If there was a market at the South Pole the missus would find it. She’s been attracted to markets wherever we have roamed like an all encompassing magnet. Like the tragic Captain Oates she’d stick her head out of the canvas, sniff the air and say ‘I’m just going outside. I may be some time.’ Unlike the explorer she knew exactly where she was going but I realised that I would need to accompany her as where she was headed was just as much a jungle as the tundra that did for him. The missus always had a fixture list with her. It didn’t list matches it listed markets. It was fuller than our Shrimpers one. There was a market for every day of the week, including Mondays. You could spend your whole holiday in the market place. I suppose that is market forces for you. It wasn’t just French markets, though they were the pinnacle. The missus sniffs them out in this country as well. I’d never been to a single market in my life until I arrived to teach in Gravesend over thirty years ago. There’s still one there today, and we buy prawns and dog chews from the covered market which more than holds its own. We as I have said are traditionalists so we buy them on a Saturday even though the covered market is open everyday. The outside Saturday one is not the same as it was, even though a roofed structure was built a couple of years ago, with the intention of adding an inside out market to the outside and inside one already in existence. There are those who say that Gravesend Market has gone a bit downmarket There has definitely been a slump in the market as far as Gravesend is concerned which is a shame as the stalls that are still there bustle and buzz and sell good quality fruit and veg, plants etc. at a fraction of the price that they charge in the real force in the market place – the Supermarket.
In those days you didn’t need to go to the clubs on a Saturday night to listen to the stand up comics. You just needed to go to Gravesend market to listen to Strongy. Some of you may have seen him on a Saturday evening on TV years ago. He appeared on The Generation Game with Bruce Forsyth. His son did it a couple of times for him as unlike Brucie age was catching up on him. If I remember right which ever one was doing it would take a stack of dinner plates and hold them in a giant fan shape then slide them unerringly into a wicker basket that would take a window dresser in Harrods all morning to do and could have you rolling about in your armchair or your stall or your stall depending whether you were watching at home, in the theatre or in the next stall in the market respectively. When the punters tried, they managed to break the lot of course. I can’t remember who or what was on the conveyer belt. Was it Anthea Redfern or a cuddly toy? When the missus before she became the missus, arrived on the scene, she would go round the rest of the market buying meat bags and cheesecloth tops while I watched Strongy sell fifty ‘last ones’, not for £7.50, not even for £4. He told us what he would do. ‘Ere! Last three. £3.50.’ (We’d just gone decimal). All fifty would go, and another 50 would appear an hour later. Christmas was special. If we’d had children at the time when Strongy was in his prime I would have taken them to Gravesend Market rather than to Selfridges and Santa’s Grotto. I would have probably saved a fortune, been entertained and our kids would have seen the one Santa’s little helper to shift more Christmas presents than Rudolph, Donner and Blitzen, Michael, Schumacher and the rest of those reindeer.
I bought a dinner service off him for my mum. Strongy not Michael Schumacher! I wouldn’t buy a second hand Ferrari off him! I posted it down and still saved a lot of money. It was a Sunflower design, and only one plate broke en route. Mum used the service for our Christmas dinner. She was in tears. She said she’d never had a dinner service before. I feel ashamed now. Not because I had inadvertently put my dad on the spot for not getting one before, but for feeling guilty at the time for buying it from a market trader rather than buying Wedgwood from Lawleys. I don’t feel that way now. My only regret is that we didn’t keep any. I’d have put a piece up on our wall as a plaque in memory. Gravesham Council should do the same for Strongy, though I expect he would have preferred them to put their energies into helping his descendents return to the outside market to ply their trade alongside people selling their local produce, organic meat, affordable shoes and whatever the modern equivalent of cheesecloth is. We love watching Del Boy, Trigger, Boycey and Al in ‘Only Fools and Horses’, even if they are now more often on UK Gold. What we don’t want is to see them only on the history channels along with Cornish Tin Mining, Tutankhamen and Ramessese III. If all towns go the same way the only real market that people will have access to will be the one on EastEnders. It isn’t just me who is saying it. I was in a charity shop just looking around and they were saying the same thing more or less. I did my bit. I bought the board game ‘Market Day’ for 75p. I’ll take it into school, so the next generation will at least get an inkling of what it could be like.
