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Supernatural Porters

Dear Rachel

Market porters are a breed apart.    By this I don't mean that they are a breed apart from other men, but that they are a breed apart from every other species on the planet.    At Camden, their main roles are the enthusiastic consumption of competitively priced lager and the ferrying of traders' stock between storage areas in the Middle Yard and stalls throughout the Lock market.    This is an important duty, as most traders are too busy drinking tea and swearing at each other to manage this for themselves.    When I was at Camden, I was usually too concerned with hunting down the component parts of my stall to bring my own stock up.    Especially tricky to locate were the wooden table tops, which I would usually have to carry in from the West Yard, a chore which I made less annoying - for myself at least - by saying 'I always get wood in the morning' or 'Every time I see you I've got wood' or some similar inane wood-related innuendo to fellow East Yard urchin Slack Matt every single time I walked past him, regardless of how large a number that might be.    He left eventually, possibly due to inevitability fatigue.

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