the best roasted end especially for you. Your reward for being a loving husband and a good father. Well, they were walking past that smell, that dream, without even turning a hair. You couldn’t beat a whole roasted chicken for two-fifty!
Sunday lunchtime the roast pork rolls went down to eighty pence. We could check the success of his gambit from behind our stall. The pig still had four legs though one looked a bit chipped. Desperation! Only twenty-four hours left to do the business. Turn the great idea into a killing that would make even The Dragons consider investing. Eighty grand for 200 roast pork stalls! Taking the whole thing nationwide! Two hundred cardboard cut-outs of Deborah Meaden looking fetching in a little white chef’s hat smiling encouragingly down the leg of a pig as she cuts off a slice! Twenty-four hours to sell out and tell the Dragons about your brilliant idea. Today the television studio, tomorrow the world!
The roast pork man’s wife was becoming increasingly bitter. The recriminations flowed thick and fast and it wasn’t confined to the caravan anymore. It was out in the open. Poor roast pork man. Whistling a happy tune down the Great North Road all unsuspecting.
Happy is the Man who Begins His Journey on Wings... Ancient Chinese Proverb… No, I just made it up! And it’s a load of old bollocks anyway. Wasn’t there some Greek guy called Icarus who got over-ambitious? Never mind. The supermarket had to close its doors some time or other. And then…
It didn’t! Not till four that afternoon anyway and by that time supplies of nosh bought earlier in the day were still awaiting consumption in the tents. The man came over occasionally to talk to us. He was mid-thirties. His wife a teacher, he a civil servant. Was this our first time at Festivals? They’d never done markets before. Louise and I looked at each other and felt a real pang of pity. I picked up a fine garnet willow and gave it to him. A little gift for his lady, from myself and my wife. Yes, we were market traders. Regulars at Festivals, but my wife was also a student. Writing up her doctorate. I wrote novels whenever I could. The markets helped finance both. He was as astounded as we were. Reading Rock was a bad place to start and the lesson was always the same. If you get an idea, check out the competition before you do anything else.
That night things went a little better for them. Half a leg gone. As for ourselves we’d run out of frogs but the crystals and earrings were shifting. Pack up time was Monday midday. He was still there early afternoon doing whatever he could. Rolls down to fifty pence, any takers? There were a few late munchers but by this time the pork was stone cold and the fat congealed something nasty. We heard his wife muttering something about dumping it on the motorway. Pork didn’t reheat well, that was for sure. If they didn’t the cats up in Newcastle would be licking their chops, or rather the pigs! Meeeow!
They pulled out just before we did, pig on its back with three legs in the air. Before leaving the lady came over to thank us. Selling food on a market was tough, we commiserated. They should just write it off to experience. Maybe they did. We never saw them again, anywhere.
It took us two hours to pack up and join the queue of vehicles leaving the site through deep mud, searching for any sign of a pig over the next three or four miles. It was probably floating down a river somewhere that night. Funny that! On the way home I really fancied one of those roast pork rolls and somehow I’d just never bought one. Missed your chance now! … Louise said with a twinkle.
Some people have really funny ideas. A life is a life so thank God it was only a pig… That is considering the history of the world and what some funny ideas have led to.
Monday 6 February 2012
SHIT IN A PAPER BAG: IT MUST BE CHRISTMAS!
The above title, especially the phrase shit in a paper bag, is a typical piece of cynical humour that like most Cockney expressions is very much to the point. It’s essentially a market trader’s phrase which, referring to the frenzied rush of the population to buy gifts at Christmas, means that they can sell just about anything to anybody.
The phrase is more metaphorical than literal. Nonetheless, in the experience of so many traders, it is very close to the truth. In their rush to buy presents, especially last minute gifts, people lose all sense of objectivity and reason so that it gets to be a situation where just about anything will do! Everyone has their own notion of anything. For the working class, the poor and the underclass it’s cheap jewellery, ornaments, cosmetics and some items of clothing. For the upper class and seriously wealthy it could be anything from diamond cufflinks in a Harrods Christmas Cracker to a parcel of shares. It’s usually bought in a hurry, as an afterthought, for the person you suddenly remember you’ve missed and are terrified about them having bought you something. This sentiment of course is far more appropriate to the poor as the rich don’t need to give a shit about anything!
