The working class have no time for crystals or crystal healing, and no interest whatsoever in either. The same goes for our gem trees, pieces of rose quartz, groups of quartz and amethyst crystals, minerals and just about 99% of everything we sell. They do however buy our little resin frogs with red eyes and blue lips mounted on bits of marble and are often interested in fossils. Crystals and crystal healing fall into the occult. Into the sphere of the impractical. A rarified world populated by hippies, people with more money than sense and middle aged women in need.
Spiritual guidance for the working class is provided once a year if that by seeing some looney looking character with a white beard holding a shepherds crook, smiling benevolently at old ladies and muttering vague utterances about social justice in the name of something ending in ghost. They’ve no time for ghosts unless they’re being busted in films and vaguely know about the Church’s lousy historical record on behalf of the poor from their grandfathers. They don’t need spiritual guidance from sparkly stones or crusty looking characters who wouldn’t look out of place at Glastonbury. Crystals and minerals are just coloured rocks. They’re not interested in Eastern religions or tantric philosophies, third eye mumbo jumbo or chakras. Try getting a welder from Newcastle or a bricklayer from Wigan to stroke a bit of rose quartz or feel the ‘energy’ in a double terminated crystal and he’ll get seriously suspicious!
As for their wives they mainly do as they’re told, when they’re not spending their time on the hen party circuit that is or walloping the kids. No, working class blokes have an altogether different set of spiritual beliefs. Theirs is a more realistic faith reinforced every week by giving fifty quid of their hard earned money to the camp they follow and whose colours they wear… to the healing balm of their local football club so they can watch their heroes spit all over the place, kick their opponents and try and put a ball where they think it should go and fail nine times out of ten! And for that their saints earn more in ninety minutes then they do in ten years. Now that’s what I call faith! What you could call being energised! Handing out your dosh every week to intellectual and moral cripples instead of giving it to their wife to buy decent food for herself and the kids rather than crap from the takeaways or cholesterol gungies in batter because they can’t be bothered to cook. Since when have you seen so many grossly fat women and children? They weren’t there in the sixties or seventies when working class girls were lithe and gangly good lookers.
So take fifty quid and chuck it at what you believe in. I mean, members of the crystal healing fraternity don’t get 200 grand for ninety minutes prancing around. But then there are con-artists and con-artists! Has anyone known a Premier League player into crystals and healing? Don’t be ridiculous. Their artistry’s in another league altogether with a mass following from a very different set of believers. If you believe in football and football players you can’t allow yourself to believe in anything else. They’re mutually exclusive. Faith is indivisible. Crystal healing and footballers don’t go. I’m not talking of just the northern working class here. It’s exactly the same in the south. Go and watch Chelsea or Spurs, Arsenal, West Ham or Fulham. How many women do you see wearing crystal pendants or men stroking bits of rose quartz let alone Bloodstone. The only yin and yang they know about is something on the menu of an oriental buffet. But then you just never know. They’ll need balance alright if they chomp into a Scotch bonnet chilli and fall off a chair.
There are exceptions of course. A hard boiled looking nut came to my stall at Leather Lane a few weeks before Christmas. Just got out of the nick rumour had it. For getting money from somewhere with violence. Wanted presents for all of his family and liked the look of the trees. Bought the whole bloody lot ten minutes later along with the malachite necklaces. Cleaned me out. Table empty for six hundred quid and got it away in a taxi. I stood there dumbfounded. Couldn’t believe what was happening. Neither could the fruit and veg men around me or Diamond Sid. How could he have sold all that shit? Later someone joked that he’d buried the money after a robbery and the police hadn’t found it. Yeah, he’d got out, dug it all up and come straight to me. The lads on the stalls could never keep a straight face.
That said I’ve tried hard to sell amethyst and quartz crystal groups to working class men and women from both north and south along with the trees. The men aren’t interested in any of it. Not even as gifts for their wives, mothers, sisters or daughters. Women are a little more so, if they’re on their own that is. They sometimes ask about the stones and if we make the trees ourselves, but they never ask for the prices. Doing that, I think, makes them feel committed to buy in the eyes of the trader. Half-way to being obliged when in truth it’s nothing like that at all. Only maybe that’s what they think! It’s indicative of a lack of self-confidence. Asking for price being on the road to commitment. Middle class women are more self-assured. Part of growing up in a specific family culture. As for healing that’s another thing altogether. I can barely broach the subject to working class men without being asked, “you taking the piss?” Working class women, however, sometimes ask questions about healing but can’t see any concrete connection between crystals, minerals and any kind of wellbeing. Feeling calm, happiness and love doesn’t necessarily follow just because you’re holding a shiny pink piece of rock. And how close to the truth they are they’ll probably never know!
