bored of excitement – the griefjunkie blog 

Dear Rachel,

Yeah I dunno how Camden has a reputation for glamour when some of the specimens of womanhood that caught Jack’s eye as we traded together in the Cobbled Yard recently would have been more at home annoying the postman or catching frisbees in their teeth.

When ladying, Jack’s technique is, I assume, to go up to a girl and say ‘Yeah hi, I’ve been looking at you for some time and plucking up the courage to come over and say hello, but now I’m here I just want you to know that you look fantastic, your hair is amazing, and when you smile you light up the room. Anyway, I was just wondering if you have any considerably less attractive and much, much stupider sisters you could set me up with?’, because some of these lovelies look like they would have gone on Stars In Their Eyes back in the day and said ‘Tonight Matthew, I’m going to be Les Dawson.’

Jack, you may recall, is behind the Rock Boutique, and the kind of ladies he seems to favour wear white as an outer garment a great deal – which, check it yourself, is a classic early warning sign – seem to be or actually are quite angry a lot of the time, and have timeless gold hoop or heart shaped earrings. Suffice to say, I have taken to referring to these types of lobe adornments as Jack Magnets.  As Louis from the Cobbled Yard sagely pointed out, some of the Jack Magnets on show were so hoopy that if you were to set one on fire, a police motorcycle display team would jump through it.

It rather puts me in mind of a person I must refer to only as the Unknown Trader who, having acquired what I’m sure was a fine young beauty down the Oxford Arms, shagged her in a pub toilet in Seven Sisters – during which bleak liaison she managed to would you believe lose her shoes – and then took her, footwearless but frisky, to a hotel for the night, whereupon she had a fight with a fellow guest.

To be honest though, it’s only bawdy and probably quite litigious conversation that gets us through the trading day at the moment.  It’s that or the tourists, and everybody hates a tourist.  Last Saturday, I had some Spanish woman ask me to explain an apron of ours with Fondue Ron Ron Ron Fondue Ron Ron on it, which – and take a second to imagine the scenario – is really hard to do. You’re either familiar with the Crystal’s 1963 hit Da Doo Ron Ron, with an excellent lead vocal by, I believe, Dolores ‘Lala’ Brookes, or you’re not.  I’m not going to sing the bastard to you, on the basis that your holiday involves questioning novelty kitchenware in a street market.