Sid Strong & Ducks In Flight

Gravesend Borough Market received its charter in 1268 and is in fact one of the oldest markets in the country. My mother said rather vaguely that it had been there since the year dot and Old Nan maintained it was definitely donkeys’ years ago that somebody had the good sense to set it up. I can’t say that I thought very much about the age of the place at the time of our many and regular visits there but later on when I came to realise that the construction of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul did not begin until 1455 I retrospectively began to see it in context. Not that I would ever suggest that the two markets could possibly be compared but it did make me stop and think about market charters which I hadn’t ever done previously.

We made a trip to the market most Saturdays and I always looked forward to it even if one or two of the aunts and my grandmother came with us. We would set off on the bus during the mid-morning and first of all embark upon a tour of the shops in New Road and a lot of time would be spent admiring what was in the butcher’s window and my mother might even make a purchase of half a dozen pork sausages. Aunt Mag was likely to dither a great deal and say she’d done all her Sunday dinner shopping already which remark might well result in Words between her and the sausage buyer because did she really believe that we were having sausages for our Sunday dinner? Could sausages, even the best pork ones, ever be described as a Sunday Roast? And later my mother would ruminate about the cheek of it especially since that saucy mare had finally made up her mind and gone in and bought a really lovely leg of lamb – having said she’d got all her Sunday shopping in! You wouldn’t credit it really would you? But then you never got the truth of any matter out of Mag and she was well-known for saying one thing and meaning another.

The frostiness might even last through the cups of tea and biscuits from the café that used to be near the old Woolworths building but by the time we got to the market family relationships were usually back on an even keel again. The stall I was most interested in was the second hand books one in the covered area just through and immediately beyond the bold, curving pediment upon which the date of the charter is given – 1268. That’s when Henry III granted the Manor of Parrock the right to hold a Saturday market and an annual fair. For years I believed this to be the original structure and was annoyed to find that it was erected in 1898 and replaced an earlier building because I wondered what the earlier building had been like. The rest of the family were disinterested in books so I was usually left at this point to browse alone after my grandmother loudly warned that I’d go blind with all that damn fool reading. I was usually allowed twenty minutes whilst the fabrics and bric a brac were examined and debated by the aunts and food items such as live eels possibly purchased by Old Nan and then placed to thresh around in the bottom of her mock leather bucket bag or sometimes, more alarmingly, in the bottom of a string bag.

We barely gave the east end of the market more than a cursory glance, and the Grade II Listed figure of Queen Victoria was largely ignored because invariably we had little interest in proceeding into Queen Street on a Saturday. Always the Saturday visits terminated in Market Square where immediately to our right we would find Strong’s Fancy Goods Ltd where the inimitable Sidney Strong the totally matchless market trader sold a wide range of china and glassware from the back of his lorry, aided by Young Gerald. Old Nan said that Young Gerald was his son and she knew that for sure because she’d been told by a cousin of Tubby Isaacs of Petticoat Lane fame. That was most probably not true because she was not someone who set a great deal of store by truth and anyhow Sid himself maintained that Gerald was his younger brother. A few years later when I had become a fully-fledged teenager and ran away from home I came across Strong’s Fancy Goods in Petticoat Lane myself and entered into conversation with Sid who tried to persuade me to return home. When I elected not to take his advice he took me with him on his weekly trip to buy china from manufacturers in Stoke-on-Trent. Later he drove me back to York Road and firmly deposited me on my home doorstep telling me I had a duty to my poor mother. At some stage the question about his relationship with Young Gerald was raised, in all likelihood by me and I was told unequivocally that Gerald was his youngest brother and he was sick to death of being asked that question.

Back in 1950 there was no real way of knowing the family relationships of market traders you had a passing Saturday acquaintance with for sure although for some reason we were all fascinated where the Strongs were concerned. However, all extraneous debate ceased once Strongy began to sell, launching with a great deal of energy into his familiar patter. Then the usual group of onlookers would gather at once, a large number of them not there to buy but simply as an admiring audience gathered shoulder to shoulder in anticipation whatever the weather.

