Pete The Market Trader

For weeks now I have been plagued by punters that all seem to want dressing gowns.

Finally concerned with all of these potential sales that I must be missing I went out of my way and brought some in.

I thought great I’m going to smash it.

Sure enough, the usual mob turned up with the same question:

“Got any dressing gowns?”

“Yes”, was my triumphant reply pointing to the massive pile of newly acquired gear.

Every response was the same:

“Oh” and then

“Have you got any cotton ones?” Or

“Do you have them with a tiger on?” Or

“Have you got any blue spotted ones, with an Arsenal badge on the front?”

The truth is they don’t just want any dressing gowns, they want the one that they once saw in Marks and Spenser.

And they want it for a quid.

There was one lady who asked for exactly what I had in stock and when I showed her what she had asked for her response was,

“Are you hear next week?”

I replied, “I’m here every week love, I’m here every week, have been for twenty-five years”.

That’s when she uttered the immortal line

“I’ll tell her”, referring to some mythical woman that she pretended to be shopping for and walked off.

Back to the basics for me then.

That’s this week’s report from Pete the Market trader.  The man on the street.  Literally.

This week Jella who’s got the big ladies fashion stall on Western, had a team of lads chopping the size tags out of the garments.  I asked him

“What happened mate, did they all come in wrongly sized?”

“No” he replied.

“Why are you cutting the labels then?”  I asked him.

“We’re taking them out and tagging them in the same garments one size down”.

“Why?”  I enquired.

“Because”, he replied, “That way, if a punter is a size twelve, they try on a size ten on the stall and it fits, it makes them feel better”.

“And?” I said.

“They sell better”.  He said.

This mystifies me, it doesn’t mean that you are any slimmer.  Put a tape measure around your waist and inches will not have miraculously disappeared, it’s just a number.  Clothes either fit or they don’t.  Also it goes against a conversation that I once had with Georgie on the dresses back in the day.  He had a range that came in four sizes: S, M, L, and FB.

I asked him once, ‘What does FB stand for?’

“What do you f***ing think” was his reply.

I paused for a moment and then asked:

“Sell many FB’s do you?”

“Actually,” he said, “It’s our best-selling size.”

That’s this week’s report from Pete the Market trader.  The man on the street.  Literally.

I was packing up Finchley this week, putting the last section of the trays into the van when at about four o’clock lady punter wandered on the stall.

“Are you packing up?” she asked whilst watching me put the last of my gear in the van.

“No love” I replied, “I’m just practising”.

Ignoring my sarcasm, she went on.

“But it’s still early,” she said.

“I’ve been here since seven o’clock this morning” I informed her.

“You’d take more money if you stayed open later,” she told me.

Now bearing in mind that I get up at five and I don’t get home until seven I am in no hurry to extend my working day and so it was at this point that I did what I do in situations like these and went into my best Basil Fawlty impersonation:

“Oh, you know all about it now do you?  Oh, you’re a market trader now are you?  Anything else I’m doing wrong?  The way I set my stall up perhaps?  The way I write my signs?  Oh please do enlighten me with your wisdom and experience”.

She gave me a vacant stare and then walked away.  I probably lost a potential punter but it made me feel better.

That’s this week’s report from Pete the Market Trader, the man on the street, literally.

I love the British summer, the rains warmer.  It chucked it down Wednesday and I had to put a ‘rig’ up.

Some market traders have to put a stall up regardless but I am one of the lucky ones that only has to put a roof up if it rains which means that on dry days I get to work beneath an open sky.

I think it is one of the best things about my job.  If I wanted a roof above me I would have got a job in an office.

No matter how tight we pull the sheet over the top, when it rains really heavily, puddles of water form in the sheet on top of the stall and if we leave these too long eventually the weight of the water causes the sheet to collapse flooding all of the gear beneath.  So from time to time we have to go around pushing the water off.

Michael the towels boy Thomas was with him this week on account of the school holidays, he is young keen and eager to help.  After watching us push the water off a few times he asked if he could help and we were happy to let him.

We gave him a broom and we watched as he approached the first puddles and STANDING OUTSIDE OF THE STALL pushed it with the broom.

We watched him stand there helpless as the water cascaded all over him, soaking the poor mite through.

It was the look on his face a split second before the water hit.

It was Michael who laughed the loudest.  Thomas, not so much.

That’s this week’s report from Pete the Market Trader.  The man on the street.  Literally.

I thought this week that I would share with you some of the wonderful things that my lovely customers sometimes say.

This is brought on by one of my Finchley customers asking me to show her a polo shirt in extra-large.

I held the shirt up for the lady and then said:

“That’s the size I wear love”.

She looked me up and down and then said,

“It’s for my brother, he’s the same size as you in the shoulders only he doesn’t have a tummy”.

Smashing.  None taken.

Of course this works both ways.

It reminded me of when cousin Darren used to work for me.  He was young and inexperienced and he asked one of the punters

“When’s it due?”

At this point both me and Michael the Towels started to smirk.

“When’s what due?” she replied.

“The baby” Darren said as his realisation of the situation started to grow.

“What baby?” she replied.  By this stage me and Mick were grinning.

Then Darren, still persevering, silently lifted a finger and pointed at the woman’s stomach.

Needless to say the lady wasn’t pregnant.

She really wasn’t amused.  Me and Mick really were.

The moral of this story is never ask a woman if she is pregnant.  Even if she is has a bump the size of a house and is buying baby clothes and nappies whilst wearing a t shirt that says: ‘I’m pregnant’.

That’s this week’s report from Pete the Market Trader.  The man on the street.  Literally.