Oh it's a marketing life for me, tra la

Marketing, hey? Seems ironic that my main pre-occupation now is my new foray into trading antiques and other stuff at the market when I have been in marketing almost all my working life. Somehow it feels right. I don't know if that makes me a "stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap" merchant, but what it actually makes me feel is like someone said to me when I was young "hey, you'd be good in marketing" so I joined Glaxo and got into the international marketing game with them, when what they meant was "you'd be good at market-ing".

And I suppose if any measure of being good at anything is if you enjoy it, then my whole life has been one massive forehead slap up to now. Because enjoy it I do. Even the wanky 'customers' who think they know it all and are rude about your stall, your goods and so on. Like they think that's going to make you say "oh, you are so noble and clever a customer, let me offer you further massive discounts on my already massively discounted goods, you wonderful human being you". Fuck off, wanker. Next time I see you coming you just know my prices are going to be up by 20% for you and you alone.

Even the bore who last week told me all about his art deco house in Brussels that's now into eight flats and worth £4/5 millions, and then bought precisely nothing from the stall. Yes, even people like him pepper the day with amusement. I really like the people who stop and find something that I've put on the stall sparks some reminiscence. Like the English woman last week who now lives in the States and has recently taken up rowing, and finds she's really rather good at it. She got into via her daughter. She'd been at Oxford, the mum that is, and she bought a very nice print I had of the Oxford and Cambridge 'blues' (you can see it, albeit very reflective, in the pic below). A drawing for "Boys Own" explaining what an Oxford Rowing, Athletics, footy etc. Blue and half blue jackets and so on look like. She loved it and I enjoyed meeting her, and will get pleasure for some time to come when I think of her taking it home, putting it on her wall in the mighty USofA somewhere and telling friends how she found it on this stall in Oxford Market. Warm glow.

Or the French guy who bought two of the old seats I have from the Royal Opera House (Covent garden) - no, really - as a sofa for his new flat. I went round to drop them off, and he gave me a shopping list of items he's looking for. Anyone got any large roccoco mirror/overmantles they want to move on?

But best of all, I have to say, are the people who make up the market.

One of them, the guy who sell and repairs watches, is just a delight He used to be the manager of the Seronera Lodge Hotel in Tanzania. Just so happens that in a past life when I was rich and unhappy I stayed there with the then missus. And now we meet again in Oxford market, as traders. He carries a bag with maybe 70 b/w photos of his time there. I love to see them.

Of course I know none of them would piss on me if I suddenly and inexplicably ignited, but while we are there for the seven or eight hours of our working (Thurs) day, these people are all friends and colleagues. Arriving at 6:45 in the morning and cries of "Morning Charlie", "How you doing Pete?", "Alright Kate?", "Nice to see you again Beep", "Bloody A34" and so on really bring a smile to my face.

Having worked for myself for so long, and alone to boot, it's a deep and real joy to be out among such lovely warm, friendly, funny people. I didn't realise how much I had missed them. And I work seven days a week now so that I can be among them, and hopefully earn my place among them as a peer. And who knows, maybe, when I've learned a hell of lot more than I know now, I might even earn and deserve their respect as an equal. And that, for me, would do.

No, that's not me.

Under the plastic sheet are the chairs from the ROH that I sold. I had two pairs, a student bought one set (for telly gaming I suspect) and the other set went to the French guy. The Charles Horner jewellery is all on the cushion in the middle, I've changed the display now and it's on a board - but blogger won't let me upload that one. I'll try later.

And yes, I am in profit after my first month, but only by the skin of my teeth and some, er, creative accounting.

Thanks to Surly for this post. Just sit in front of it (the blogosphere), she said, and write.









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