I remember years ago explaining guide dogs to my daughter, and once she had digested the information for long enough she asked me how a blind person knew he had a guide dog as if he was blind he might just get an ordinary dog by mistake. This is how brilliant a child’s logic is; she provided me with an image of a blind man blundering his way into a pet shop knocking things over before an unscrupulous shop keeper sold him a hyperactive Jack Russell that led him a merry dance as it chased squirrels around parks. It is a shame that we lose this ability to paint our own pictures in our heads as we grow older and become weighed down by real life, children take things literally and seem happier for it. My nephew Harrison, when I asked him when he went back to school, once gave me the matter-of-fact answer “as soon as the holidays are over”. This made perfect sense to him and from the mouth of a grownup would sound sarcastic.

We have all at some point in our lives made some joke relating to the fact that Currys don’t sell curry, Selfridges don’t sell fridges (although I’m pretty sure they do), and Superdrug…I doubt very much that anyone actually got confused by these shop names.

It wasn’t until I had finished yesterday’s blog about cash in hand work that I remembered something that I believed as a child and because nothing happened today worth writing about, it gives me something to fill today with on the blog. One evening in the 1980s I watched a news report about bootleg cassettes and how copied versions of chart tapes (in the days of pre-recorded tapes) were cheaper than the likes of Our Price and Woolworths when bought on the black market. My dad once mentioned that he had to buy a concert ticket on the black market, and the grownup newspapers occasionally made mention of counterfeit clothes being available on this same black market.

Some of you might be ahead of me here; I thought that the black market was an actual market. Similar to the Saturday markets found in many towns, the Black Market was a market where you were able to buy things cheaper than the shops. As a child I didn’t have to worry about food and clothing of course, but the notion of being able to stretch my pocket money further by buying cassettes from this wonderful place sounded amazing. Here I am, already a lover of music and an avid collector, having to save up to buy an LP or tape in the days when music was still quite expensive compared to today (an LP cost a minimum of nine pounds), when I could go to the black market and pick up several cassettes instead. If they sold comics and writing paper (I didn’t have a lot of needs as a child) then I would have been in my element.

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February housekeeping

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