Remembering Mr Pussy In Winter
Today I remember my old cat, Mr Pussy. This is an extract from the biography I wrote of him, THE LIFE & TIMES OF MR PUSSY.
On dark winter nights, Mr Pussy seldom stirred from the chimney corner. Warmed by a fire of burning pallets, he had no need of whisky to bring him solace through the dark hours, instead he frazzled his brain in a heat-induced trance. Outside in the streets, Spitalfields might have lain under snow, the paths might have been coated in sheet ice and icicles might be hanging from the gutters, but this spectacle held no interest for Mr Pussy. Like the cavemen of ancient times, his sole fascination was with the mesmerising dance of flames in the grate. And as the season descended towards its nadir in the plunging temperatures of the frozen byways, at home Mr Pussy fell into his own warm darkness of stupefaction.
When Mr Pussy grew old and the world was no longer new to him, his curiosity was ameliorated by his love of sleeping. Once he was a brat in jet black, yet he became a gentleman in a chenille velvet suit, as tufts of white hair increasingly flecked his glossy pelt. One summer, I noticed he was getting skinny and then I discovered that his teeth had gone which meant he could no longer crunch the hard biscuits that were always his delight. Extraordinarily, he made little protest at this starvation diet, even as he lost weight through lack of food. I learnt to fill his dish with biscuits and top it up with water, so that he might satisfy his hunger by supping the resulting slush. And through this simple accommodation – plus a supplement of raw meat – his weight was restored to normal and he purred in gratification while eating again.
Once Mr Pussy was a wild rover, ranging over the fields in Devon, disappearing for days on end and returning proudly with a dead rabbit in his mouth. Yet in the end, he did not step beyond the end of the alley in Spitalfields and, in sub-zero temperatures, he only ventured outside to do his necessary business. Sprinting up the stairs and calling impatiently outside the door of the living room, he was ever eager to return to the fireside and warm his cold toes afterwards, sore from scraping at the frost in the vain attempt to dig a hole in the frozen earth. Like a visionary poet, Mr Pussy acquired a vivid internal life to insulate himself against the rigours of the world and, in the absence of sunlight, the fire provided his imaginative refuge, engendering a sublime reverie of peace and physical ease.
Yet Mr Pussy still loved to fight. If he heard cats screeching in the yard, he would race from the house to join the fray unless I could shut the door first and prevent him. Even when he had been injured and came back leaking blood from huge wounds, he appeared quite unconcerned. Only two small notches in his ears persisted as permanent evidence of this violent tendency, although I regularly checked his brow for tell-tale scratches and the occasional deep bloody furrows that sometimes caused swelling around his eyes. But I could stop him going out, even though it was a matter of concern to me that – as he aged and his reflexes lessened – he might get blinded in a fight one day, losing one of his soulful golden eyes. Since he was blissfully unaware of this possibility, I had no choice but to take consolation from his response when he could not eat, revealing that Mr Pussy had no expectations of life and consequently no fear of loss. His nature was to make his best accommodation to any exigency with grace.
Be assured, Mr Pussy could still leap up onto the kitchen counter in a single bound. He could still bring in a live mouse from the garden when he pleased and delightedly crunch its skull between his jaws on the bedroom floor. If I worked late into the night, he would still cry and tug on the bed sheets to waken me in the early morning to see the falling snow. When the fancy seized him, he could be as a sprightly as a kitten. Come the spring, he would be running up trees again, even if – in the darkest depth of winter – he only wanted to sleep by the fire.
When I was alone here in the old house in Spitalfields at night, Mr Pussy became my sole companion, the perfect accomplice for a writer. When I took to my bed to keep warm while writing my stories, he was always there as the silent assistant, curled into a ball upon the sheepskin coverlet. As the years passed and Mr Pussy strayed less from the house, I grew accustomed to his constant presence. He taught me that, rather than fear for his well-being, I needed to embrace all the circumstances and seasons that life sends, just as he did.
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The Shops Of Old London
Butchers, Hoxton St c.1910
Are you short of cash and weary of shopping? Why not consider visiting the shops of old London instead? There are no supermarkets or malls but plenty of other diversions to captivate the eager shopper.
These glass slides once used for magic lantern shows by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society at the Bishopsgate Institute offer the ideal consumer experience for a reluctant browser such as myself since, as this crowd outside a butcher in Hoxton a century ago illustrates, shopping in London has always been a fiercely competitive sport.
We can enjoy window shopping in old London safe from the temptation to pop inside and buy anything – because most of these shops do not exist anymore.
