bored of excitement – the griefjunkie blog 

Dear Rachel

Notorious Camden Lock East Yard toothbrush sceptic Pikey Dave once informed me, in an offhand manner reminiscent of someone reading the big easy letters on a chart at the opticians, that he wanted to ‘fight women.’ It remains one of the most remarkable conversational snippets of my life. Not so much a raconteur as a random word generator, he also once snatched a crossword from me on the fairly random basis that ‘it could never work.’ If memory serves I subsequently whiled away the afternoon leaving lighted matches on his stall while trying to distract him long enough for a handbag fuelled fire to break out.

It’s a different matter at Greenwich, where Danny, a fellow trader, and I can usually wrap up the Times2 crossword between us over the course of a Saturday. Danny is an ardent atheist. I thought that having an atheist on board while doing a crossword would be handy, as, considering that he has somehow managed to solve the central philosophical questions of human existence – ie why are we here and is there a God – a ten letter word for plant or shy person would be comfortably within his grasp. It wasn’t on Saturday – the answer is wallflower, of course, and I got it in the end – but I cheered him up by reminding him that life is pointless and unmagical, and that the sum of human creativity and endeavour has only come about because we are a mutant species of over evolved intergalactic space fungus.

[Getting on Read More now will reveal more crosswordal shenanighans, among other things]

I have been tackling the Times2 crossword for only a couple of months. Before this, i used to do the word wheel on the opposite page while quickly turning over to give the impression of doing the Times2 crossword whenever anyone approached the stall. Even the word wheel was too mighty an adversary for a while, and I wanted to petition the Times to put one of those ‘Can You Help Harry Find His Kennel?’ things that usually feature a dog seperated from his house by a jumble of squiggly lines through which you have to trace the correct path. Or, failing that, I dunno, something I could just colour in.

Word puzzles certainly seemed to be in the air on Sunday. While I was getting a bit annoyed about another word for an oyster and bacon dish – which sounds lovely, but that I can’t instruct my domestic staff to make for me because, not getting the answer, I don’t know what it’s called – a lady walked past the stall pushing her small child in a pram. They were playing the classic ‘I Spy’ observational pastime. ‘I spy, with my little eye’ said the lady, offering the traditional rhyming couplet opening gambit, ’something beginning with ‘b’.’ ‘Because’ answered the child triumphantly, displaying either an idiotic misinterpretation of the rules or the Sixth Sense-like ability to see prepositive conjunctions. This occurred shortly after the management of another market which I’m afraid must remain anonymous asked me if I wanted to help out settling new traders, with which they are inundated at the moment. I would be something akin to a playground monitor. They said they were looking for someone cheerful, practical and confident, to which I replied that I could offer complex, difficult and exhausting, if that was any help, and they didn’t seem to mind.

This week’s photo is a Turnpin Lane, Greenwich Market. I used to scuttle down here with nine seconds to spare to get a pitch when I was a casual trader here.

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