Blackwater Rag Market

You can’t get it anywhere else. That’s what we say down the Blackwater Rag Market, crammed into our rickety stalls on the lakeshore’s half-moon crescent. God knows what the shopfronts looked like when this twisted marketplace first sprang up – 1516, it was, we’ve got a placard on the pavement and all – but these days, we’re strategically positioned opposite the local Wetherspoons, artfully cocooned around the front doors to trap the day-drinkers in a net of nonsense goods. You have to buy it. You just have to.

Oh, we’re good talkers. You’d have to be, if you were trying to flog baby corn to the local harmless pisshead every time you saw him stumbling past. Johnny’s managed to sell a sackful of the stuff to the poor bloke, which some of the more morally inclined of us think is cruel. It’s not as though he’s got an oven to cook them in.

Johnny’s got big dreams, though. When he’s been on the drink himself, washed out of the pub into the market’s bay, he says he’s going to win The Apprentice. I tell him that he’s going daft, that he hates all of that commercial, commodity-driven shite, but the whiskey does something fierce to his head. “I’d win, Duckie,” he promises me. “I’d definitely, definitely win.”

But I know that in a fair fight, Johnny wouldn’t come up trumps. I can outsell him ten to one, because I can keep up with the changes. Green beans are getting old, as are the carrots and the corn and the odd courgette he digs up. If the punters still want the stuff, they can just go to the supermarket instead.

He should’ve decided to sell something that the big players in business can’t replicate. What I sell never goes out of style. You can’t get it in the Tesco that they set up two roads away. You can’t get it anywhere else.

We’ve seen the tourists. We’ve seen it all down here. They want to know if the local farms make locally sourced food, if we sell quail’s eggs (chicken isn’t keto-friendly), if the meat is vegan, if we take Apple pay.

“Don’t waste our Duckie’s time, sweetheart,” one of my regulars leapt to my defence the last time I got harassed for a contactless machine. Karim gave me the broadest wink, cheeky young creature, far too young to be buying from me. “Can’t you read? Cash only.”

“Oh, that’s a terrible shame…” the woman pursed her violet lips into a tight wrinkle. She was the quirky sort, but within the bounds of “normal human being”. “Lance, let’s get ourselves a Costa. It’s getting awfully cold.”

I let unspent laughter burn a hole in my throat until they walked away. “Lance!” I crowed, cackling with the young lad who defended me. “Prince Lancelot of the feckin’ rag market!”

”Ethical, artisan Lancelot, lord of the local Costa,” Karim choked on his roll-up as he laughed.

“They’ll be here next,” Leslie intoned, lurking bitterly behind her strung-up geese. She’d assigned herself the role of the doomsday prophet. It was fitting. She was a right old hag, down to the hippie frizz of grey hair and crystal necklaces. “You just wait, that empty shop will be a coffee chain. I’ll bet you a whole bird.”

I’m glad I never made that bet. The vacant shop floor next to Wetherspoons was cashed in by Starbucks, much to everyone’s uproar. I wasn’t too afraid – they’ll always buy what I’m selling – but Oliver was in a tailspin when the news broke. Nobody would want his freshly baked bread when you could get it at half the price across the road.

Nobody did want his bread. He was the first to go, dropping from the edge of our steely crescent like a chunk of rust. “It’s just supply and demand,” Johnny insisted. He had never liked Oliver for reasons more homophobic than economic.

Some divine being must’ve heard his sick gloating, because in the months that followed, the public persuasion for his local vegetables was decidedly awful. It was the Farmfoods that drove him out. Tesco had been a hit, but this was the final blow.

They took out Leslie in the New Year. Too many vegetarians, so she said. “I haven’t got the lab to grow fake geese,” she spat, shoving her things into Ikea boxes. “I hope it poisons them and all.”

We dropped like flies, our little community. The lights dwindled out until I was the last man standing. Me, of all people. Noble Duckie. Every day they come to me, the old market crowd, the new shoppers, the vegans, Apple payers, pretentious twats, honest souls. Johnny can’t believe I’m still going. Leslie hates my guts – but she’s here every day. They understand now. They hate it, but they understand.

Karim flicks a glance at me, all bloodshot and twitching behind his grin. “You can’t get it anywhere else.”