When I told people during my enforced year off between school and university that I worked in “ a market in The City ”, it raised more than a few eyebrows. “Derivatives or futures?” they’d ask, pretending not to be impressed. “ Confectionary ,” I’d reply with a wink, the more enterprising immediately getting onto their brokers to make sure of they got their piece of the next rights issue from Bassets the Jelly Baby manufacturers . Nothing that I stated was false. Leadenhall Market is indeed in the City of London and is purported to be the place where Dick Whittington arrived in London (the real one, not Linda Lusardi , unfortunately). I did indeed work there in confectionary, selling chocolate from behind a tatty wooden stall in the company of a perpetually morose but likeable lad from Ewell. He had his own curious dialect, starting every sentence with “ Fackin’... ”, and appending the entirely unnecessary preposition “ up ” onto the end of almost all verbs . Apparently, his friend got...
Wistful reflections, petty glories.