Mrs Crow at the market

Are You Free?

Whilst I sit here in my sweet little market pitch full of jolly books enjoying the peace and quiet that only a recession brings - thankyou boys, just what I needed.. the chance to rest my feet and stay poor - Jon is running around at the bookshop trying to do nineteen different things as well as keep Arkwright's till from biting his fingers every time he goes in for a pound coin. 

As it is so quiet, I slipped away yesterday to meet my Aunty Reet in Croydon and the empty aisles in Debenhams, strung hopefully with Christmas jumpers positively sparkling with static, were spooky. It was like an episode of Survivors. But without the jokes.

Naturally, I made a complete fool of myself by buying a six zone ticket for the tram from Beckenham - the sun was shining directly on the screen.. It was! - and then, once in store, so distracted was I by the surfeit of shimmering PRODUCTS, I blindly tried to go up the down escalator. The bored security guard was very nice about it. Apparently old dears do it all the time. 

Finally, suffocating under the weight of my winter garb, I found the restaurant and my aunt and sister and nephew with the place to themselves. The baby boy was sweating and I stripped off, practically to my vest. And we were all gasping for something to drink. Imagine how hot it must get during an economic boom. Meanwhile, in the near distance, gondolas loaded with twinkling decos, bundles of bathtowels, PJs and Simpsons mugs remained untroubled by purchase, breakage or theft.

Eventually, too parched to sit there any longer inspite of the various beverages, and maddened by Slade, we swapped gifts and cards as planned and kissed our dear aunt, the last link to our mum, goodbye and stepped out into the cavernous shopping centre where it was so dead we could have done cartwheels. If we hadn't got so many bloody clothes on.

Outside, where there is sky, the cold clobbered us instantly.

Back at the cosy covered market, the weather beyond the swing doors is as dodgy as our prospects but inside we are warm. The playlist has worked a treat and with two floors of stalls where you can get anything from tea cups to bathmats, olive oil to bath oil, gloves to paper doves, it strikes me that we have our very own department store here. Only with no Simpsons tankards, and you don't get an electric shock off everything you touch. Oh, and Keith has just walked in with a pint for everyone from the boozer across the road. Bet the staff in Debenhams are gagging for one of those..

eek! What've I gone and done?

Traders meeting last night. One I didn't attend on account of me being in a cold pool teaching kids to swim. But in an attempt to show willing, I did leave a list of ideas. Thus, when I got in this morning, I was immediately Mrs Unpopular At the Market because of my controversial suggestion that we prop the double swing doors open. Partly it is 'cos I'm a shopgirl at heart that I have a default that requires easy access for shoppers, pushchairs, wheelchairs, shopping trolleys, dogs, cats, squirrels etc, not just out of the kindness of my little ole heart, but also because it makes it far more likely they will part with their readies if it is made less complicated. I mean, I have been that harassed wifey with an unsteady buggy unbalanced by not just by my state of mind, but children and bags too, and have reached my destination shop, the one for which the entire hellish troll down the high street has been made, and taken one look at the awkward entrance and thought: "I can't be arsed.." and turned round and gone home. Naturally, the weather forecast for the weekend is an artic front sweeping in from the north (where else might it come from I wonder?) and we ain't just talking financial. Meanwhile, Eddie the landlord is rubbing his hands together happily as there's no point in putting the heaters on if the doors are open. And all the stallholders are eyeing me with distrust as they adjust their extra length woolly scarves and hoik up their thermals. In my defence, I am the one in the artic firing line as my pitch is right opposite the open doorway. To say nothing of the number of times I have leapt off my perch to hold the doors back for incomers.

Meanwhile, my other foolhardy suggestion was to switch the dang radio off from time to time, just to give the smackers of the bint who sings I Kissed a Girl a gazillion times a day a break. Eddie came up to me this morning and said, Congratulations! You are officially in charge of the iPod playlist. Eek! What've I done? I was absolutely dreading the prospect of Slade and Wizard and Greg Lake on a commercial radio loop at the market this festive trading season and had in mind something a tedge classier, some Dixie Hummingbirds spliced with Luther, some Anita O'Day, a bit of Buddy Holly; even Bing Swingin' On a Star once or twice has to be healthier for the soul than Last Christmas I Gave You My Sodding Heart a hundred times interpersed with ads for GGGGarmin.. But now I have to come up with the goods.  What will my fellow fingerless-gloved traders make of Camille? Or will my playlist be jettisoned in favour of nineteen earworms in a row followed by a commercial for chlamydia? No, really. Second thoughts, anyone got a copy of Windsor Davies and Lofty doing 'Whispering Grass' I could borrow..... ?

Throwing Pots

Next to the frocks lives Katie and she has the most divine ceramics. If I was rich, I'd have 'em all over my house. She's selling fine, fragile vases and cups, bowls, decos and they are a magnet to  a shopper's fingers as everybody needs to touch them. I live in dread of the inevitable sound of posh pot shattering against concrete painted terracotta red, but she reckons the only people to smash her stuff  are her fellow traders - my predecessor notably when he lost his grip on the concertina partition doors and they swung out across the aisle and took out some mugs she had hanging from a cross-beam. God, I hope I'm not in the market pitch equivalent of the keyboard player of the Grateful Dead. I watch as she closes yet another sale and wraps the goods beautifully. Against the backdrop of fashion and facing my space (haha!), it is like having serenity cast in clay and glazed with sublime.

Mouse Spotted

All peaceful here at the market, though a mouse was spotted earlier. It didn't buy anything but I believe it came in for a frock off the stall opposite.

They are newcomers, the frocksellers, and where once I gazed upon a cream brick vista rowed with calico covered retro chairs that the world and his wife sat upon regardless of price ticket, to eat their sarnies and phone their sisters and shuffle through receipts, now the acoustics have been baffled by twin rails of bright smocks and long halter-neck dresses, just this side of Abigail's Party.

Through the grim rain of the weekend, I sat here ignored in my neat unit lined with tidy books while across the way, armfuls of funky prints on hangers were ferried down to the lav that now doubles as a fitting room (it is nice and wide),  and ladies whirled their skirts before me and checked their behinds obliviously in the full length mirror leaning against the wall. During the briefest of static moments in their trade, I stood up to straighten a board book that had been sucked by a toddler I'd been left to babysit (more of that another time...) and caught myself regarding my own image. It took me a second to snap out of it, so strange was it to have my head and feet in the same frame.

Now the stall is shuttered and locked and the steam machine like Wall-E with a full facial beard sleeps. And it seems terribly, well, quiet. I keep expecting an excited garment to slip its hanger, sashay into the aisle, get drunk and make a scene.