Beware the heather sellers…

Have you ever been to Covent Garden in London? I only ask as it was around this time of year in 1994 that I happened to visit the place. I was thinking about it just recently and remembered an embarrassing thing that happened to me there. Although not a native of London, I had been to Covent Garden before and have returned since, but it was on this particular occasion that I was (quite legally) mugged.

I had been standing in the cold January air listening to a string quartet playing Pachelbel’s Canon for the tourists. The musicians were wrapped in scarves and thick coats, their faces wore a look of intense concentration as their fingers made chords and drew bows across strings.

Gypsy peddlers (being gypsies selling things as opposed to people selling gypsies) swarmed around like they had fallen from the pages of a Dickens novel. One particularly insistent older gypsy women stepped in front of me as I walked by, having finished listening to the open-air recital. She barred my escape and proffered a dry sprig of heather in my face like it was a weapon.

“Sprig of heather for luck sir?” she offered desperately.

I decided, against my better judgement (and with thoughts of a nasty curse being placed upon me should I decline her offer, cliché I know, but you do wonder) to offer a couple of pound coins for her piece of flora. It’s strange how, twelve years later, I can still recall the look of disgust on her face as she peered into my palm at the coinage as if I were holding out steaming pile of dog excrement in exchange for her tatty heather. She looked up, and with a piercing stare said,

“Paper money only sir!” in the tone of one highly offended by my already generous offer.

Glancing around I saw some of her accomplices eyeing me with suspicion, ready at the slightest signal from their fellow heather seller to pounce, and for all I knew, bind my hands with some homespun washing line and bundle me into the Romany caravan no doubt waiting nearby, to give me my just desserts.

I decided not to test my suspicions, and with an air of defeat, pulled from my wallet and handed her the smallest paper domination issued by the bank of England, £5. In exchange for this I received a battered, greenish brown leaf with a couple of purple flowers clinging to it. I took it in a bit of a stupor as the gypsy muttered something unintelligible, and disappeared (as if by magic) to find another idiot to con – sorry, another tourist to whom she could bring luck and a genuine London experience.

It had all happened so quickly that it took me a few seconds to comprehend exactly what had occurred. I made my way sheepishly out of the market court and joined the bustling crowds of The Strand; sure that everyone I passed knew I had just been duped by a middle-aged woman in an apron and fingerless gloves.

Disclaimer: This story is in no way meant to be derogatory to those of Romany descent. It is entirely factual and in not embellished in any way.