Towering over the shopping landscape of a century ago were monumental department stores, beloved destinations for the passionate shopper just as the City churches were once spiritual landmarks to pilgrims and the devout. Of particular interest to me are the two huge posters for Yardley that you can see in the Strand and on Shaftesbury Avenue, incorporating the Lavender Seller from Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London, originally painted in the seventeen-nineties. There is an intriguing paradox in this romanticised image of a street seller of two centuries earlier, used to promote a brand of twentieth century cosmetics that were manufactured in a factory in Stratford and sold through a sleek modernist flagship store, Yardley House, in the West End.
Wych St, lined with medieval shambles that predated the Fire of London and famous for its dusty old bookshops and printsellers is my kind of shopping street, demolished in 1901 to construct the Aldwych. Equally, I am fascinated by the notion of cramming commerce into church porches, such as the C. Burrell, the Dealer in Pickled Tongues & Sweetbreads who used to operate from the gatehouse of St Bartholomew the Great in Smithfield and E.H. Robinson, the optician, through whose premises you once entered St Ethelburga’s in Bishopsgate. Note that a toilet saloon was conveniently placed next door for those were nervous at the prospect of getting their eyes tested.
So let us set out together to explore the shops of old London. We do not need a shopping basket. We do not need a list. We do not even need to pay. We are shopping for wonders and delights. And we shall not have to carry anything home. This is my kind of shopping.
Optician built into St Ethelburga’s, Bishopsgate, c.1910
Decorators and Pencil Works, Great Queen St, c.1910
Newsagent and Hairdresser at 152 Strand, c.1930
Dairy and ‘Sacks, bags, ropes, twines, tents, canvas, etc.’ Shop, c. 1940
Liberty of London, c.1910
Regent St, c.1920.
Harrods of Knightsbridge, c.1910
The Fashion Shoe Shop, c.1920 “Repetiton is the soul of advertising”
Evsns Tabacconist, Haymarket, c.1910
F. W. Woolworth & Co. Ltd. 3d and 6d store, c.1910
Finnigan’s of New Bond St, gold- & silversmiths, c.1910
Achille Serre,Cleaner & Dyers, c. 1920
Old Bond St. c. 1910
W.H.Daniel, Cow Keeper, White Hart Yard, c.1910
John Barker & Co. Ltd., High St Kensington, c.1910
Tobacconist, Glovers and Shoe Shop, c.1910
Ford Showroom, c.1925
Civil Service Supply Association, c. 1930
Swears & Wells Ltd, Ladies Modes, c. 1925
Glave’s Hosiery, c 1920
Shopping in Wych St, c. 1910 – note the sign of the crescent moon.
Horne Brothers Ltd, c. 1920
Tobacconist, High Holborn, c. 1910
Yardley House, c. 1930
Peter Robinson, Oxford St, c. 1920
Confectionery Shop, corner of Greek St and Shaftesbury Ave, c. 1930
Bookseller, Wych St, c. 1890
Pawnbroker, 201 Seven Sisters Rd, Finsbury Park, c. 1910
Bookseller & Tobacconist and Dealer in Pickled Tongues at the entrance to St Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, c. 1910
Oxford Circus, c. 1920
Glass slides copyright © Bishopsgate Institute
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Bug Woman London
I am delighted to publish these extracts from BUG WOMAN LONDON – a graduate of my blog writing course who has been publishing posts online for over ten years now. The author set out to explore our relationship with the natural world in the urban environment, yet her subject matter has expanded in all kinds of ways. Follow BUG WOMAN LONDON, because a community is more than just people
I am now taking bookings for the next writing course, HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ on February 1st & 2nd.
Come to Spitalfields and spend a weekend with me in an eighteenth century weaver’s house in Fournier St, enjoy delicious lunches and eat cakes baked to historic recipes, and learn how to write your own blog. Click here for details
If you are graduate of my course and you would like me to feature your blog, please drop me a line.
THE OWLS’ DUET
Dear Readers, there is something magical about owls and they are often nearer to us than we think. The two chicks above were photographed in Kensington Gardens, of all places, and there are Little Owls there too. And there are Tawny Owls in both of our local cemeteries (St Pancras and Islington and East Finchley) and probably in Coldfall Wood too.
