Market Barkers
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In Newcastle there used to be a Sunday market on the quayside and one week I set off there to buy some new jeans.

As I was wandering around my attention was attracted by some guy on a stage who was giving his spiel about the wondrous goods he was selling. As he seemed to have attracted a large crowd, I hung around on the edge and listened to him. And became spellbound.

Everything he was selling seemed like an amazing, too-good-to-be-true bargain. There were delicate pottery figurines that he assured us were selling for £200 in the big stores and he was *giving them away for a mere fiver. There were rare African carvings that he *guaranteed* could be found on the Antiques Roadshow for several hundred pounds and he was knocking them out for only a tenner.

The list of goodies he was selling at amazing prices just went on and on. And, he confidentially assured us, the reason he could sell at this price was that all of his stock *might* have fallen off the back of a lorry and he had to get rid of it as soon as possible. Or at least before the real owners realized it was missing.

I was sucked in. Mesmerized.

I eventually got home having failed to buy the jeans I needed but proudly clutching my bargains-of-a-lifetime. I was looking forward to my family's amazement at my bargaining prowess. I burst into the house and showed them my new goodies.

A frying pan and a cut-glass decanter for £30. I was 16.

They pissed themselves laughing.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Tue 9 Jan 2007, 15:43, Reply)