Survival Guide for Dunces and Fools Going To The Antiques Market

Go there early. When I say early, I mean, really early, even if it means getting up at 5 am on a Sunday morning and teasing the stakes of ruining your mood for the next 12 hours. It is good to be there shortly after it opens for trade (i.e. 6 am at the latest if it opens at 5 am), since professional dealers go there themselves early to get the best stuff available.

You may consider looking at a map / weather forecast / take good shoes / a survival kit -- if you're foolish enough for not considering any of the above-mentioned precautions, you may find yourself arriving a good hour later than expected -- which would considerably ruin your chances to find anything of interest.

Take cash with you (I still don’t know what to think of sellers who have credit card facilities), but not much; that will prevent you from making any unreasonable purchase.

Walk nonchalantly through the stalls, a hand in your pocket, the other one scratching your chin (or eyebrow, or picking your nose, whatever), in a dilettante-ishly unconcerned fashion. Walk through the whole market once, to determine quality display from utter crap, scandalously overpriced stuff from out-of-the-attic mess. When your inner-radar has spotted something of interest, calmly (I said calmly), an eyebrow raised and the lips clasped tightly around that toothy smile of yours contained with extreme difficulty (showing your sudden enthusiasm would ruin anything), make a move towards the Miraculous Stall.

Look –blatantly- carefully at the stuff you’ve seen (and preferably at the stuff around too), weight it, pounce it, pinch it, gauge it, measure it… whatever you may think off (although if you sniff it the dealer might find you a wee-bit weird) – that’s to show you’re not a desperately ignorant buyer ready to shed pounds for the most miserable glittery old-ish looking piece of rag, that you may even have a slight idea of what may be that wonderfully obscurely mysterious stuff you’re looking at. To enhance that connoisseur effect, you can also, while you handle the item and observe it from all its sides, frown slightly [meaning either appreciation or disappointment; in both cases, the dealer will be eager to sell the stuff].

Then, put it aside for a while [but close enough so you can stop any inopportune hand from snatching it], displaying sudden disinterest - indecisiveness is crucial to bring the price down – and look at other stuff, intermittently going back to the item with little sighs every now and then.At this moment, the dealer is ready to welcome your (fake) naïve look while you ask ‘tell me what you know about this [insert appropriate name]’. That’s to see to what extent he/she is trying to fool you / tell the truth (pretty unlikely, especially if he/she starts by ‘do you want the truth?’ – then, beware); but also, if it’s a very lucky day, the Moon is in full connection with Mars and Venus is overlooking the Sun, a Comet rushes in the sky and a squirrel pees on your shoes, then you may expect with some hope that you’re being told the truth, and that this truth contains useful information about the item. Use facial signals to show the extent of your incredulity, then carry on looking at other stuff (lips pinched with annoyance / boredom / whatever you find suitable]. When you judge you’ve left enough time for the dealer to ponder how knowledgeable you really are, asked for the price in a detachedly bored tone.

Good Luck

[N.B: You'll probably, like me, end up going home with crap worth less than peanuts, but that's the fun and the risks of the trade, innit?]

Chronicles of the Box-Office # Epilogue.

This is the end of the Chronicles of the Box-Office.

After over two years working on the river, this is with immense relief that I have finally taken upon the opportunity of a small scholarship, to resign and get my freedom back. I feel relieved, but also strangely empty, exhausted, perhaps even disheartened.
There is not much to miss though. My Chronicles of the Box-Office were scarce (to be honest, I lacked funny material), and carefully avoided the worst moments of the job.

I have been stuck eight hours a day in a telephone-booth-sized-box, among dirty carpet, messy wires, cigarette smells and mice. I’ve been freezing cold in the winter, shivering with the wind sweeping in through the money tray. The summer has seen me heat-struck and sweating like a pig behind my greenhouse–style window. I’ve been deemed as ‘useless’ by customers when I could not answer their (irrelevant) questions, had (several) customers wishing me to be fired, got (very frequently) insulted because of a boat being late/full/cancelled/ or, even, ugly (hilarious, really). Among my top insults: ‘stupid’, ‘uneducated’, ‘strange’, ‘French’ (which, uttered by the average working-class-football-freak-beer-drunker-sporting-tacky-England-football-top, means something really, really rude), or even effing foreigner.

On busy days of endless queues, having to explain customers that ‘the next available boat will be in one hour and twenty minutes’ and that ‘they should queue on the pier is they want a chance to board’ was like calling for public lynching, and I spent the best of last summer apologising because of late/full/cancelled boats. How many times did I want to cry out my frustration because people would never say ‘hi’, ‘please’ or ‘thank you’, and find that abusing a ticket-agent is the most soothing action after queuing for a long time? Sometimes I felt it would have been less offensive if people had swept dirty shoes smeared with dog’s poop on my back, or snorted greenish snot to my face.

Perhaps one of the least enjoyable aspects of the job was working with a largely misogynist, macho, racist and xenophobic team of watermen, who called me The French Bird for the best of those two years, and who only spared me the worst jokes because 1- my fiancé is English, 2- I am not Black, nor Asian.

After setting such a picture of the job, I wonder how I have managed to stay there more than two years without jumping in the river, punching a customer, or spitting to a captain’s face.
I am surprised I have only cried a couple of times or so, out of frustration and anger.

What surprises me the most is, as much as I know I won’t miss the job, how empty I feel. Admittedly, it was not always as ‘dark’ as described above. There have been nice moments too, good days laughing with customers and watermen alike, a much-welcomed solidarity bond between foreign staff, and, frequently, the satisfaction of having been through a busy and hectic day without incident, without drama.
I realise that, little by little, for the past two years, I have been shifting from PhD student full of energy, hopes and ambitions, working for my food and rent while trying to get something better… to ticket-agent, bitter, sad, stuck in my job and grinding my teeth, feeling less than nothing because abused by customers and colleagues alike, wondering if I’d ever get positively through and interview, wondering if I’d ever get to do something meaningful in my life, wondering if I….
What happened to me? How did I end up there? Why couldn’t I get out of this infernal spiral? Why did I lose confidence? Why could I not find another job? Why have I spent two years of my life, of my precious youth, in a box? I feel like I am now in a time of re-construction, of reunion with a long-lost myself, whom I’ve missed dearly.