The prime time for owl ‘conversations’ is in the spring, but there is something particularly spine-chilling about hearing them at this time of year, as the nights draw in and Halloween approaches. Of course, for the owls themselves the calls are many things, but mostly they are a way of helping the male and female owls to establish their territories in preparation for the spring breeding season. The ‘tu-whit, tu-whoo’ call is the two owls duetting, and typically it’s thought that the ‘tu-whit’ is the female’s soliciting call, the ‘tu-whoo’ part the male answering.
However, I learnt that male owls can also make the ‘tu-whit’ call (though at a lower pitch than the female does), and both sexes can answer. Which just goes to show that just when I think I have something about the natural world nailed down, it turns out to be more complicated which is a source of some pleasure.
Owls can tell a lot from one another’s calls, not just the sex of the caller but their size, weight, health and level of aggression. These are all important factors in choosing a mate. Will they be able to defend and hold a territory? Are they good hunters? Males with the highest levels of testosterone call more frequently and for longer, and this is often related to the size and quality of their territories.
The combination of the two owl ‘voices’ is a signal to other owls that the partnership is working, and that they are cooperating in defending their territories. It is hard work providing for owlets, so this teamwork is essential.
Although the cry of the owl has been seen as a harbinger of doom since before Shakespeare’s time, for me it signals that something in the ecosystem is working. If it can support two tawny owls, then the rest of the food chain is likely to also be relatively healthy.
The woods at night are an interesting soundscape but note that at this time of year you are most likely to hear the owls just after sunset, rather than at the dead of night. It is definitely worth going for a dusk walk, just to see what you can hear and see.
THE SAD STORY OF THE COMMUNITY VOLE
Dear Readers, I was rushing off to a meeting when I was stopped in my tracks by this little rodent all alone in the middle of the pavement. What on earth was s/he? With those tiny ears it was not a mouse and I wondered for a second if s/he was an escaped gerbil but then it clicked. I was looking at an East Finchley bank vole.
Two young women popped out from the house and we all looked at the vole. I was worried because you would never normally get this close to a wild rodent, bank voles are very skittish and can climb trees and shrubs. My Guide to British Mammals says that they ‘walk and run, often in quick stop-start dashes’, but not this one.
“Do either of you girls have a box?” I asked. I knew that the vole would get eaten by a cat or pecked to death by a magpie if s/he was left where she was. Neither girl had a box, so I dashed back home to get one. I thought that we needed to check a) if it was actually some kind of rodent pet and b) if it was a wild animal. I would keep it safe until after dark and then release it if it was well enough.
When I came back, the mother of the girl was also there and all four of us stood and gazed at the oblivious rodent. “He’s rather sweet”, said one of the girls. I always find it heartening when people are not scared of small furry things.
I scooped the vole up and popped them into a box. I got the slightest of nibbles – which did not break the skin – so I felt as if there was still some feistiness left, a good sign. I told my long-suffering husband what was going on and left him to find food/shelter/water etc for our guest.
When a message went out on the Whatsapp for the road, the little rodent was quickly christened ‘the Community Vole’.
When I got back, the Community Vole was having a little nibble at some muesli but clearly they were not well. There was that slight tremor I have seen before in mice that have eaten something poisoned, either by rat/mouse poison, or from their food plants being sprayed with pesticide or herbicide. But bank voles only have a lifespan of a year, so s/he could simply be getting to the end of their natural life. I realised that s/he was much too weak and wobbly to be released into a night-time garden full of cats and foxes. Plus, if s/he was poisoned, anything that ate them would also pick up some of the toxin.
Meantime, the street was full of suggestions for Community Vole’s name.
“Vole-taire”
“Vole-demort”
“Vole-erie”
But in between the jollity there was genuine concern for the well-being of this small animal.
I put some bedding into the box, made sure there were various kinds of food (grass, grapes, cashew nuts, sunflower seeds), covered the box and found a quiet spot for it. If the vole rallied by the next morning, I could release them. If they were still unwell, I would see if I could find a vet. But in my heart I knew that this little one was on its way out.
Next morning, they were tucked up in their bed, dead.
People were genuinely sad that s/he had died. There are an estimated twenty-three million bank voles in the United Kingdom but there is something about seeing an individual animal, or person, that activates our empathy. It is easy to dismiss whole rafts of animals as ‘vermin’ and frighteningly easy to do that to people as well. But when we hear the story of one creature or person we can somehow understand and start to build connections. Maybe that is how we save ourselves, one story at a time?
Joan Brown, The First Woman At Smithfield Market
Click here to learn more about my blog couse in February 2025
Following the City of London Corporation’s vote to close Smithfield and Billingsgate Markers for good, I publish my interview with Joan Brown, the first woman to be permitted to work inside Smithfield Central Market in 1945.