There was no doubt that Strongy could hold the attention of a crowd, from the pre-schoolers in push chairs to the elderly leaning on their bamboo canes. Old Nan, generally more prone to criticism of salesmen rather than praise, admitted he was an Artiste and he should be on the bleeding stage and that was a fact. She’d certainly seen far worse at Collins Music Hall years ago and had to pay for the pleasure what’s more. Meanwhile Strongy, seemingly oblivious to his entertainment value expertly tossed an entire dinner set into the air and caught it again without as much as a resultant crack in a side plate and beamed around at the spectators delighting in the intakes of breath and spontaneous bursts of applause. It was at this point with an appreciative crowd in the palm of his hand that his patter would become his spiel, and pulling himself to his not inconsiderable full height it would rapidly morph into a kind of patois between himself and Gerald that he knew with satisfaction we would not understand a word of.

Although china was the main feature of his regular stock base in fact a wide range of other household goods reliably surfaced from the depths of the truck and at one time or another almost everyone you spoke to had made an important purchase from the Strongs. My grandmother was adamant that she had been a regular customer at their Sunday pitch in Petticoat Lane for years and particular buys in the past had been what she indelicately described as really lovely china Piss-pots, each one a work of art. Certainly each one of the many Constant daughters had been presented with one of these then essential items on the occasion of their weddings from Mag in the twenties right up to August 1939 when my mother was the last to walk down the aisle. Nobody expected Freda, the baby of the family to ever find a husband because of her multiple personality problems and tendency to petty crime so somehow or other she was never counted as part of the marriage stakes. Lovely pieces of work those chamber pots had been though and Old Nan frequently reminded us that you just didn’t see Piss-pots like that these days with all the new-fangled Bakelite and plastic. You didn’t seem to get the same kind of decoration around the sides now did you? The one she gave Nell and Bern at the very advent of World War Two had been dusky pink and had been adorned with little golden cherubs flying alongside white doves. My mother was never amused when this story was repeated and when the giver was out of earshot said that if the truth be known she had been ashamed to receive such a gift but at the time had no option but to join in the laughter and put up with all the smutty jokes that went hand in hand with weddings. Her honest opinion was thank the Lord for plastic and long may it last.

The fact that Sidney Strong made regular appearances in Petticoat Lane on Sundays was at one time something of a surprise to us because we definitely saw him as belonging to Gravesend and of course our loyalty was first and foremost to our local market but as Aunt Martha pointed out, he had to make a living the same as the rest of us didn’t he? And some market men were able to make a very good living by anyone’s standards if former stall holder Alan Sugar is anything to go by. Perhaps Strongy never quite reached Sugar’s dizzy heights but over the years it was obvious that all things considered he certainly wasn’t on his uppers. In 1956 when he was seen at Meopham Green in The Cricketers my car conscious cousin Harold couldn’t help noticing that he seemed to have bought himself a brand-new Ford Fairlane and such a vehicle he pointed out would have set him back a bob or two and no mistake.

Certainly Strong’s Fancy Goods basic stock became more diverse as time went on and aptly accommodated the household needs of the local clientele. There were dinner sets and canteens of cutlery for the newly- weds together with bedlinen and towels, followed by pushchairs and baby baths a year later in time for the first infant and by the mid 1950s glamorous items like electric blankets or even tea making machines to be ostentatiously purchased by young marrieds like my cousin Margaret who was said to have more money than good sense.

