A text from my boss says my stall is next to the nearby bank. I pass a cash machine that’s had it’s screen smashed. Maybe someone got too aggressive with the touchscreen.
Walthamstow on a Sunday morning isn’t too different from Holloway Road or Dalston Kingsland on a Sunday morning, there’s a reverberation of Saturday nights’ exploits still ringing in the air. In certain areas of London you can feel the city is asleep, but here the movement seamlessly transitions from still-drunk Shuffling stragglers to half-asleep traders setting up.
My stall sells bread and pastries. On sale are many different types of sourdough bread and all sorts of sweet and savoury treats. Cheese straws, pain au raisin, pain au chocolat, and a few more adventurous options like a pain au chocolate with pistachio and a Jalapeño cornbread muffin. It’s fairly bog standard and fairly expensive. I’ve learned that whether it’s good or bad, customers like to repeat words that shock them;
“Ooh a pain au chocolat with pistachio! How much is that?”
“Four pounds”
“Four pounds!”
At which point I want to collapse onto the ground holding my head in my hands at having to either defend a company that pays me less than one of their mince pie boxes or try to calm someone down over a pastry no one is asking them to buy.
It’s mid-January and I’ve been in this job for two and a half months. Most of the people on this market don’t give me much time of day. It’s clear when a ‘creative type' is in a job like this and they don’t last long. They either can’t handle the cold and move on or get a gig and vanish. I’m aware as I did this five years ago. Before I wrote my first play, my tour, my second play, before my agent, I worked the markets. This place is an in-between jobs-job. I’m treated with the expectation that this is a stepping stone, and it’s an expectation I hold for myself. Unfortunately, I have no idea what my next step is.
A month ago I had bailiff’s threatening to come to my doorstep and giving them every penny in my account with a promise to pay a fix sum every month without missing a payment was all I could do to keep them away. The Ostrich approach to every bill under the sun since 2020 wound up not working for me. I had a commission for a play that I did(!) finish but didn’t get made. I have a script that I’ve put a lot of work into but doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. So as long as this bailiff debt hangs over me I’m stuck on these markets. For now there’s a sunset on my creative endeavours.
I feel like a bird who migrated in the wrong direction. I should be someone who turns up to the market to buy provisions with my family, instead I’m here at eight am, fresh after another break up, selling to people I wish I was. I’m one of the parakeets on Hampstead heath, freezing my arse off, flying to branch to branch, knowing something about where I am doesn’t quite fit.
On my way home I look at the splintered cracks on the cash machine again and think of people who smash their tv’s while watching a football match. Situations out of their control having an overwhelming amount of power over them. The reality they think they were promised, slipping out of view. Upset because pain like this shouldn’t hurt so much.