Pete The Market Trader

The Spring Madness Continues

June 7, 2017

This week’s smartest punter award goes to the lady buying perfumes from ‘Holistic Stan’.

Now as market traders we have a thing about discount. I know that you all think that you are expected to ask for discount because you are on a market but you are not in Marrakesh now. If something is up for a pound just pay the pound and be happy and three items does not constitute a bulk buy. Having said that if you are spending good money feel free to kick us.

Stan’s customer spent good money. She spent ninety-seven quid and Stan said:

“Darling, if you spend over a hundred pound you get ten percent off”.

“I’ve got all I need!” replied the lady, indignant at his attempt to sell her more perfume.

“But Darling” said Stan “If you buy one more it works out cheaper”.

“I don’t want to spend the extra three pound” she said and walked off.

You can’t help some people.

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

Pete The Market Trader

I don’t think they’re Jeckle’s

June 6, 2017

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Been a better week on the stall this week. Worried Michael turned up with a cotchel of kid’s designer polo shirts. I say designer, it has a logo that is two men on two separate horses playing polo and the word Ralph is nowhere to be seen.

I think that they are kosher and they should be okay with Trading Standards. They remind me a bit of the football shirts that we sold during the world cup that had ‘two lions on a shirt’ and they were okay with them.

That was around the time that we sold the kids tee shirts that had the names of all of top clubs emblazoned over a football with world cup written on it. We had them all: Manchester; Liverpool; Chelsea; Newcastle. It wasn’t until after I had taken delivery of ten boxes of the shirts that Little Laurence pointed out that Manchester and Liverpool didn’t actually play in the world cup.

What do I know about football, from the age of eleven I spent all my Saturday’s working on a record stall in Milton Keynes selling ‘Geoff Love’s Banjo Party’.

As fate would have it the T’s turned out to be a rocket of a line and I went back for another batch.

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

Pete The Market Trader

Red Nose Day

June 6, 2017

It was Red Nose Day this week and as a result all of the kids red sweat shirts I have been selling for the last two months have just walked out of the door. In certain schools the kids go in dressed head to toe in red. I approve of this silliness, although I have to say that I couldn’t help anyone out with requests for red trousers, it’s a market stall not a circus supplier.

I will be making a donation, not because I sold a load of sweat shirts but because it is a good cause and I always give. If you haven’t, you should. There, you’ve been told.

The one thing that I don’t understand is why the mums wait until the very last minute to buy when they’ve known for weeks that it’s coming up and then look at you like it’s your fault that you’ve no longer got the size they want.

It’s like when they are queueing to pay, looking at you as if to say ‘hurry it up’ and then, when they get to the front of the queue, they start looking through their handbag which is the size of a small moon for their purse.

Then, once they have paid, they ask the immortal question:

“What size did I just buy?”.

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

Pete The Market Trader

Stupid Tax

May 11, 2017

I’m not sure if it’s the change in the weather but the punters have gone a bit do-lally.

This week I had two ladies buy FIVE bits from the twenty pence, six for a pound bin.

Ten minutes later I had another punter looking at the three-pound leggings

“How much are the leggings?” she said.

“Three pound sweetheart.”

“Can I have three for ten?” she enquired

I paused momentarily waiting for the penny to drop and then, when it didn’t, I replied

“Of course you can darling”.

Always happy to oblige.

Perhaps it is a bit unfair of me and I should point out that they’re not actually doing themselves any favours, but in situations like these they have to pay what we call ‘stupid tax’.

Besides, even at five for a pound, I like to think that they are still getting a good deal and those leggings are £12.99 a pair in Marks, I know the supplier.

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

The man in the street.

Literally.

 

Pete The Market Trader

Swapsies

May 11, 2017

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,

 

Pete The Market Trader