For the trader each social class will have its own characteristic rubbish or shit. They won’t themselves regard the things they buy for others as such. They can’t do that, it defeats the whole purpose. Even so, the upper classes undoubtedly regard so much of working class commodity purchase as rubbish with the snobbery that characterises their cynical demeanour. Something they rightly share with Cockney Traders because both kinds of being are fundamentally the same. Creatures on the make. Indeed, the on the make spivvery of the upper classes and their hangers on is only hidden by their accents and public school confidence.
Put succinctly, the title refers to the ability of traders to sell just about anything because of the time of the year. It’s Christmas, the Giving Season! It doesn’t happen anywhere else on the calendar. The need to buy presents at Christmas becomes a national obsession commercially burnt into the psyche. It’s an essentially family thing. You wouldn’t rush to some store or street market for your boss. Of course not! The time of year and the Season flicks on a switch in your brain. The giving hormone has taken you over! You’re like an out of control lemming, heading for the cliffs of your credit card limit. You can’t help yourself, can’t bloody-well stop. Over you go with a box of Max Factor or current rave dvds. In short you’re up for just about anything.
You’re ready to buy and traders ready to sell. Stall piled high with job lot crap from toys to ten a pack feature lipsticks so you can kiss just about anything in ten different shades. The big exceptions are food and most kinds of clothing, though socks, stockings and underwear have now joined everything else that’s cheap out of China. Interestingly enough I saw these items myself only recently in the City of Bath and you really need to look hard to find anywhere in England so completely up its own arse. Of course, I’m sure you can guess which political party runs such a place!
Yes it’s Christmas. The nation’s in a rush and ready to buy anything, particularly at the cheap end. Shit in a paper bag out of China because that’s where most of it comes from. But remember this. There are different kinds of shit in a paper bag. The effluent that people rush to get their grabs on at Christmas is by no means homogenous. There’s shit and there’s shit! Most street traders know what they’re selling. They might shout lovely stuff but they keep their thoughts to themselves. Others, most often the artisan and craft crowd, put it about that they’re a cut above everyone else. They make the goods they’re selling themselves! Hand-made and far above the mass produced tat. They’re artists. Craftsmen if you please! Put all their skill into their products. Say China and you’re dead!
Truth is, ninety per cent is still out of China. They’ve just taken the label off as a prelude to taking the piss, after which it’s your money. Don’t make me laugh. Sunday Craft Days at Covent Garden were always Chinese, just better looking Chinese. Only Chinese Craft Shit doesn’t come in a paper bag, no sir, more in an expensive upmarket carrier along with the craft trader’s superior upmarket demeanour. To the common as muck market boy traders, craft type crap is still paper bag stuff. To the Christmas craft merchants, the market boy merchandise is the lowest you can go. Their sneers are the last word in snobbery but scratch a bit deeper and you’ll find it all a pretence. The little craft workshops in Essex where it’s all so lovingly made are really the back alleys of Shanghai and it gets to your glass living room cabinet along with all its other nick-knacks straight out of a shipping container.
However we need to be careful. There are far worse things that people can do at Christmas than buy shit in a paper bag for themselves and their kids. I could suggest quite a few but they’d only be my opinions. This post is already critical of things people buy and the way that they spend and isn’t meant to be a vehicle for psychological analysis. I might elsewhere castigate the crystal healing profession along with its whacky metaphysics and adepts. I might castigate politicians and political parties. Goodness, we all know these people are professional liars and can’t help themselves, but when it comes to matters of science and the things these people do in their political life you’ll surely allow me that. Market traders are people with definite opinions. They meet people all the time. It’s their job to know what they’re thinking. It helps them to sell.
Most market traders are cynical about human behaviour, and deadly cynical about politicians. They are often genuinely amazed about spending habits and the way people throw their money around at Christmas. They need it and love it and the expression Shit in a Paper Bag to describe that habit shouldn’t surprise anyone. It sounds a bit harsh, a cynical view of human behaviour from those who profit by it. People can spend their money any way they like. They’ve earned it, they have the right to. Trouble is, so many of them spend money they haven’t got and that leads to problems. There’s always payback time to be faced.