“When the cat can’t decide whether to go out, I say ‘Make up your Smithfield mind!'”
I visited Joan in her tiny bucolic cottage situated among overgrown gardens in a quiet cul-de-sac in Peckham. Of sprightly demeanour and impeccable manners, Joan has good claim to be the first woman to work in Smithfield Market. Yet, even though she was conscientious not to absorb the colourful vocabulary for which which the Market is famous,“When the cat can’t decide whether to go out, I say ‘Make up your Smithfield mind!'” she confessed to me.
“I went to work at Smithfield Market in 1937 when I was seventeen years old. I was studying at a school for commercial typists and, at that time, there was a recession so it was hard to find work, but my shorthand teacher was asked by a neighbour who worked at Smithfield if he knew of anyone reliable – so I was offered the job.
My mum was horrified – all those men and that bad language! But my dad said, ‘We’ll sort this out,’ and he went to take a look and discovered the office was in West Smithfield, not in the Market itself. So I took the job. It was a family business and I worked for John Jenkins, the son, as his Private Secretary. We were agents for Argentine Frigorifico and we had a stall in the market selling Argentine Chilled Beef, it was not ‘refrigerated’ but ‘chilled.’
It was very well organised, a number of Argentine famers formed a group and a ship of their meat arrived in the London Docks once a week. It opened up on a Monday and so much beef – only beef – was brought over to the market in time for the five o’clock opening. That went on each day until the ship was emptied at the end of the week. Then another one arrived and it happened all over again.
I worked there until the war came, when everything changed and I was employed by the Ministry of Food. We were evacuated to North Wales and the Ministry organised these Buffer Depots in every village in the country and my job was to keep a record of it all. I had to co-ordinate the corned beef supplies. It was incredibly complicated and there were no computers, I had a large sheet of paper – we called them ‘B*gger Depots.’
After the war, I came back to my old employer but I discovered we didn’t have an office anymore, it had been bombed. So I said, ‘John, why don’t we use one of the spaces over the shop in the Central Market?’ He said, ‘But we can’t expect customers to walk through the Market to get to our office.’ Then I reminded him that there was a door onto Charterhouse St, so they didn’t have to walk through the Market. We moved into an octagonal office in one of the rotundas above the Market and that was when I became part of Smithfield proper.
Before the War, women couldn’t go into the Market but afterwards we were allowed in. I always remember walking through the Market for the first time, the Bummarees were perfectly respectful. I walked down Grand Avenue and they all moved out of the way, calling ‘Mind the Lady!’ The Bummarees delivered the meat, they wore long overalls and they used absolutely appalling language and were famous for that. But it wasn’t real, they didn’t mean anything by it.
I worked for John for more than fifty years and sometimes we had visitors from the Argentine. After John died, the business was sold and I was taken on by the new owners, Anglo-Dutch Meats. I became Private Secretary to their Director, Mohammed El Maggot. He was Egyptian though he had been to school in England. He was known as ‘Hamdi’ in the Market and I worked for him for several years. He was a very polite young man and his father was determined that he was going to work, that’s why he bought the company to occupy his son. Mohammed came to work every day at five o’clock in the morning and he settled in to work.
One day, he walked into the office and announced, ‘I want you to come to my wedding – in Cairo!’ When we came back, he and his wife took a flat in the Barbican and he said, ‘I want you to come over and teach Imam how to make a proper cup of tea.’
As far as I was concerned, that was the end of my life in Smithfield – I was seventy-four and it was time to retire. Mohammed was terribly upset but I said, ‘It’s no good Hamdi, I have to go!’ I thought, ‘That’s where I cut my connections, otherwise it will be, ‘Can you go to Harrods to buy the baby a bottle?” So I cut myself off completely from Smithfield Market in 1994. I never married, I was always working in the Market. When I was sent to North Wales, I left all my boyfriends behind in London and I was surrounded by a lot of middle-aged men.
I was always happy to be in the Market, I was part of the Market. To look down from my office window upon the Grand Avenue and see everything going on. That was my life.”
Smithfield Market as Joan Brown first knew it in the nineteen-thirties
Entrance to the General Market on Charterhouse St, completed 1881
Entrance to the underground store at the General Market
South-east corner of the General Market
North- east corner of the General Market
War Memorial in Grand Avenue in Central Market
The Central Meat Market
Joan Brown worked in an office in one of the rotundas at Smithfield’s Central Market
The Central Meat Market at Smithfield
Archive images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
Around Old Billingsgate
I am giving my last lecture about the astonishing East End photography of David Hoffman this Sunday 8th December at 2:45pm as the finale of the Bloomsbury Jamboree at the Art Workers’ Guild.
