There are certain questions that the punters ask that get an automatic response.

“Will this fit my brother?” always gets the answer, “Yes”.

The fact that I have never met the ladies brother and therefore have absolutely no idea of their size is irrelevant.

“Is the for a boy or a girl?” always gets the response, “They’re unisex my love”, the fact that the garment may be pink and has flowers on it again is neither here nor there, after all, who am I to dictate gender roles.

My favourite pat response is if one of my lady customers refers to me as young man, a ridiculous greeting as I am approaching fifty but when you consider I have punters in their eighties I suppose it’s relative. This always gets met with me singing the second line from the Village People song:

“There’s no need to feel down.”

Most of the time they just look at me blankly.

This week a lady called me young man and after my reply she said “Young man”.

“When you’re in a new town” I responded. And she said “Young man”.

I thought ‘finally someone who’s with it, someone who gets the joke’.

Then I forgot the next line.

One day I hope to make it to the chorus.

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