Viewed coldly it comes down to this. The people who will benefit most from the annual Shit in a Paper Bag habit pursued in the West will be a handful of Chinese astronauts who will sooner or later land on the Moon.
I’ve just had an afterthought… sooner or later land on the Moon, yes, and bring back many large pieces of rock out of which they’ll manufacture tens of thousands of ultra-exclusive Moon Rock Pendants worn only by the super-rich, on the sales of which, you may be sure, another Chinese Moon Expedition will soon be launched and then another… and another…
The phrase is more metaphorical than literal. Nonetheless, in the experience of so many traders, it is very close to the truth. In their rush to buy presents, especially last minute gifts, people lose all sense of objectivity and reason so that it gets to be a situation where just about anything will do! Everyone has their own notion of anything. For the working class, the poor and the underclass it’s cheap jewellery, ornaments, cosmetics and some items of clothing. For the upper class and seriously wealthy it could be anything from diamond cufflinks in a Harrods Christmas Cracker to a parcel of shares. It’s usually bought in a hurry, as an afterthought, for the person you suddenly remember you’ve missed and are terrified about them having bought you something. This sentiment of course is far more appropriate to the poor as the rich don’t need to give a shit about anything!
For the trader each social class will have its own characteristic rubbish or shit. They won’t themselves regard the things they buy for others as such. They can’t do that, it defeats the whole purpose. Even so, the upper classes undoubtedly regard so much of working class commodity purchase as rubbish with the snobbery that characterises their cynical demeanour. Something they rightly share with Cockney Traders because both kinds of being are fundamentally the same. Creatures on the make. Indeed, the on the make spivvery of the upper classes and their hangers on is only hidden by their accents and public school confidence.
Put succinctly, the title refers to the ability of traders to sell just about anything because of the time of the year. It’s Christmas, the Giving Season! It doesn’t happen anywhere else on the calendar. The need to buy presents at Christmas becomes a national obsession commercially burnt into the psyche. It’s an essentially family thing. You wouldn’t rush to some store or street market for your boss. Of course not! The time of year and the Season flicks on a switch in your brain. The giving hormone has taken you over! You’re like an out of control lemming, heading for the cliffs of your credit card limit. You can’t help yourself, can’t bloody-well stop. Over you go with a box of Max Factor or current rave dvds. In short you’re up for just about anything.
You’re ready to buy and traders ready to sell. Stall piled high with job lot crap from toys to ten a pack feature lipsticks so you can kiss just about anything in ten different shades. The big exceptions are food and most kinds of clothing, though socks, stockings and underwear have now joined everything else that’s cheap out of China. Interestingly enough I saw these items myself only recently in the City of Bath and you really need to look hard to find anywhere in England so completely up its own arse. Of course, I’m sure you can guess which political party runs such a place!
Yes it’s Christmas. The nation’s in a rush and ready to buy anything, particularly at the cheap end. Shit in a paper bag out of China because that’s where most of it comes from. But remember this. There are different kinds of shit in a paper bag. The effluent that people rush to get their grabs on at Christmas is by no means homogenous. There’s shit and there’s shit! Most street traders know what they’re selling. They might shout lovely stuff but they keep their thoughts to themselves. Others, most often the artisan and craft crowd, put it about that they’re a cut above everyone else. They make the goods they’re selling themselves! Hand-made and far above the mass produced tat. They’re artists. Craftsmen if you please! Put all their skill into their products. Say China and you’re dead!
Truth is, ninety per cent is still out of China. They’ve just taken the label off as a prelude to taking the piss, after which it’s your money. Don’t make me laugh. Sunday Craft Days at Covent Garden were always Chinese, just better looking Chinese. Only Chinese Craft Shit doesn’t come in a paper bag, no sir, more in an expensive upmarket carrier along with the craft trader’s superior upmarket demeanour. To the common as muck market boy traders, craft type crap is still paper bag stuff. To the Christmas craft merchants, the market boy merchandise is the lowest you can go. Their sneers are the last word in snobbery but scratch a bit deeper and you’ll find it all a pretence. The little craft workshops in Essex where it’s all so lovingly made are really the back alleys of Shanghai and it gets to your glass living room cabinet along with all its other nick-knacks straight out of a shipping container.
