A tissue salesman on the Metropolitan Line
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Version 0 of 1. The picture tells a story that most of us have heard many times. Does a day go by in London when you don’t get regaled with a tale like this, feel touched or troubled by it and wondered how much, if any, of it is true? But this was a winning variation on the familiar theme. The background pattern tells you that it took place on a Metropolitan Line train - that’s the smart moquette of those walk-through, air-conditioned carriages, introduced five years ago. My wife, who took the photo, encountered the tissue vendor on her way to Wembley Park with one of our daughters on Sunday. It was a sparsely-populated train, perhaps the worst kind on which to be solicited for cash because the moral pressure can feel more intense. Not that panhandling is widely welcomed on the Underground at any time. To be begged from in such a confined space can be excruciating, whatever form it takes. When buskers pile on board busy trains in the centre of town, I get off at the next stop to avoid becoming irate - don’t corner me with your phoney bonhomie. But this unofficial salesman was subtler. There was no direct approach. Simply, silently, he placed his wares and his five-line sales pitch on a vacant seat and moved away to do the same thing further down. A few minutes later, he returned. My wife gave him two pounds and put the tissues in her bag. He thanked her, head bowed, his accent Eastern European. Other passengers made purchases too. He’d found a way into his customers’ purses and their hearts without taking their consciences hostage. Of course, the usual doubts remained. We talked about them later in the comfort of our kitchen, speculating on this fleeting Tube line contact with a very different kind of London life. What did he spend the money on? Was the typewritten appeal a pack - indeed, a tissue - of lies? Yet who doubts that there are true stories like his? And who could fail to admire his ingenuity? This is nothing if not a city of enterprise. |