Home life
Hawkers welcome
Alice Thomas Ellis
Two little girls knocked at the door the other day and asked if there were any odd jobs they could do to make money for some charity or other. They were very little girls and I shouldn't imagine they were terribly competent at anything yet. Any- way, so many odd jobs need doing that I couldn't think of any one in particular. I asked if they were travelling widely round Camden Town knocking on the doors of strangers and they said they were, so I asked if their mothers knew they were thus engaged and they said they did. I can only suppose that their mothers were unbeliev- ably busy making chutney, and I don't know quite why but I also think they have left-wing tendencies. The little girls had privately educated voices and nice clean frocks on and an air of informed good will, and were somehow subtly different from little conservatives. I didn't have long enough to question them further because they were off on the trail of good works,
robbing me of the chance to explore further my theories as to the nature and behaviour of the young from families of varying political affiliations.
Then a man knocked at the door and said he was selling fitted carpets. He happened to have with him an acre or two of grey corded stuff and we happened to have several bedrooms in need, so we did a deal: on the spot, just like that. I'd been planning to do it for years and years and never got around to it. Normally it involves going to shops that sell carpet and making choices, and one simply hasn't got the time. It was very reasonably priced too an important consideration, as often one simply hasn't got the money either. Being a carpet man he noticed with the acumen of his calling that the stairs were uncarpeted, as they have been for years since the last lot wore completely away. 'What about this then?' he enquired with a bright and encouraging glance, and I explained that I sincerely intended one day to do something about it, but not until I'd cleared out the loft and taken the contents down to the country. I said I just hadn't got the time to get round to it, so he said he'd empty the truck of carpet and do it for me. If he does he will have solved at a stroke a problem which has been dogging me for years. The untidiness of the loft has been a constant oppression and I have long suspected that moths and wasps build up colonies in there and then make forays downwards to ravage everything else in the place, or lie in wait to sting you in the case of the wasps — and clog up the kitchen sink on some motive- less suicide mission.
Apart from little girls and the carpet man, people no longer call at the door offering their services. We are told to be wary if they do because they might, in fact, be after our savings; or they might be mad rapists or gangs of professional burglars who take everything, right down to the fridge — and, quite possibly, the carpets. It's years since I saw the man who used to come round to cane the chairs and even longer since I saw the man who used to grind knives. Neither of them was particu- larly good at doing these things, but they gave the place a Dickensian, traditional feel as they sat incompetently amidst the tools of their trade, drinking tea and making conversation. The knife man had one leg and wore one ear-ring, and I always assumed he had been a seafarer. He had a romantic air, and although after his visits we frequently found a bottle of booze was missing I didn't really mind.
I wish the butcher and the baker still called, and the muffin man. Why not? it never occurs to me to go out and buy muffins and I bet I would if a man came to the door with some. I think this may be the answer to unemployment. Only if little girls are going to do it I think their mothers should abandon the chutney and go with them. They could canvass votes at the same time.
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