However we need to be careful. There are far worse things that people can do at Christmas than buy shit in a paper bag for themselves and their kids. I could suggest quite a few but they’d only be my opinions. This post is already critical of things people buy and the way that they spend and isn’t meant to be a vehicle for psychological analysis. I might elsewhere castigate the crystal healing profession along with its whacky metaphysics and adepts. I might castigate politicians and political parties. Goodness, we all know these people are professional liars and can’t help themselves, but when it comes to matters of science and the things these people do in their political life you’ll surely allow me that. Market traders are people with definite opinions. They meet people all the time. It’s their job to know what they’re thinking. It helps them to sell.
Most market traders are cynical about human behaviour, and deadly cynical about politicians. They are often genuinely amazed about spending habits and the way people throw their money around at Christmas. They need it and love it and the expression Shit in a Paper Bag to describe that habit shouldn’t surprise anyone. It sounds a bit harsh, a cynical view of human behaviour from those who profit by it. People can spend their money any way they like. They’ve earned it, they have the right to. Trouble is, so many of them spend money they haven’t got and that leads to problems. There’s always payback time to be faced.
Viewed coldly it comes down to this. The people who will benefit most from the annual Shit in a Paper Bag habit pursued in the West will be a handful of Chinese astronauts who will sooner or later land on the Moon.
I’ve just had an afterthought… sooner or later land on the Moon, yes, and bring back many large pieces of rock out of which they’ll manufacture tens of thousands of ultra-exclusive Moon Rock Pendants worn only by the super-rich, on the sales of which, you may be sure, another Chinese Moon Expedition will soon be launched and then another… and another…
GIVING YOUR SEX LIFE SOME OOMPH: CRYSTALS FOR GERIATRICS
I have to say immediately that this post is not a joke and neither is it meant to be. Just in case there are readers out there who think I’m spoofing I have to tell you that there are a wide variety of people who genuinely believe that quartz crystals can spice up their sex lives and nowhere is this belief more prevalent than in the elderly. In fact it’s true to say that the older people get the more likely they are to give the idea credibility. It applies to men in particular but there’s also no shortage of women who nurture the view that a crystal with ‘powerful energy’ might somehow be able to buzz up their hormones again. In short, that part of the title, Crystals for Geriatrics is, from a market trader’s point of view, not so fanciful as it seems.
And how do I know about these things? Well I’ll tell you. It’s because they talk to me about it! It’s not as if they immediately come out with it, like have you got a crystal that will give me an erection? or a friend of mine told me that some of these crystals can get to parts of you that not even Viagra can reach. No, the connection between crystals and sex is broached in a more subtle manner. Usually as part of a conversation which develops into something specific to that particular area and, bit by bit, to that particular person. It is a bad idea to ‘feed’ this conversation in any way or worse still try to direct it. It is the customer who, in my experience, wants to talk. Hopes you will listen and eventually comment. In nearly all such cases it is enough for me to show interest by nodding my head and saying things like ‘yes’ or ‘right’. Waiting to see where they’re going before coming out with any views of my own.
It is only when the customer, often an elderly gentleman on his own or occasionally accompanied by his wife, is well along with his ‘enquiry’ and wants to say something that I begin to discuss the powers of crystals and their possible healing energies in directions which might further their interest. There’s nothing crude in any of it. Nothing rude or naughty. I try to stay analytical. Objective though encouraging. Above all interested and hopeful! Let me make it clear then. There’s no talk about willies or pussies. Most definitely not the latter to elderly ladies! What on earth would they take me for? No, tiptoeing my way round the subject like the Sugar Plum Fairy is far more likely to inculcate interest than taking a Kango Hammer to such sensibilities. In matters such as these being a good listener ‘with a certain interest’ let us say, is all that is needed. A mutual understanding between a customer’s delicate interest and possible needs and a crystal healer’s considerate knowledge and advice is always best. The geriatric as the unspoken sex patient and me as the crystal doctor from whom they seek advice. And if they like what I advise, purchase a crystal that might re-energise the physical side of their lives.
