GLASCOT MARKET - by DAVID JACKSON

We're putting this piece in as it's quite cheerful - there'll be time for the murder stories and the paranormals soon!

I wake up worrying that I’ve missed the alarm. I haven’t, it’s only 6.30 a.m., but I get up anyway, shower and go downstairs to make the morning tea.

An hour later and feeling every one of my sixty-two years, I stumble out into a bright, spring morning, Brasher boots clumping on the path; a slightly frayed figure with long greying hair and a short white beard, wearing ‘Blue Harbour’ jeans, a blue polo shirt and a brown cord jacket.

My son Ben can’t drive, so I take the van round to the terraced cottage which he shares with his brother, Tom, and a small, dominant black and white cat called Felix. Since Ben quit his job in Financial Services to be a full-time artist and part-time ice-cream maker, his market stall is his sole source of income.

Ben is sitting on the low wall in front of the house, enjoying the early morning sunshine. His orange T-shirt proclaims ‘Never Give Up on Your Stupid, Stupid Dreams’. 6’4” and 17 stones, he lumbers across the grass verge and into the van. Smelling of toothpaste and shampoo, he utters his customary greeting, ‘I’ll need a crap when I get to yours!’, and settles into the passenger seat.

‘It feels really early,’ he says, ‘so early that Felix didn’t even try to escape when I came out. He just lay in his bed, and waved one paw.’

Ben is the fourth generation of the family to work on the markets, my father and grandfather both had fruit and veg stalls.

Back home, we load the van with cool-boxes full of cheese and fridges filled with ice-cream. The journey to Glascot takes 45 minutes.

We arrive at a scene of chaos. There’s only Alyson’s son and his girlfriend to set up the marquees for the stalls. The farmers’ market has been confined to an even smaller portion of the car-park than usual, and they’re  having trouble shoe-horning everyone in. Some stall-holders sing ‘why are we waiting?’, but mostly we all just stand quietly in the sunshine. Eventually Ben’s allocated a spot under a bright yellow gazebo by the back fence.

‘Coffee-man’ sets up next-door. Small, wiry, with receding hair, Coffee Man is a really nice, friendly man in his fifties. Wildly enthusiastic, he really hustles. He bounds round all the other stall-holders offering to deliver discount coffee or hot chocolate to their stalls. We feel really bad, when we say no. We’ve brought a flask; times are hard!

A figure we’ve come to recognise approaches the stall. A tall, thin woman of around sixty, I’d say, she peers suspiciously at our goats’ milk cheese.

‘Are your goats free to roam, or are they kept in a shed?’

They aren’t our goats. We buy the cheese from a small creamery up in the hills. The goats’ milk comes in by tanker. The cheese-makers say the goats live out in the field, but we don’t really know, and we don’t want to lie. We explain this to our interrogator.

‘We don’t know, we’ll ask them again when we see them,’ we say.

 ‘I wouldn’t want to buy products from goats that are kept in a shed,’ says the tall, thin woman and sets off to the next stall.

‘She asks that question every month,’ says Ben.

She’s questioning the Coffee Man now, about where his coffee beans come from and what the conditions are like for the workers.

We know about the sheep’s milk cheese, that’s been on TV. That guy on ‘Countryfile’ was standing in the miniature milking parlour while all the sheep ran in to be milked. That programme boosted sales for weeks. I made us a poster with a picture of a sheep on it.

‘What breed of sheep is that?’ asked a burly man at Asham Market, ‘Looks like a Clun. Can you milk Cluns?’

It’s a Southdown, but I say ‘I don’t know, it’s just a sheep from ClipArt.’

The things people ask you!

A disgruntled looking woman, like an Alan Bennett character; square-set with a leg at each corner, approaches the stall with her husband.

‘I fancy trying damson ice-cream,’ the husband says.

            ‘Well I don’t,’ she says, ‘I like plain supermarket ice-cream.’

Her husband rolls his eyes behind her back.

She looks at me accusingly, ‘Is this plain supermarket ice-cream?’

‘No, it’s got real flavours.’

‘I’ll have a damson,’ says the husband.

We give him his 125ml tub.

‘Is that all?’ says the wife, ‘I’d expected a litre tub at least!’

‘What, for £1.20?’ says Ben.

She marches away; her husband follows, eating his damson ice-cream and smiling.

One of the pie-men – there are three on the market – comes over for a grumble. He talks nineteen to the dozen. He gestures towards one of his rivals.

‘Hand-made pies, he calls ‘em, hand-made pies. I know for a fact he gets ‘em from a factory in Ashton-under-Lyne! I don’t know why I still come here, trade’s really slow. There’s better markets. Are you going to Hamford mid-week? Really good market Hamford, goes like a storm, you want to try Hamford. Have you seen Kevin recently, the one with the flower stall? I heard he’s been poorly, no? I’ll have a gooseberry ice-cream. Stall-holders’ rates?’