In the week after the City of London Corporation voted to close Smithfield and Billingsgate Markets for good, I present these evocative colour photos from the sixties.
Fish Porters at Number One Snack Bar next to St Magnus the Martyr
These intriguing photographs are selected from a cache of transparencies of unknown origin acquired by the Bishopsgate Institute. We believe they date from the nineteen-sixties but the photographer is unidentified. Can anyone tell us more?
Looking west along Lower Thames St and Monument St
Sign outside St Mary-At-Hill
Pushing barrows of ice up Lovat Lane
Passage next to St Mary-At-Hill
Carved mice on a building in Eastcheap
Old shop in Eastcheap
Billingsgate Market cat
Inside the fish market designed by Horace Jones
Old staircase near Billingsgate
The Coal Exchange, built 1847 demolished 1962
Part of London Bridge crossing Lower Thames St, now removed
The Old Wine Shades, Martin Lane
Sign of a Waterman, now in Museum of London
In All Hallows Lane
Derelict site next to Cannon St Station
Looking towards Bankside Power Station by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, now Tate Modern
Old Blackfriars Station
The Blackfriar pub
Sculptures upon the Blackfriar
Sunrise over Tower Bridge
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Roy Reed At Old Billingsgate Market
I am giving my last lecture about the astonishing East End photography of David Hoffman this Sunday 8th December at 2:45pm as the finale of the Bloomsbury Jamboree at the Art Workers’ Guild.
In the week after the City of London Corporation voted to close Smithfield and Billingsgate Markets for good, I present Roy Reed’s photography of the Old Billingsgate Market from 1975.
Roy Reed took these pictures of Billingsgate Market when he was a twenty-three-year-old documentary photography student at the London College of Printing in 1975.
Roy’s enthusiasm for the subject was greater than the interest of the student journalist who asked him to take the pictures for a project on London’s dying markets. “When I suggested we get there early, she said, ‘See you there at eight,'” Roy recalled, rolling his eyes significantly. In the event, Roy got there at seven-thirty on a February morning and took his pictures just here as business was winding up at the nocturnal market. Nearly fifty years later, any disappointment Roy might harbour that the project was never written up and published is outweighed by his satisfaction in having taken these rare photographs of a lost world.
“It was nice chatting with the porters,” Roy remembered fondly, “No-one seemed to mind having their photograph taken – except maybe the guy in the tweed hat, you can see him looking at me suspiciously in the picture.” Taken at the time the market was already due to leave its ancient location next to London Bridge, Roy’s lively photographs comprise a fascinating record of a seemingly recent era in market life that grows increasingly remote.
Photographs copyright © Roy Reed
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A Night At Billingsgate Market
Up to 600 homeless sleep people on the floor at the Crisis at Christmas shelter in Whitechapel, 1978.
I am giving my last lecture about the astonishing East End photography of David Hoffman this Sunday 8th December at 2:45pm as the finale of the Bloomsbury Jamboree at the Art Workers’ Guild.
In the week after the City of London Corporation voted to close Smithfield and Billingsgate Markets for good, I publish my account of a night at the market in the company of legendary fishmonger Charlie Caisey.
Eighty-five year old fishmonger Charlie Caisey retired more than twenty years ago yet he could not keep away from the fish market for long, so I was delighted to give him an excuse for a nocturnal visit – showing me around and introducing me to his pals. Charlie maintained his relationship with the fish business through involvement with the school at Billingsgate, where he taught young people training as fishmongers and welcomed school parties visiting to learn about fish.
Universally respected for his personal integrity and generosity of spirit, Charlie turned out to be the ideal guide to the fish market. Thanks to him, I had the opportunity to shake the hand and take the portraits of many of Billingsgate’s most celebrated characters and, looking back with impunity upon his sixty years of experience in the business, Charlie told me his story candidly. He did not always enjoy the high regard that he enjoyed in latter days, Charlie forged his reputation in an arena fraught with moral challenges.
“In 1950, when I joined Macfisheries and started in a shop at Ilford, I was told, “You’ll never make a fishmonger,” and they moved me to another shop in Leytonstone. I was honest and in those days fishmongers always added coppers to the scale but I wouldn’t do that. Later, when I ran my shop, it was always sixteen ounces to the pound.