The above is a general but accurate description of the course of such contact. When they ask me, as they invariably do, whether I’ve ever tried it, I’m always truthful with my reply. Fortunately I’ve never needed such therapy myself, the word being key to the whole process. Crystal healing viewed as a kind of therapy. Often emotional, soothing, relaxing, stabilising and calming. Often innervating and enlivening. Physically as well as psychologically. Working to restore physical as well as emotional strengths and balance. The idea of their restorative power is particularly important. That is the general healing purpose of crystals. To create and promote wellbeing. The two notions feed off each other. Restoration promotes wellbeing and vice-versa.
It requires no great leap of imagination however to take the idea of spiritual restoration the small but necessary step forward required to shift the parameter from the realm of the spiritual to that of the physical. It is the process from where the story of this post begins because bridging the two worlds of the physical and the spiritual is the sexual. The purpose of crystal healing is to create the fundamental unity of both. Explaining the value of quartz crystals in these terms makes the possibility of their innervating and restorative powers being better understood.
Look, it’s all very simple. We run a business. We don’t judge people on the basis of age or appearance. All people who come to the stall are equal, but then being business people, those who clearly have money to spend are more equal than others, so when old George appeared with his Zimmer Frame and straggly grey beard innocuously enquiring about the loving powers of Rose Quartz, I accepted his interest for what it was. He’d clearly heard about healing from someone or other. It was only when he returned a week later wanting to talk about the energising powers of quartz crystals and jokingly asked me whether they could do anything for his love life that I suspected where he was going. The initial chuckle between us soon moved on to the subject of innervation.
Were the powers of crystals actually restorative? “Physically I mean?” he enquired, showing me a full set of dentures. “Did they… could they?”
He left the last part of his enquiry incomplete, waiting for me to answer.
“You want to know whether they might…”
I hesitated. He could have been a retired copper. Trying to catch me out on some indiscretion. We ran a straight business but the law was as flexible as they wanted to make it!
“Whether they’ll help me get an erection,” he finally came out bold as brass.
I could have blushed with shame! Respectable Old George with his Zimmer Frame, asking me questions like that! The mind boggled. I just didn’t want to think what he had on the go. He could have been a Tory M.P. with some young girl tucked away in his London flat courtesy of expenses on the taxpayer. Vital for his constituency work no doubt. His blue rinse wife making the rounds of the Women’s Institute and doing charitable good deeds somewhere in Surrey all unsuspecting while her husband was hoping a quartz crystal would help him get it up in the capital.
I looked at him direct. “If you buy one of the big ones, grip it in your hand and think about what you want there’s every chance it’ll help,” I said encouragingly. “The energies will do their bit. Make you feel active. More aggressive. You’ve just got to enjoy the idea,” I added positively.
I could hear myself being a therapist. In some areas of medicine, placebos play an important role. The same might be said of crystals as an agent of sex therapy. Who could tell? George bought one of my largest double terminated quartz crystals with a satisfied smile. Twenty quid thank you very much. If he scored it would be worth ten times more to him only I didn’t want him to come back telling me. Some occasionally did. Like I was some kind of father confessor, but they’re only a few out of many. Maybe it didn’t work for the majority or maybe they just don’t want to communicated the details. That said no-one’s ever asked for their money back! When they return on occasion it isn’t their wives they’re talking about.
This brings me to the other half of the matter. Old ladies and crystals. If you don’t want to know you can stop here. I don’t mind, but when I say old ladies I mean old ladies who are still sparky if you know what I mean. Many are wealthy. Often upper crust. Husbands died and left them a packet. But then it’s not all about
Lady Agnes up at The Lodge. There are all kinds of elderly women, of all classes, though the great majority are in the middle, for whom the fires haven’t faded and to whom the hormonal buzz still applies. Keen to step out from respectability for a final last gasp fling, preferably with a stranger. Anyone else is too risky. Too close. Even so, this kind of thing is the exception let it be said. The truth more often closer to home. A genuine desire to appeal to their husbands. Married forty years and still keen. Flabby in every department yet still wanting, still hoping to excite. Tired of going to bed early with him busy working the Babe Station channels or worried about the little Polish blonde at the bank. The one he’s told her about. Asking if there’s anything more she can do for him with a sly smile after she’s handed over the money. Next thing you know she’ll have titillated him into a divorce, given him a heart attack then copped the lot!