The market opens at 10, but by noon we’ve only sold £15 worth of cheese and 3 ice-creams. The stall rent’s £20 and there’s diesel to pay for as well. Things are looking desperate!

Coffee Man says his family are Italian, ‘Just call me Adriano from Napoli!’  He maintains a non-stop patter and offers free samples to passers-by; a cup of coffee or ‘a chocolate-covered coffee bean’. He attracts small family groups around his stall, all enjoying his samples.

He hands out leaflets. I don’t think he’s too bothered about actually selling hot coffee. He has his website and sells ground coffee, roasted beans and chocolate direct, by mail, and his quarterly visits to this market seem mainly about promotion.

Still, he’s selling quite a few of his distinctively patterned black and brown tins (‘nobody remembers the name, but everybody remembers the design’) of coffee and ‘edible drinking chocolate’. Past customers are buying refills. He seems happy with the way things are going.

Some people seem alarmed by his approaches. They veer away and scurry past; we hope that doesn’t mean they’ll miss our stall!

Coffee Man thinks we don’t hustle enough. He thinks we need to promote ourselves more, to be more visible, more aggressive I suppose. Get people talking, offer samples of the cheese, samples of the ice-cream.

Ben isn’t sure about samples. He’s heard my stories of taking stock to the Royal Show when I was a kid. By visiting the bread and cheese promotions in the right order you could get a free lunch. You could even get something hot if you hung around the demonstration kitchens.

Coffee Man’s probably right, neither Ben nor I are good at ‘hustling’, we tend to wait for people to come to us. Tom‘s a lot better; five years in the hotel trade taught him how to talk to the public. But he’s still abed at home.

The organiser stops by to encourage us, ‘Ice-cream has its selling time. After lunch, if it’s warm and sunny and you’re open and visible, people will buy ice-cream’.

Coffee Man has made a big sale. He calls over, ‘Got any carrier bags?’

I rummage in our box and find a plastic bag, ‘Here you go.’

He puts his goods in it and passes it to the customer. She wrinkles her nose.

‘But it’s a Morrison’s bag!’

‘I might be able to find a Sainsbury’s bag,’ I say, ‘but we’re out of M&S.’

She laughs.

Ben thinks the cheese signs are confusing people. And so at 1.00 p.m., with temperatures rising, we take them down and pack the cheese away in the cool-boxes. We move the ice-cream signs to the centre of the stand. It’s very clear; we’re an ice-cream stall.

            Sales and spirits pick up as people start to buy our ice-cream. As others see them enjoying it, they buy as well. The ice cream’s good and customers pass the word around.

I ponder this change in people’s buying behaviour.

I tell Ben that people seem so affected by ‘image’ that we should adopt a new strategy.

We’ll be a cheese and baked-goods stall until 12.30, then away with the ‘Artisan Cheese’ signs and the green and white chequered tablecloths.

Shazaam! Hang up the ‘Home-made Ice-Cream’ signs, on with the blue and white gingham tablecloths, and put out the black glossy A-frames stressing the wholesomeness and exciting flavours of our superlative product! In the afternoons, we’ll be just purely an ice-cream stall.

Let’s hope it works!

Coffee Man has an audience. Two adults and a small girl with scraped-back black hair, large, round, dark-framed spectacles and an intense gaze. She looks like ‘Clare in the Community’ in the ‘Guardian’ cartoon. Coffee Man gives her some chocolate discs to try and asks ‘Are these your Mum and Dad?’

‘No,’ she replies. She points at the man, ‘he’s my uncle.’

‘And is this your aunt?’ Coffee Man asks gesturing towards a slightly plump young woman.

‘She’s my “soon-to-be” aunt’.

‘Hello, soon-to-be aunt,’ says Coffee Man, ‘have a chocolate-covered bean.’

They move on to our stall, the girl stands in front of the table scrutinising us intently.

‘She doesn’t like ice-cream,’ says Uncle. ‘Can you imagine, a child who doesn’t like ice-cream?’

‘We like ice-cream,’ says the soon-to-be aunt firmly.

‘We certainly do,’ says Uncle, ‘I’ll have a mango ice cream, please.’ ‘What about you,’ he asks his girlfriend.

‘Lemon meringue,’ she gives the child a long appraising look. ‘Doesn’t like ice-cream...... perhaps a child psychiatrist might help?!’

By 2.30 p.m., it’s all over. We pack our gear in the van. In go the cool-boxes. We connect the fridges, containing what’s left of the ice-cream, up to the electrics and set off for home. We haven’t made much money, but it’s been a good day.