Published in issue 26

I had just slipped past the night watchman by the Proud Rock Poster Gallery using a simple old blues trick I learned in the mean streets of Westernville: a whisky bottle, a rat and a hockey stick make a perfectly timed mini-explosion. I jumped the wall and crept along the old horse stalls of Camden Market (London, Europa). For the good of mankind, I needed to find out what happened to the druid who once sold his magic theremins and sixties’ Camden vibes. But then, from out of the shadows, stepped a figure I didn’t expect.

The tall trees in a forest can’t grow without the wood lice and toadstools below. It’s just so with a market. A good market can’t thrive without its car stereo thieves and lunatics. The big banks in the city would never exist without the desperate poor and hookers on the outskirts of town doing all the ugly jobs fixing bankers’ plumbing.
I had returned to the dead and barren Camden Market to find what had become of the druid, but little did I know what a sinister spell had been cast on those London horse stalls which held him prisoner and had turned Camden Market into a souvenir stand for Satan.

Bebo the Impaler is a cruel landlord. He’s supposed to have won the market in a Mayfair card game and has transformed it from eccentric chaotic beauty to a knick-knack shopping mall in only a few short years. First he doubled the rents, then he tripled them. And when the stall holder is deeply invested and starts to bleed, 10 per cent is taken of his or her gross. Much of the market is forced to be open seven days a week now instead of two. It’s become the fourth biggest tourist attraction in London. Not sexy.

Bobo’s rages are much talked about (though this paper cannot be responsible for false rumour; please don’t break my legs, Biffo). The traders put up with his threatening and bullying. He works the market like a plantation. One busy Saturday afternoon, with many witnesses, he is said to have yelled at a stall owner who left a shopping bag in the aisle: “You think this is your market? This is MY market. I MADE this market. You will do as I say or I’ll burn your fucking stall down!” Think about that.

Would his henchmen crush my pelvis like they did the old fruit and veg wagons if they caught me? I snuck under the cameras and past the Cyberdog bazaar.

Way out west in America, the markets have almost completely disappeared. They talk of a free market society, but if a cat who’s down on his luck can’t take some busted crap or lousy batteries into a market and sell ’em, how’s he supposed to get a leg up? If you need a special licence to sell garbage, what poor-ass dude is gonna pay and apply for that licence? VAT for old, scratched 45s? Forget it. If there’s no free market at the bottom of the food chain, then the businessman gets rich, forcing everyone to work in his malls that sell cheap Chinese imports. Aww, balls on an anvil, this commie moaning ain’t gonna rescue rock’n’roll from BooBoo and his casino friends, is it?

The figure stepped out from the shadows. I saw his face then. Liam Gallagher advanced, waving a busted pint glass at me. “Liam, it’s me, Son of Dave, I’m on your side,” I whispered. “I need to find the druid. Only he can fix my theremin and return the spirit of Camden to the kids.”

Liam coolly eyed me and said, “I can’t find any very ironic parkas anymore. Market’s fucked. I’m not having it.”
We went silently to where the old druid’s cave was. Feeling along the wall, now sealed over, Liam got the idea. “D’ya think there’s something hidden here, like?”

“Yes,” I said. “You aren’t nearly as dumb and grumpy as you pretend to be on television, are you?”

“Exactly, it’s all an act,” he confided, and suddenly his hand caught on a loose brick.

I thought to myself, “How in cross-eyed Mary can those neopolitan puffer-jacketed arrogant tit tourists afford to pay 275 quid for a sixties Burberry mac? They’ll never wear it! It doesn’t bloody rain in their country! We have to get to the bottom of this mystery.”

Liam slid the brick out slowly and the wall started to slide.

“We need help, it’s too heavy,” I said as I threw my modest weight behind it. But Liam was on his iPhone, and almost instantly we were silently joined by a small army of British indie legends. I blushed with honour as I found Jarvis to my left and Graham to my right. Together we stormed into the hidden tombs of Camden.

The steam and heat from the tunnels hit us. Deep in the horse alleys was a secret ironworks. No ventilation, an evil stench and the aged love generation squinted at us with sunken, desperate eyes. The artists, leathermen and vinyl dealers of the old market had been imprisoned here, deep under the rail tracks, and forced to make the huge metal horse sculptures which crowd the tacky market outside. Oh, the terrible suffering to indulge one mad man’s fantasy!
And behold, the druid! Jarvis bowed and spoke for all of us: “Great druid, we have missed you. Camden has missed you, and the music is dying. We need your dodgy theremins, your holy eccentricity and your weird spaceship sculptures to keep our British identity. Let us free you from these chains and take you to a better scene. The Truman Brewery in Brick Lane is where the kids are now. There’s still some room up on the third floor.”

Just then, what seemed like half the Israeli mafia surrounded the entrance to the caves. Bricks and bottles began to fly. Much of nineties’ British music history and one blues pervert would be trapped in this tomb forever if they sealed us in. Luckily, the new iPhone has an application for dialling telephone numbers. I quickly called the late night Marathon Bar around the corner and, at my command, the most brutal bunch of smelly drunks imaginable came stumbling to our aid. Caught in the middle, the henchmen didn’t stand a chance. Nothing could defeat the doubly unpleasant force of British rock and Camden drunks.

They ran screaming into the bloody night. We liberated the old Camden craftsmen, but we couldn’t reclaim the market, because it’s privately owned by a’holes. They’ll never own the free spirit of rock@roll™, however, not even if they buy The Stool Pigeon and align it with the new Sony/EMI/Clear Channel/NME merger. Hmmmm. I feel another ad coming on: Rolling Indie Magazine? RIM? It would need some Qatar investment… or the Scientologists.

S.O.D

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