That’s why elderly ladies, more often than not, come to the stall to talk about the loving nature of Rose Quartz. It’s not usually the innervating, restorative energies of quartz crystals they’re interested in although their thoughts may ultimately lie in that direction. Truth is they’re more interested in stimulating affection. Sex is only the consummation of an amorous loving relationship not the egotistical bang-bang desires of men. For most women, sexuality is more a matter of sharing. Its basic character primarily altruistic. Sure they want what they want but they also want love to go with it. For men it’s more egotistical. A desire to dominate. Many women understand and accept this. When they discuss the matter with my wife they might want to try their hand with a quartz crystal but more often it’s Rose Quartz. That first then maybe try their luck with a crystal later.
There are things I can talk about and things that I can’t. Indeed there are things I can’t say in this post,
but I will mention Celia, a delightful well-spoken great grandmother who came to our stall only recently.
Quiet, dignified and well dressed. Trying to look attractive. Clearly happily married. Talked about her husband with pride. Ex forces man. Ran his own business. Kept himself fit and still a good looking man. Trouble was he didn’t seem to be interested in her any more.
I listened to her hardly daring to say anything. They’d been married well over forty years. Who could say what was what? Maybe he just didn’t like what he saw when she had her kit off. In that case nothing could help let alone a stick of silica dioxide. Time to give it up. Retire gracefully into the bosom of family. No point getting desperate about what she couldn’t have any more.
It wasn’t easy. There was no point saying these things. Even so I still wanted to advise. A crystal wasn’t necessarily the answer. Rose Quartz however was a loving, calming stone. It was much more likely to help.
I’ll never forget what she said. She didn’t need that kind of help. She wanted her husband to be busy with her the way he once was.
She gave me a look. As though to suggest I knew what she meant. I knew all right but it was somewhere I didn’t want to go. Even so it made me think. How would I feel about my own wife when she was that age, and how would she feel about me? It’s not exactly an uncommon thing. The lines from a poem by Robert Herrick who wrote in the seventeenth century came to mind. “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles to-day…To-morrow will be dying.” True it was titled, To the Virgins, to make much of Time but somehow the words seemed appropriate and there many old people who think that crystals, one way or another, can delay the whole process. I wanted to tell Celia to have a chat with her doctor and maybe go to some sex therapy classes on the NHS but didn’t have the heart. He’d probably suggest she go private and recommend some scoundrel he knew who’d give her the talk and take all her money. I didn’t want to do that. In the end I sold her a superb Rose Quartz crystal pendant. A beautiful piece of Madagascan set in silver on a silver chain and suggested she get her husband to fasten it round her neck. She liked that. It was very romantic. I liked it too. She seemed happy and the price was good for both of us. I hoped it might help in some way and that her husband would adore her again in the way that she wanted. She was so neat and feisty a lady. Age shouldn’t matter, not really, only for most men it does. That and appearance. For most men appearance is everything and they make their women know it. But then women can be equally the same.
That’s where crystals come in. When I hear the tap, tap, tap of a walking stick or see a dolly on a trolley approaching the stall I know that they’re coming in hope. And who am I, as a market trader sailing the high seas of commerce, to deny any sex starved geriatric the expectation that… every crystal would do its duty…
And how do I know about these things? Well I’ll tell you. It’s because they talk to me about it! It’s not as if they immediately come out with it, like have you got a crystal that will give me an erection? or a friend of mine told me that some of these crystals can get to parts of you that not even Viagra can reach. No, the connection between crystals and sex is broached in a more subtle manner. Usually as part of a conversation which develops into something specific to that particular area and, bit by bit, to that particular person. It is a bad idea to ‘feed’ this conversation in any way or worse still try to direct it. It is the customer who, in my experience, wants to talk. Hopes you will listen and eventually comment. In nearly all such cases it is enough for me to show interest by nodding my head and saying things like ‘yes’ or ‘right’. Waiting to see where they’re going before coming out with any views of my own.
