Street Sellers

In the mornings from about 6.30 onwards the street sellers do their rounds. One of my favourites blows a whistle that sounds exactly like an old fashioned police whistle. It's his signature. He cycles his bicycle along the street with a big box full of something, I have no idea what, on the back of his bike blowing his whistle.

Others just call out their wares as they walk or ride or drive while the onion and garlic sellers generally have their produce hung around their necks in the traditional French way.
In Havana, where many inhabitants live in first or second floor apartments, people often lower a basket on a rope with the money from a balcony and the seller places the produce in the basket with the change and this is hauled up to the balcony. This is all preceded with a calling conversation of what is needed and the price, and possibly a bit of haggling thrown in. It's wonderful to watch and listen and makes me realise that street sellers must be the original convenience shopping, the original Tesco Direct.

I can vaguely remember an onion seller on our street when I was very small, with onions cascading over the handlebars of his bike. I'd swear he wore a French beret but that might be my imagination.

How great would it be if we still had this in the UK? It would be a bit like the individual shelves of a supermarket arriving on your street over the morning. You'd wander out and buy vegetables, the fish man would turn up followed by the juice seller and the meat men. Trouble is most of us are out at work during the day and all we still have in the UK is the milkman, and like many others we buy our milk from the Co-op . . .