Okay, if you’re
still with me I want you to imagine what it’s like being out on the street seven-thirty
a.m. till six at night, five sometimes six days a week throughout the months
October till April. It’s dark early mornings and pretty cold too all the way
through the day so you need to keep warm. Clothing helps but there’s nothing
like tea and a cigarette, and later a coffee or two. The caffeine gives anyone
working a bit of a boost. Consider this though. Most men working the markets aren’t
exactly what you’d call kids. They’re at the higher end of the thirty to fifty
age bracket, many of them with the same nasty problem.
It’s what happens
to them when they get older. Enlarged prostate! Drink a tea or a coffee and two
minutes later the urine’s all ready to flow, only the control they once had
just isn’t there anymore. I don’t want to get personal but you can either piss
in your pants or head for the café where you’re well known because in nine out
of ten street markets there’s nothing official in the way of a toilet. As for
pubs you’ll always be sure of a welcome, just as long as you’re buying and that
means more pissing. Like you’re on some kind of treadmill.
Tea or coffee keeps
traders warm and gives them a lift on a real cold and frosty but it comes with
a price for a man with a problem. When you’ve got to go then you’ve just got to
go. Holding it in is simply too painful so you ask your mate on the next stall,
third line of the title. It’s okay, he’s heard it before. You say it to him and
he says it to you, like you’re in some kind of street opera. The pair of you
desperately dancing from one leg to another singing can you keep an eye on the stall… and after a while when they’ve
all had their tea a whole bloody encore of traders hopping around wanting a
piss singing the same line like it’s a scene straight out of Puccini, the only
thing missing being a dagger, a jealous husband and some heroine or other but
preferably not the one in the café who does you a bacon roll regular cos she’s
one of those typical up for a shag grannies of seventy.
It all sounds straightforward
enough. You ask the guys each side of you or the fruit moll over the street and
they’ll keep a reasonable lookout. Most of everything’s on the same level. Straight
out the pound shop only three times the price. Then there’s me and my crystals.
Something totally different. On street markets like these most traders are
reasonable types. If they say they’ll keep an eye while you’re emptying then
they’ll give it a glance. Maybe even wander over on occasion. What they won’t
do is keep an eye if they know you’re pissing it up in the pub. If you’re
straight with them they’ll be with you. They’ve got sharp eyes and a promise is
always a promise.
It’s not the same
though if you’re on some private market. Traders who work markets like Covent
Garden are quite something else. Most sell craft of one kind or another, others
jewellery, ornaments and collectables. There are days when everything’s mixed
or just one of a kind. What you never get are fruit and veg men, canned or
jarred foods, cooking utensils or cheap cosmetics. What the craft crowd call
the shit end. Those who trade in private markets are also one of a kind. Affable
on the surface but full of bile underneath. They’re in deadly competition with each
other. Resenting every penny anyone else takes because it should have been them,
and piling up yellow resentment by the bucket load when they see you doing
serious business! You all work together but make no mistake, they’re not really
your friends. That said, when you urgently need a piss on one of these markets
and you ask the guy working the stall next to you if he’ll keep an eye you know
he’ll say yes. But you also know that he won’t, and furthermore wouldn’t give a
jonny jack rabbit if a gang of Romanian women showed up carrying holdalls!
So when you ask
that favour and get a positive response you know it means just about nothing.
It’s the word of someone who’d frankly prefer to see you piss in your pants and
in your heart of hearts you know it. And in his heart of hearts he knows it too
but it’s not something you’re likely to bring up in some ruddy confessional.
You asking for a promise you know he won’t keep and him making a promise he
knows he won’t either. Mutually assured lying! So you rush off close to
bursting, pretending to yourself that if fifty Albanians came from all parts of
London in a co-ordinated attempt to clean out your stall he’d be there to fight
them off, even though knowing the truth while you’re pissing your tea out he’s
keeping watch on their behalf and
helping them piss all your profits
away. But then it’s not East Europeans you need to be worried about but the
French kids who’ve gone over your green gem trees like locusts and left not a
wrack behind!
So even your
pissing was fearful and painful and while you’re doing it you hate the trader
next to you selling those hateful little models of Swiss chalets and cuckoo
clocks and you’d really like to piss all over them and promise yourself that
one day you will! And when you’re back at your stall you see that nothing has
gone at all and that you’re okay, only you’re not because two of your willows
aren’t there anymore and what you resent more than anything else is not that
the bastard on the stall next to you let you down which was on the cards
anyway, but that you’d been happy thinking nothing was nicked then plunged into
despair when you realised you’d got it wrong and having thanked him prematurely
you can’t turn round and say something filthy. And what is the really bad thing in all this? Well I’ll tell you.
You want to get your own back, so when he next needs to go for a piss you tell
him, sure, don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye
out and naturally you don’t. Trouble is he doesn’t get any thieves coming
to his stall because nobody wants any of the shit that he’s selling!
So much for putting
your trust in others! The people you spend time with day after day. Talking the
endless rubbish that traders incessantly talk about. Everyone competing against
one another in a mutually assured urination fest! Okay, you need to go for a
wee. He promises to keep an eye on your stall. In return you get him a tea as a
thank you. He drinks up and needs a wee likewise so you promise to keep an eye
in return for which he returns the favour. No
sugar mate I’m part diabetic! Now imagine this going on all over the
market. Two to three hundred traders all running across to the gents in a hurry
then scurrying back holding more cups of tea. And so it goes on like some
perverted version of La Traviata.
The fact is that
anywhere you are and whatever market you’re working, if you’re on your own you
can trust no-one. Everyone’s liable to
let anyone down. Not because they’re intrinsically bad but because looking
after anyone else’s stall isn’t rightly their business. Their stall is their business, not yours. Why should any trader
have to act as anyone else’s unpaid security? What for? Surely not the cup of
tea you’re bringing back for them! No, they’ve got their own stuff to look
after and sell thank you very much. You and your gear come way down the list, besides
which, they don’t like you or your lousy stuff anyway. Fuck you and your talk
about crystals and healing, and all the crazies who give you money for bits of
rock you dug up in some fucking back garden. And there they are, trying to make an honest living selling designer teapots
or zip up penis warmers for dogs, and then there’s you and the shit that’s
taking the food out of the mouths of their kids!
Look after your
stall while you’re having a wee? No worries!
Okay, now you’ve
got some idea of what it’s like working on a market are you still willing to
give it a try? If so I need to tell you that you’ve first got to take the
compulsory Street Traders Test as required by law. It’s quite simple really.
You go to the Snake House at the London Zoo and ask the Head Keeper if you can
put your hand into a cage of rattlesnakes. If he’s agreeable and you come out
alive then you are certified as fit for the job and may I wish you all the best
in your chosen career.
Alternatively of course there’s always bound to be something waiting for you in banking should you change your mind. It’s an occupation that has many compensations, one being an intimate acquaintance with a certain celebrity starlet’s tuning fork.
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