Bored of excitement – The griefjunkie blog 

Dear Rachel,

One of my favourite sporting stories concerns Graeme Souness, ex-Liverpool archetypal midfield general, and, by 1992, manager of Glasgow Rangers. In this latter capacity, he went to scout Red Star Belgrade, who were at the time one of the greatest sides in Europe, and who Rangers were due to play in the third round of the European Cup. Arriving back in Glasgow, the team, squad members and associated personnel were assembled for a tactical overview of the Yugoslav giants, and were somewhat surprised when this consisted entirely of Souness unveiling a flip-chart upon which he had written the words ‘We’re Fucked’.

Almost everyone I have ever traded with in any market in London had their first Souness-like moment of clarity shortly before realising that they were going to have to trade in a market in the first place, and has typically had several subsequent ones on an almost daily basis, leading to an outlook which, now I come to think of it, essentially consists of one long pep talk prior to an upcoming game with Red Star Belgrade, which never actually arrives. In fact, for anyone connected with this particular company, it is as if Graeme Souness is hiding behind every apron and leaping out of every storage box, eternally tapping his motivational flip-chart in a knowing manner.

This gives rise to one of the most clearly noticeable features of market life: that no one running a market stall set out to run a market stall, and they have only arrived at this point via the most ridiculous and unlikely route, like a coin falling through one of those RNLI collecting boxes you see in chip shops.   It isn’t like being an accountant, for example, or a doctor, where all of your colleagues trained to be accountants or doctors and have therefore had much the same educational and career path.   I made a list while trading today, and found that it contained jobless actors, ex-politicians, disgraced headmasters, former Israeli special forces operatives, wide boys on their way up, wide boys on their way down, the homeless, the helpless, the hapless and the toothless, the semi and fully insane, alcoholics by the dozen, ex-cons by the score, revolutionary Communists, sleeper cell anarchists, the illegal, the vaguely legal and the trans-legal, dreamers, schemers and has-beeners, idiots, shamblers, idlers, derelicts, stealers, dealers and geniuses of every variety and persuasion, united by little other than the rather salient fact that they are almost entirely unemployable in any conventional capacity.

As you might imagine, with a population which closely resembles the patrons of that pub in Star Wars where Luke Skywalker stops whining long enough to buy a van off Han Solo, all manner of unlikely alliances are forged.   Us and Tony last year, for a start, and the unfortunate one between my former East Yard sparring partner Pikey Dave and his long term Chinese right-hand-man Win.  Win had come over from China especially to look after his sister, and was therefore quite furiously uninmpressed when Dave shagged her in a variety of imaginative positions and locations, including, brilliantly, in the rear storage area in the Rear Storage Area at Camden Lock.   She was, I am reliably informed, both filthy and insatiable.   I said that yeah maybe you should have told Win that, he might have been a bit more understanding, and not fucked off back to China with half your stock.   I also pointed out that he was literally in a No Win situation, to which he pointed out how much he would like me to piss off.    Come to think of it though, there was some consolation for Dave as, like Glasgow Rangers during their eventual 4-1 defeat by Red Star Belgrade in that far off European Cup tie, he lost the game but did at least manage to score.

Twitter: Over capacity I should think.

Facebook: 117 in the Facebook group.  Been the same for a while now, which is nice, as everyone is obviously getting on with each other nicely.