By the time we got to the Market in L’Escala there was not much left. I got the feeling that if we had been there at the beginning there would not have been much to start with. The missus bought some fruit and veg and that was about it, except for a stall manned by latter day hippie types in Mohican hair cuts selling jewellery. Even they were packing up and seemed to resent the missus wanting to look through their Deli wares and Humungous organic dried fruit and nut necklaces to find something to match her tan. Previous Spanish markets had proved to be more fruitful. Our last time in the Costa Brava coincided with a very pleasant and characteristic market at Llafranc which is only that short coastal walk away from Callela de Palafrugell where we stayed. It could have turned out to have been a very long walk indeed as it is an annual market. Palafrugell itself had a massive one, which seemed to meander endlessly through the streets like a church procession. It was a Sunday market. You need a car for this one to carry the stuff home. Despite so many roads having been swallowed up by the market, with mathematical precision we still managed to get lost on the remainder. We went around the one way system twice and the French people we eventually asked responded to our requests of ‘Marche?’ by directing us to a supermarket. Bearing in mind what I’ve been saying about supermarkets you won’t be surprised to hear that we drove straight out of their car park, turned down the road that the missus had pointed out to go down in the first place and turned into a building site adjacent to the street market to park the car.
’ I was expecting you to go hyper.’ The missus said.’ I have my principles.’ I reminded her. ‘But if we get clamped the level of hyperbole will be as high as that fucking yellow crane that we have parked next to.’ ‘All the locals park here!’ she snapped. ‘It’s their land. ‘Bullshit!’ I retorted, making a stand, like I used to do in Science.’ We’re foreigners over here, if you haven’t noticed. We’ll be sitting ducks for the Wheel Clampers and Shunters Club looking for new members. I’ll Sioux the bastards if they do.’ ‘Are you finished dear? She enquired politely. I cussed her as she stuck the knife in. ‘For a start it’s a hire car with Spanish number plates, and there’s nothing new or big about your member.’ Like Yellow Hair I knew my time was up, but I still gave the horn one long final blast.
Shoes and clothes seemed to feature a great deal in this market. I ambled up and down with the boys, though ‘was jostled’ might have described it better. The boys had not been brought up on rugby and were not able to sidestep effectively. Despite being Crystal Palace fans, they had been brought up well enough not to barge their way through the crowds shouting racial abuse at all the Eric Cantonas who were strutting around as if they owned the place. Though more backs than forward, they didn’t need a rugby background to appreciate the need for a cold beer so we took a time-out to pass the time away, as we didn’t know the rules and left the ladies to the scrum. A newspaper helped the time go by, as I guarded the ever increasing number of bags that the women returned with every 40 minutes or so. I showed interest in the first few, but decided to stick to the San Miguel rather than the aftershave lotion and the perfume in the first cohort of bags. It was colder for a start.
There was a knock on effect as in one of the bags were a pair of high heeled shoes and some lacy underwear. Although it was the missus who had left the bags, I couldn’t get too excited as it may have been one of the youngsters who had bought them. There was no way I would delve further. Geronimo may have been able to ride off in war paint, bodice and knickers after one of his lightning raids and get away with it Randolph Scott free, but like the last of those Mohicans I wouldn’t have been seen dead in public in salmon pink. Shrimp yes, salmon no. The missus returned and picked up the bag of lingerie and shoes. ‘I wanted to make up for that cheap jibe about your totem pole.’ She said, full of Western promise. ‘So I bought some tarty bits for later.’ She put down a bag containing a tarta maca and a tarta de manzana and passed the racy lacy bag to my mate’s missus who then disappeared off with my mate on her Silver heels, back to the wagons more pronto than Tonto, for all he was Fort Worth. I didn’t need the third umpire or Hawkeye to tell me who was High, Wide and Handsome. There’s an old Indian saying. ‘Lucky bastard!’ We read the smoke signals and the steamed up windows when we got back to camp to keep away from their caravan. My Favorite Wife and I smoked the pipe of peace with some salmon and pez espada ahumado. The former because it’s our favourite and the latter because we couldn’t draw lots.
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