It is only when the customer, often an elderly gentleman on his own or occasionally accompanied by his wife, is well along with his ‘enquiry’ and wants to say something that I begin to discuss the powers of crystals and their possible healing energies in directions which might further their interest. There’s nothing crude in any of it. Nothing rude or naughty. I try to stay analytical. Objective though encouraging. Above all interested and hopeful! Let me make it clear then. There’s no talk about willies or pussies. Most definitely not the latter to elderly ladies! What on earth would they take me for? No, tiptoeing my way round the subject like the Sugar Plum Fairy is far more likely to inculcate interest than taking a Kango Hammer to such sensibilities. In matters such as these being a good listener ‘with a certain interest’ let us say, is all that is needed. A mutual understanding between a customer’s delicate interest and possible needs and a crystal healer’s considerate knowledge and advice is always best. The geriatric as the unspoken sex patient and me as the crystal doctor from whom they seek advice. And if they like what I advise, purchase a crystal that might re-energise the physical side of their lives.
The above is a general but accurate description of the course of such contact. When they ask me, as they invariably do, whether I’ve ever tried it, I’m always truthful with my reply. Fortunately I’ve never needed such therapy myself, the word being key to the whole process. Crystal healing viewed as a kind of therapy. Often emotional, soothing, relaxing, stabilising and calming. Often innervating and enlivening. Physically as well as psychologically. Working to restore physical as well as emotional strengths and balance. The idea of their restorative power is particularly important. That is the general healing purpose of crystals. To create and promote wellbeing. The two notions feed off each other. Restoration promotes wellbeing and vice-versa.
It requires no great leap of imagination however to take the idea of spiritual restoration the small but necessary step forward required to shift the parameter from the realm of the spiritual to that of the physical. It is the process from where the story of this post begins because bridging the two worlds of the physical and the spiritual is the sexual. The purpose of crystal healing is to create the fundamental unity of both. Explaining the value of quartz crystals in these terms makes the possibility of their innervating and restorative powers being better understood.
Look, it’s all very simple. We run a business. We don’t judge people on the basis of age or appearance. All people who come to the stall are equal, but then being business people, those who clearly have money to spend are more equal than others, so when old George appeared with his Zimmer Frame and straggly grey beard innocuously enquiring about the loving powers of Rose Quartz, I accepted his interest for what it was. He’d clearly heard about healing from someone or other. It was only when he returned a week later wanting to talk about the energising powers of quartz crystals and jokingly asked me whether they could do anything for his love life that I suspected where he was going. The initial chuckle between us soon moved on to the subject of innervation.
Were the powers of crystals actually restorative? “Physically I mean?” he enquired, showing me a full set of dentures. “Did they… could they?”
He left the last part of his enquiry incomplete, waiting for me to answer.
“You want to know whether they might…”
I hesitated. He could have been a retired copper. Trying to catch me out on some indiscretion. We ran a straight business but the law was as flexible as they wanted to make it!
“Whether they’ll help me get an erection,” he finally came out bold as brass.
I could have blushed with shame! Respectable Old George with his Zimmer Frame, asking me questions like that! The mind boggled. I just didn’t want to think what he had on the go. He could have been a Tory M.P. with some young girl tucked away in his London flat courtesy of expenses on the taxpayer. Vital for his constituency work no doubt. His blue rinse wife making the rounds of the Women’s Institute and doing charitable good deeds somewhere in Surrey all unsuspecting while her husband was hoping a quartz crystal would help him get it up in the capital.
I looked at him direct. “If you buy one of the big ones, grip it in your hand and think about what you want there’s every chance it’ll help,” I said encouragingly. “The energies will do their bit. Make you feel active. More aggressive. You’ve just got to enjoy the idea,” I added positively.
I could hear myself being a therapist. In some areas of medicine, placebos play an important role. The same might be said of crystals as an agent of sex therapy. Who could tell? George bought one of my largest double terminated quartz crystals with a satisfied smile. Twenty quid thank you very much. If he scored it would be worth ten times more to him only I didn’t want him to come back telling me. Some occasionally did. Like I was some kind of father confessor, but they’re only a few out of many. Maybe it didn’t work for the majority or maybe they just don’t want to communicated the details. That said no-one’s ever asked for their money back! When they return on occasion it isn’t their wives they’re talking about.
