Swapsies

His real name isn’t Louie, his real name in Malcolm but we call him Louie because he looks like Louie out of Taxi.

Anyway, he had frozen coats left and I had a couple of spare cases of pepper pig pyjamas left over from Christmas.

The fact that they say ‘present from Santa’ and ‘let’s build a snowman’ on the front is largely irrelevant.

Stick pepper on the front of a pair of winceyette pyjama’s and the kids would still want them even if it was the height of summer.

Louie’s a proper old school market trader, he started around the same time as TD and my Dad.

He’s the kind of guy who has a line for everything.

We used to work next to each other on Bovy.

I would be serving a customer and he would come up behind me and say to them something like:

“We used to be in a band together love, we were called the symbolics.

I was sym, and he was……..”

……and then he would just walk off.

Our paths seldom cross now but if any of you are ever on Bletchley market, please go up to the big guy on the kids clothes stall, the one with hair like a clown and say to him this line, the one he always used to say to my punters about me, ‘he’s a lovely man, just don’t give him any money’.

He’ll understand.

That’s this week’s report from Pete the Market Trader.

The man on the street.

Literally,