In Leytonstone, it was an open-fronted shop with sawdust on the floor. You had a blocksman who did the fishmongering, a frontsman who served the customers and a boy who ran around. At twenty-one, I was a boy fishmonger and then the frontsman decided to leave, so I moved up when he left. And I found I had an uncanny ability at arranging fish in shows! I made quite a little progress there, even though I was never taught – just three weeks at Macfisheries’ school.
I got my first management of a fish shop within three years, I was sent out to a poor LCC estate at Hainault. It was a fabulous shop but it was losing money, this was where I learnt to run a business and I worked up a bit of a storm there, working eighty hours a week and accounting the stock to a farthing. As a consequence, I was offered a first hand job in a shop behind Selfridges where all the customers were lords and ladies, but I refused because, if I was manager in my own shop, it would have been a step down. So then they sent me to run a shop in Bayswater. It was a lovely shop, when I arrived I had never seen many of the fish that were on display there, and I became wrapped up in it. We had a great cosmopolitan public including ladies of the oldest profession in the world.
Within a couple of years, Macfisheries moved me to Notting Hill Gate at the top of Holland Park Avenue – absolutely fabulous. I served most of the embassies and the early stars of television. The likes of Max Wall, Dickie Henderson and the scriptwriter of The Good Life were customers of mine. I built up quite a reputation and I was the first London manager to earn £1000 a year. From there I went to Knightsbridge running the largest fish shop in London, opposite Harrods. In 1965, I had thirty-five staff working under me and I worked fourteen hours a day.
My dream was to go into business on my own but I had no money. When I started my own shop, the sad part was how poor it was. It had holes in the floor, no proper drainage and no refrigeration. I’d never been to Billingsgate Market in my thirteen years at Macfisheries and when I went with my small orders, it was a different ball game. The dealers treated me like an idiot, the odd shilling was going on the prices and I was given short measures. Yet I never took it personally and I started to earn their respect because I always paid my bills every week. And, in twenty years, my turnover went from twelve thousand pounds to over half a million a year.
Most of my experience and knowledge has come from the customers. My experience of life came from the other side of the counter. They showed me that if you go out and look, there is a better life. When I think of Stratford while I was growing up, it was a stinky place because of the smell from the soap factories. My family were all railway people, my father was an uneducated labourer and what that man used to do for such a small amount of money and bad working conditions. We were poor because my marvellous parents were underpaid for their labours. I didn’t leave London during the war and I witnessed all the horrors. I missed lots of school because I was in the East End all through the bombing, so I’ve always been conscious of my poor education. Basically, I’m a shy man and I’m always amazed that I can stand up in front of people and speak, but I can do it because it comes from the heart.
Don’t ever do what I did. I went eighteen years without a holiday. It was a little crazy, I was forty before I had time to learn to drive.”
Dawn came up as Charlie told me his story and we walked out to the back of the fish market where the dealers throw fish to the seals from the wharf. Through his tenacity, Charlie proved his virtue as a human being and won respect as a fishmonger too. Yet although he may regret the inordinate struggle and hard work that kept him away from his family growing up, Charlie is still in thrall to his lifelong passion for this age-old endeavour of distributing and selling the strange harvest of the deep.
Clearing away after a night’s trading at Billingsgate, 7:40am.
Tom Burchell, forty-nine years in the fish business.
Alan Cook, lobster specialist for fifty-two years.
Simon Chilcott, twenty-four years at Bard Shellfish.
Mick Jenn, fifty-four years in eels – “Me dad was an empty boy and I started off in an eel factory.”
Terry Howard, sixty-three years in shellfish – “I played football in the 1960 Olympics.”
Anwar Kureeman, twelve years at Billingsgate – “I am a newcomer.”
Paul Webber, seventeen years at J.Bennett, Billingsgate’s largest salmon dealers.
Andres Slips came from Lithuania eleven years ago – “I couldn’t speak English when I arrived, now my mother would blush to hear my language.”
Geoff Steadman, fourth generation fish dealer, thirty-three years at Chamberlain & Thelwell.
Charlie in his first suit at fifteen –“From Willoughbys, I paid for it myself at half a crown a week.”
Charlie at the Macfisheries School of Fishmongery (He is third from right in back row).
Charlie in his fish shop in the seventies.
Charlie Caisey – the little fish that became a big fish.
You may recall I met Charlie Caisey at The Fish Harvest Festival
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Boiling the Eels at Barney’s Seafood