This brings me to the other half of the matter. Old ladies and crystals. If you don’t want to know you can stop here. I don’t mind, but when I say old ladies I mean old ladies who are still sparky if you know what I mean. Many are wealthy. Often upper crust. Husbands died and left them a packet. But then it’s not all about
Lady Agnes up at The Lodge. There are all kinds of elderly women, of all classes, though the great majority are in the middle, for whom the fires haven’t faded and to whom the hormonal buzz still applies. Keen to step out from respectability for a final last gasp fling, preferably with a stranger. Anyone else is too risky. Too close. Even so, this kind of thing is the exception let it be said. The truth more often closer to home. A genuine desire to appeal to their husbands. Married forty years and still keen. Flabby in every department yet still wanting, still hoping to excite. Tired of going to bed early with him busy working the Babe Station channels or worried about the little Polish blonde at the bank. The one he’s told her about. Asking if there’s anything more she can do for him with a sly smile after she’s handed over the money. Next thing you know she’ll have titillated him into a divorce, given him a heart attack then copped the lot!
That’s why elderly ladies, more often than not, come to the stall to talk about the loving nature of Rose Quartz. It’s not usually the innervating, restorative energies of quartz crystals they’re interested in although their thoughts may ultimately lie in that direction. Truth is they’re more interested in stimulating affection. Sex is only the consummation of an amorous loving relationship not the egotistical bang-bang desires of men. For most women, sexuality is more a matter of sharing. Its basic character primarily altruistic. Sure they want what they want but they also want love to go with it. For men it’s more egotistical. A desire to dominate. Many women understand and accept this. When they discuss the matter with my wife they might want to try their hand with a quartz crystal but more often it’s Rose Quartz. That first then maybe try their luck with a crystal later.
There are things I can talk about and things that I can’t. Indeed there are things I can’t say in this post,
but I will mention Celia, a delightful well-spoken great grandmother who came to our stall only recently.
Quiet, dignified and well dressed. Trying to look attractive. Clearly happily married. Talked about her husband with pride. Ex forces man. Ran his own business. Kept himself fit and still a good looking man. Trouble was he didn’t seem to be interested in her any more.
I listened to her hardly daring to say anything. They’d been married well over forty years. Who could say what was what? Maybe he just didn’t like what he saw when she had her kit off. In that case nothing could help let alone a stick of silica dioxide. Time to give it up. Retire gracefully into the bosom of family. No point getting desperate about what she couldn’t have any more.
It wasn’t easy. There was no point saying these things. Even so I still wanted to advise. A crystal wasn’t necessarily the answer. Rose Quartz however was a loving, calming stone. It was much more likely to help.
I’ll never forget what she said. She didn’t need that kind of help. She wanted her husband to be busy with her the way he once was.
She gave me a look. As though to suggest I knew what she meant. I knew all right but it was somewhere I didn’t want to go. Even so it made me think. How would I feel about my own wife when she was that age, and how would she feel about me? It’s not exactly an uncommon thing. The lines from a poem by Robert Herrick who wrote in the seventeenth century came to mind. “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles to-day…To-morrow will be dying.” True it was titled, To the Virgins, to make much of Time but somehow the words seemed appropriate and there many old people who think that crystals, one way or another, can delay the whole process. I wanted to tell Celia to have a chat with her doctor and maybe go to some sex therapy classes on the NHS but didn’t have the heart. He’d probably suggest she go private and recommend some scoundrel he knew who’d give her the talk and take all her money. I didn’t want to do that. In the end I sold her a superb Rose Quartz crystal pendant. A beautiful piece of Madagascan set in silver on a silver chain and suggested she get her husband to fasten it round her neck. She liked that. It was very romantic. I liked it too. She seemed happy and the price was good for both of us. I hoped it might help in some way and that her husband would adore her again in the way that she wanted. She was so neat and feisty a lady. Age shouldn’t matter, not really, only for most men it does. That and appearance. For most men appearance is everything and they make their women know it. But then women can be equally the same.
That’s where crystals come in. When I hear the tap, tap, tap of a walking stick or see a dolly on a trolley approaching the stall I know that they’re coming in hope. And who am I, as a market trader sailing the high seas of commerce, to deny any sex starved geriatric the expectation that… every crystal would do its duty…
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