Memoirs of London - 10

Other street vendors were the papers sellers.  They also came almost exclusively from East London but it was very rare to find young people among them. They worked outdoors all year long, occupying the corners at the exit of the most important metropolitan stations, using some of the simple metallic box inside which the newspapers were and, sometimes,  a table with metal chair, and from there emitted some incomprehensible sounds that merged with the drafters  coming from the bowels of the earth, through the infinite meanders of the subway; and in those sounds one could no longer recognize the names of the heads of the daily newspapers Evening Standard and the Evening News, which they pronounced in a short,  deformed by habit, similar to the rattle of a wounded beast, to attract the  attention of the distracted and hurried passengers in transit to the entrances of underground tunnels. The Evening News was actually just an imitation of the most famous Evening Standard. The latter was published in multiple editions from seven a.m. until late at night, with a frequency between  two and three hours. From one issue to the other, only the first page was changed in order to attract the readers to brilliant news. It was distributed to such vendors with a truly fantastic delivery network.

The delivers came in black-yellow van, and from there, with the engine still on, without descending from the van,  they flown the  newspapers packages.

The Evening Standard did not have a precise political physiognomy (at least not in the sense that we Italians give it to this expression) and perhaps it alternated its ideology tuning  with the political parties ruling  the largest London administrative body: "The Great London Council ".

All those vendors gave me a strange impression: that they had always done  that job. Not only for the wheeze voice that characterized them, but also for their very dirty clothing. The skin of their face looked   dark, almost dirty, because of the exposure to the unhealthy air.

 It also seemed to me that they felt  always cold, even in the summer, as if in their bones it was penetrated the humidity and the chilling breath of the freezing drafts coming from the Tube.

 They wore gloved handcuffs in order to easily grab money and newspapers and warmed up with a tea-milk cup they bought take away from the nearest snack bar.

Despite  of their appearance, which in the days of intense fog blended with the surrounding landscape, becoming a characteristic element, like the red royal columns of the Royal Mail, the telephone booths and the black cabs, the sensations they conveyed were, however positive.

 I do not say they were cheerful, but may be jovial. A serene and resigned joviality, as if the diffusion of the events, from London and the whole world, contained in their newspapers, made them impermeable to emotions, placing them above the human events, as if they were impartial messengers  from the underground’s gods.

When passing by, where I was working, they never lacked to nod at me with  sympathy, at the same time giving making a sound which wanted to be  an "are you all right " but one could only hear a  hiss, like the wind that had entered into their bodies, consisting of three, perhaps only two syllables, veiled, almost died  in the throat.

10. to be continued...