Old Bakery Street, 9.22

Salvu Grech, from the shop opposite

Don't look at me, look at the washstand. Good. Now — you see the tag on the leg of it? That figure on the bottom, that's not a price, that's what he gave for it. Everyone on this street does it and everyone on this street thinks it's clever. It's a word. 10 letters, no letter twice in it, written on a card in his till, and the letters just count along: 1st letter is 1, 2nd letter is 2, and the 10th one is 0. That's the whole of it. Any boy he takes on at 15 reads the card once and can price the shop by dinnertime.

He's up at the corner with a coffee so we've got 40 minutes, maybe 35. I've left my own shop wide open across the road with the stoves out, which is not clever of me, but there are 11 lots at Ħamrun on Tuesday and he's after 11 lots at Ħamrun on Tuesday and I want to know what he thinks a chest is worth before I set a reserve on 2 of mine by Monday night.

He buys better than I do. I'll say that flat. His lotting at that sale room is the best on the island — he'll put a bad chair with a good tray and it goes out the door as 1 lot at a price nobody would give for either. I'm not standing here because I think he's a fool.

Right. First thing. The codes are in shillings and pence, never in pounds. So a chest at 3 quid 15 goes down as 75, and that's why half of what's hanging out here is 2 characters long. Which is why I said, straight away, that the little tag on the end there is a cheap piece — 2 characters, 2 characters is under 100 shillings, must be small money —

— no. Wrong. I've got that wrong and I'll say so. A 2-character code is a 2-character code, it isn't a small piece. He'll carry a wardrobe home for 90 shillings if it's out of the right house and 90 shillings is 2 characters. Forget the length telling you the money. The length tells you something else, and I'll come back to it because it makes me want to sit down.

That commode came out of the Vella house behind the church, the one where the daughter took the good clock and left everything else standing. 3 dealers went, he was there first because he always is. Where was I. The sums.

The margin isn't a percentage, nobody quotes a percentage. Small stuff he trebles. Big carcase furniture he doubles and carries. Anything wanting a polisher, he prices what the polisher charges and puts the piece on top of it. So a selling price and a cost together are a statement about how much work the thing needs — a piece doubled is a piece he thinks is sound, and a piece where the gap is silly is a piece with a leg off.

Now. Look at the sale sheet lying there, that's his own writing, that's what 3 of these actually cost him under the hammer in January — hammer, plus the 5% they take off you, plus the porterage. He was standing in that room. I was standing in that room. So I've got the same 3 figures he's got, and next to them are the codes he wrote for the same 3 pieces, and there's your way in. Take the figures against the letters and the letters start falling.

I had it half out and then I said, right, this one's 2 shillings over, must be carriage, must be a letter in there for carriage —

— and no again. Carriage he adds in figures. Always in figures. He puts the goods in letters and the cart in numbers because the carter has to read the note. I'd forgotten that and it cost me 10 minutes and I'm telling you so you don't lose the 10 minutes.

And then the thing that makes me want to go home and shout. My wife has been marking my stock since 1959 with the same 4 letters. The same 4. Since 1959. Anybody on this street could stand at my door of an afternoon and read every margin I've got, and I'd not know they'd done it, and I have said this to her 40 times.

Look at the REDUCED one. Look at it. He's struck the old cost through with 1 line and written the new one beside it — the same object, 2 codes, and a relationship between them he's told me himself in violet pencil. That tag does half my morning for me. I could kiss it. I'm not going to, the pavement's hot enough already, I can feel it through the soles.

And the envelope. He's added 4 costs into a total and left the total in plain figures, and it's in shillings and pence, 12 to the shilling, 20 to the pound, carried the way anyone carries it. If you add it in decimal you'll get a number that's very nearly right and completely no use. That's not cleverness dying, that's paperwork. The code always goes on paperwork. A man will keep a cost in letters for 6 years and then write a delivery note with the goods in letters and the cart in figures and it's finished.

Then I did the last stupid thing. There's a code with 3 characters that can't possibly be a 3-figure sum of that shape, and I sat there reading the middle character as a letter of its own and getting a total that was nonsense. It isn't a letter of its own. That's all I'll say about it. When a code is shorter than the smallest price it could stand for, or when 2 pieces you know cost identical money carry codes of unequal length, stop and look again at what you've been calling a letter.

Turn the tags over. Press the space bar on whichever one you're standing at — 4 of them have got writing on the back and he'd not thank either of us. Put your letters down on the slate. It won't take a letter that argues with a figure already down; the chalk just doesn't hold and the letter goes back to the tag and nothing tells you which figure objected. That's fair. Nothing on this pavement is going to tell you anything.

If you're wrong when you submit, it rubs out 2 that were right along with the ones that weren't, and it says nothing, and the smear stays there for good. There's no rubbing a slate properly, everyone knows that.

The card's in the till under the brass weight. It does nothing at all until you've been wrong 2 whole times. After that you can lean on the weight for 4 seconds and it lifts far enough to read 1 letter — 1, chosen for you, once, and never offered again. I've used mine. I'm not proud, but I've used it, and 1959, and the same 4 letters, and my own wife.

Fill the 10 and the slate reads his word straight across. Then you'll know what he paid for every piece on this pavement, and on Tuesday morning at Ħamrun you'll know what he can go to on 11 lots, and he'll be standing there buying better than both of us anyway. He's coming back up in 30 minutes. Look at the washstand.