Our experience on London street markets demonstrated to us that there’s no real correlation between the price of goods and working class interest. We tried dropping prices down to rock bottom. Just over cost or sometimes even taking a loss. Trying to tempt people with offers. It makes no difference. It wasn’t just a lack of interest we were dealing with. We carefully analysed this by considering the amount of time people spent looking at our goods. In the great majority of cases, working class men didn’t bother looking at all. A quick glance and they moved off, or if they did look it’s brief, while they’re still on the move. Sometimes, if they hesitate a fraction I’d try chatting to them. Always with the greatest tact and politeness. Not about our stuff. More about themselves. Were they on holiday in London or which part of the country they came from? What work they did or about family background. I only rarely ask if they like our display. Even less if they might like to buy a gift for someone. Even at a few pence for a child the answer’s invariably no. Say a quid for a crystal and their faces turn blank and they leave fast. It’s a fundamental disinterest that we’re dealing with and there’s no getting round it.
We had the perfect experience of this when like a couple of virgins we took a stall at the Great Dorset Steam Fair. It was our first and we had no idea it was a 100% working class do. Beautiful belching steam traction engines with names like the Firefly and the Goliath; brass bands playing the Floral Dance; endless fish and chips and sausage and burger outlets along with doner kebab bacteria factories; model tanks and aeroplanes and endless stalls selling industrial tools and machines, model making kits and radio controlled toys. Nearly everyone there had a dog, a Staffordshire bull terrier or cross so that whole place stank of dog shit. Put your feet somewhere you shouldn’t and you were squelching in it. Even now, at a distance, I cannot speak of the toilets!
It was into such a situation that we arrived at the stall we were given and set out our stuff. Good connections for our powerful halogen lights and that night it looked beautiful with the twin rows of crystal pendants on leathers hung out on bungies and the gem trees, quartz and amethyst groups almost glowing under the light. We’d be taking money here fast!
The next four hours till eleven disabused us completely. The people who stopped to look regarded our stuff as a total anomaly. Something that just shouldn’t have been there! “Where are you from,” they asked, meaning what are you doing here? Others, we observed, deliberately chose not to look, walking straight past the stall with their eyes staring away into the night. During that time no-one asked us a question about any item we had, what it was or where it came from, let alone price. As the experience went on we realised that it wasn’t disinterest alone. It was, we sensed, a strange kind of fear. They were afraid to talk. Afraid to ask, and it wasn’t just to do with price. The things we were selling were totally unfamiliar to them. In plain terms they felt embarrassed. They had their world and our things were from another. A middle class planet of plummy accents and Waitrose, while theirs was chip butties, sugary donuts and steam. Just after eleven a miracle happened. A lady walking the dog with her husband asked me the price of a ‘tiny’. It looked lovely with its garnet leaves. I said a quid, for a joke really, as it was six, but the look of horror on her face! “A pound!” she declaimed querulously, as though I was a banker trying to rob her. “We’re not stopping here Horace.”
That’s what we were facing for the next three days. The following day it was worse! No-one even stopped to talk to us. Not a word. It was like we’d been blackballed. No George you’re not talking to those people. They’re hippies. No jobs, never worked for a living…The experience was so interesting and strange. We knew our stuff looked beautiful and we sensed they were somehow fighting against it. They couldn’t allow themselves to like it. It would be cultural treachery!
We packed up on the evening of the second day without selling a thing and put all our stuff in the van. We weren’t middle class. We both came from working class backgrounds and regarded ourselves as such, yet we were different. Self-educated. We’d read widely as kids. H.G.Wells, Kipling and foreign classics. Had an interest in so many things. We’d gone to various universities and outshone the best the middle class had to offer. But above all we were self-assured, confident, and had boundless energy. People who were quite unafraid. We had the best of middle class values, so what did it make us?
I’ll tell you. We don’t run when we’re faced with a challenge. And we know how to talk to people. We understand what they are and we never look down on anyone, or up! That’s more than I can say for those who regard themselves as our betters.
We don’t look down on you cos we aint got the time. In it. In it. In it!
