NOW ITS LIKE LOOKING THROUGH A WINDOW
by Mary Morgan
Chapter 1 page 7
The sight of all those dead animals and birds used to upset me, so I
would avoid going that way if I could, while pushing the trolley over
the road to the wholesale market. The stalls here were a lot bigger.
More professional, with their own offices and cold rooms.
They dealt mainly in fruit and vegetables that came from further away
like the Channel Islands, Ireland or Scotland. Plus of course what the
ships brought in from abroad.
Goodall Brothers who had their pitch in the middle of the wholesale
market mainly dealt in potatoes and tomatoes from all over the UK. Then
there was Dickenson's, who specialised in imported fruit and vegetables.
I would have to call on all the wholesalers in turn and ask if my mother
had ordered from them that morning and if so, load it into my trolley.
Some of the boys that worked as porters and carriers would sometimes
give me a hand, but most of them knew they wouldn't be paid for the
effort, so it didn't happen very often. They would play tricks on me
instead. I used to get my leg pulled something awful until I became a
lot wiser and managed to turn the tables on a lot of those characters.
My name was Quick and I had to live up to it.
I think the worst trick played on me was to be told to help myself to
an extra large hand of bananas from a box in Dickensons' banana rooms -
and finding the biggest, hairiest, ugliest spider I had ever seen in my
life, under it! The bananas ended up across the room and I ended up
running back to my trolley and kicking it a few dozen times, blaming
myself for falling for a trick like that. Of course the spider was as
dead as a doornail by then, but all the blokes and young lads gathered
around laughing at me, fit to burst. It was a long time before I lived
that down, but I never let up getting my own back after. Every morning I
would move a basket of fruit or a sack of vegetables from each order
that was stacked ready for collection by its owners. I would swap "Mr.
Smith's" apples for "Mr Jones" carrots. This way the young lads that
worked at each wholesaler would to get into all sorts of trouble! It
became an obsession with me, to the extent that I would swap part of one
order at a wholesalers pitch at the bottom of the market to one right at
the top. Hours later when the supplier had sold all his stock and the
original buyer would come back to pick up his order, he would find he
had paid for fruit or vegies he no longer had, and not likely to get
that day either. I didn't realise it then but I must have wreaked havoc
on the market system. But I did stop doing it when there was a fight
between two of the porters and one nearly drowned the other in the horse
trough.
By this time I was beginning to think of what time I had got left to
get back home and get ready for school. The trolley would be loaded with
most of the stock my mother had bought by then. If I ran out of room in
the trolley I would have to make arrangements for one of the market men
who owned a lorry, to drop it off at our shop later. This wasn't always
a good thing to do though because likely as not, most of them would be
in the pub until late evening and too drunk to remember. The market pubs
could stay open all day on market days and the "drink and drive" laws
were only enforced if you couldn't drive in a straight line! No
breathalyzers or squad cars…just Policeman Plod on his bike.
