WHITE WELLIES

 

Muswell Hill's long-established fishmonger is steaming with anger, his apron slimy with blood and scales, his wellies white. He leaves his line of customers, abandons his shop to an open-mouthed apprentice, storms out of the premises with its salmon-pink salmon, translucent steaks of white cod, lobster-hued lobsters, heaps of crushed ice, glistening dark-green samphire, and he thunders down the road. The street is jampacked with twilight traffic. The fishmonger bludgeons his way in his white wellies through the stationary cars; he marches over to the street corner by the church pub, where a cheerful Geordie is selling Northern wetfish out of the back of a white van to passing pedestrians. He, too, is wearing white Wellingtons."Get off my fucking patch," bellows the sturdy native, his red face pushed close to the Geordie smile. They are white toe to white toe. The local man wins the white welly stand-off. The Geordie, half his size, backs off.