Nuts and Thoughtcrimes

 Nuts

My mother has recently entered a franchise market stall arrangement with her old school friend. This involves my mother selling nuts. It also involves my mother using her amazing wits and charms to convince men who have just bought a giant German sausage from the German sausage stall to buy nuts. They saunter past her and she hollers like a barrow girl, or perhaps like Nancy in Oliver! (the one directed by Carol Reed and where Ron Moody bought Fagin so frightfully to life that I know people who still fear him) .

A typical exchange;

"Do you want some nuts with your sausage sir?" 

"Only if you come with them you saucy minx" He winks at leers at mother.

"I do not come with them, but if you want some sauce I also sell chutney, but for a man like you I would not advise you buy any of my cheese with those sort of lines"  She is cold and harsh in her delivery and before the poor man knows it, he has parted with £2 for a bag of 100g cinnamon roasted cashews. 

Today I went and help her set up the stall. Mother was concerned that me not having paid work and not having got the job relating to the bananas has knocked my confidence. So as mothers do, she made me feel guilty. She made me help her against my will. Really I think she wanted me out of the house. I made no money (this was unpaid work) but I did learn a couple of things...

The Pigeon"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."
- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 7

 1984 is without a doubt a literary masterpiece. I never once for a moment thought that Orwell's words would ring through my ears today whilst attempting to help my mum on a nut stall. 

Now on the stall there is not just nuts. There is curry, fudge, chutney and cheese - a wonderfully odd combination.  The stall is a small log cabin from hell, a hell which has frozen over because it is so cold in there. With a section which opens at the front with shelves and a spit guard displaying the goods. There are also samples. In order for people to sample the samples bread is provided on a small plate. No surprises there. Nothing out of the ordinary except the combination of food. 

Mother has been reporting that seagulls have started nesting on the log cabin of her misery. She shoos them by tapping the roof from the inside. The seagulls are most definitely conscious.Their ear piercing schreecing, sqwarking and shitting lets us know they are awake and ready to destroy. And anyone who knows anything about seagulls know they are rebels and they will rebel. It is how they have done this which is quite spectacular. It seems they have recruited some feeble pigeons. 

The first pigeon came for me. Directly at my face. I screamed it dropped and it landed in some curry. Pigeon Curry?

No.

So the first round of cleaning the samples out and starting again had begun. It took about an hour.

I am then having a five minute little break (playing on Mothers iphone to look for jobs I care about). When a woman starts screaming at me as if she herself is a seagull or a victim of a mugging. 

I look up. She is pointing at another FUCKING PIGEON. 

Another pigeon in the curry.

At the same time the seagulls are stomping and cheering on the roof of the logcabinfromhell.

She tells me in no uncertain terms in a thick middle class accent "you better sort that out".

She stares at me like a piece of shit until I start to move to the back of the stall to use the door to go round the front. Whilst all this is happening my mother is weeping over some burnt cashews, too entrenched in her own pain and suffering to notice the pigeon assault on her budding franchise.

When I get round the front of the stall, the woman is still standing there. Looking at me really disapprovingly. Like somehow it is my fault that pigeons want to eat and that the pigeons want to eat this curry sauce. And then I realize...

Judgement : "Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death."
- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 2

The woman had judged me. The woman had judged me for working (unpaid) on a market stall. Her tone. Her posture. Everything about her stance was directed towards judging me harshly. 

And the reason I know this judgement from the tone, stance and posture? 

Is surprise bloody surprise, I have made such judgements myself. I have made it in this blog about other unemployed people and how I somehow think I am better. I am not. There is no difference in any of this. I do not want this to sound like a disneyesque epiphany, because it is not, it is grittier than that and is probably part of some hideous post quarter life crisis chrysalis that I have yet to grow out of.

What really interests me now, is how my thoughtcrime is no longer about evolving into Pauline who shops from the Elizabeth Duke range in the Argos catalogue and goes down to the dole office would be the most awful thing to ever happen to me. But instead it is about how fucking sanctimonious and judgmental middle class wankers are.  I know I am one.

 So, she judged me for being a market stall barrow girl. I only stayed another hour on the stall because I was so upset. What I then noticed is how the people walking past look right through you or how the people who come to the stall are not actually interested in the goods,but are interested in the samples and the samples alone and anything you say is just drowned out by their smug greed.

 I am not really sure what I am going to do about this new underdeveloped thought process.

We shall see. But I would like to avoid making any further thoughtcrimes and avoid any further interactions with curried pigeons and Sergent Seagull.