Listening to Strongy launch into his sales patter was mesmerizing because it wasn’t just a matter of raising an arm and saying that you would have one of them there electric blankets for two pounds ten shillings before they all went, or even determinedly waving the required sum at the seller. Strongy was absolutely not going to let his beloved blankets go that easily and he always elected not to take your money immediately because strangely he preferred to slash the price to two pounds, then astonishingly to one pound ten shillings. He was just giving them away at thirty bob and that was a fact. But then again - No he’d rather be robbed than take thirty bob from you and they would have to go at a guinea a piece! By this stage anticipation was high and instead of selling two blankets he’d be selling ten then twenty and be quickly down to the very last one. And who would take the last one off his hands? Then invariably if someone elected to do so he would find another last one in the back of the truck for the disconsolate and disappointed few fearful of remaining blanket-less.

And within this odd post war mixture of hyped selling and East End humour Sid Strong briskly and proficiently sold a wide variety of household essentials to the families of Gravesend and Northfleet at prices to suit every pocket. There was no doubt whatsoever that he was an Artiste if ever there was one and even my mother agreed with that. Old Nan said he put her in mind of Gus Elen years ago at the old Hackney Empire. He’d been known as the Coster Comedian and famous for ditties such as Wait Until The Work Comes Around that made you fall off your seat laughing. Gus Elen was always far superior to Harry Champion for instance in her opinion – but Old Strongy of Gravesend Market was one out of the bag though he never went in for singing of course. And it was for all these reasons together with items such as alarm clocks and toasters that the Saturday visits to the Market Square were a regular outing for so many members of the Constant family as of course they were to hundreds of other families in the district.

One particular Saturday trip had been organised by the collective of aunts to celebrate a significant birthday for their mother and a fish and chip tea was going to be part of the treat possibly even at The Reliance Fish Rooms but before that could happen a trip to Strong’s Fancy Goods was critical. My grandmother had expressed a great desire to own a group of china ducks to fly above the mantelpiece of the house in Iron Mill Lane, Crayford and she had been reliably informed that Strongy had a batch of them, suitable in every way. My mother said as far as she was concerned she wouldn’t give china ducks house room and they were definitely not worth the money you had to fork out for them but if that’s what Mum wanted that’s what Mum would get because there was no arguing with her once she got the bit between her teeth.

We waited patiently through the Finest Porcelain tea sets, sherry glasses packaged in neat half dozens, turquoise or navy if you fancied it candlewick bedspreads, easily mistaken for genuine tiger skin rugs, baby-bath-and-potty sets in pink or blue, shopping trolleys on wheels and walkie-talkie dolls with blonde brushable hair and at long last just when Old Nan’s feet were killing her and her legs threatened to hold her no longer the ducks in flight that were easily attached to any wall, appeared. And as with everything else when Strongy first demanded thirty bob apiece we knew without doubt that within five minutes that sum would be reduced to twelve and sixpence much to everyone’s pleasure and approval.

Later on as she sat upright and straight as ever over her halibut and chips my grandmother rather uncharacteristically said it was most definitely a blinder of a birthday celebration. She was glad she’d worn her coat with the fake fur collar because as birthdays go she hadn’t had a better one since the time her Edgar, God rest his soul, took her to Brighton and they were thrown out of The Grand though for the life of her she couldn’t remember how or why that happened.

It was all of fifteen years later when one of my cousins drew my attention to the fact that Strong’s Fancy Goods Ltd had been very much in the news and in fact the talents of the incomparable Sid had at long last been recognised with him winning a silver cup and voted the best market auctioneer in Europe. Photos of Sid in Amsterdam holding his cup and looking very dapper in a silk mohair suit of the type later seen on the Kray Twins during their trial at The Old Bailey, had been in all the papers and what’s more he had appeared on television to say a few words. My mother told me he’d said more than a few of course because he definitely had the gift of the gab but he’d always been a good sort and no wonder he’d done well. And did I remember the time he brought me back when I ran away, driving miles out of his way? And what about them lovely ducks we’d bought from him years ago for Old Nan that she still had flying over the fireplace. Not a mark on them and good as new because they were real quality. My brother, sitting at the kitchen table and idly turning the pages of a magazine called Wildlife murmured that if you looked at them properly you would see that they were not actually ducks of course – they were Canada Geese but we ignored him.