The city of Perth is pretty small compared to most other state capitals, and Perth in the year 2000 was still referred to by its inhabitants as “Dullsville.” Every now and then politicians would try and butter us up for our vote and refer to Perth and Western Australia in general as the “Cinderella State,” but by and large they weren’t fooling anyone. That said, Perth’s main shopping drag of Hay Street still drew a decent crowd on Saturdays. I remember watching the various street performers licenced by the city try and liven up the streetscape; one of my favourites was a clown on stilts who would exaggeratedly sneak up on tourists to scare them, then nonchalantly lean against a lamppost or roof sign if he got caught and pretend he’d just been waiting for a friend. Another was a punk chainsaw juggler – I’m fairly certain there’s a planning law in every city stipulating the use of at least one juggler among every group of street performers, preferably juggling with something sharp and deadly. The guy was pretty talented, although he did end up losing it and chasing a group of Hare Krishnas down Hay Street, both him and the chainsaw screaming, when the Krishnas interrupted his performance one too many times with their chanting.
There was nothing quite like standing at the front of the A&R store on a hot Saturday morning. The smell of dust, the sound of hundreds of men, women and children doing their furious day of shopping (most of the stores in Perth didn’t open on a Sunday), and the kaleidoscope of shop fronts, street performers and beggars all vying for the contents of shopper’s wallets. Standing in the boundary between the bustling street and customers lining up at the counter behind me, you could almost feel like you were a neutral observer, a spectator in some inexplicable game being played out on the streets of Perth.
This wasn’t true, though. A&R had a stake in this attracting the attention of the mob of Saturday shoppers, and one afternoon Katherine pulled out a small portable speaker and a microphone and lugged it to front of the store.
“Time to do some spruiking,” she announced to the staff. “Who’s first?”
For anyone unfamiliar with the term, “spruiking” meant to stand at the front of the store and loudly describe what was on sale, in the hopes of attracting customers to visit the bookshop. Keep in mind that most of our target audience was still more comfortable with catalog mail-outs than internet campaigns, so having some patter with the oldies always guaranteed extra business.
As soon as Katherine spoke, all the casuals working that day (myself included) suddenly found something that was utterly essential to clean, because after a minute she rolled her eyes and turned on the microphone herself. To her credit, the purple-haired woman held up the microphone like a cabaret singer and burst into a long routine about our latest books, and as her voice rolled into the hubbub of the crowd it was obvious she had been doing this for years.
Unsurprisingly, it was Denise who was the first to offer to take over when Katherine had enough. Tall, tawny-haired and good-looking, Denise immediately turned heads as she took the microphone and started to speak. The young woman’s voice ambled pleasantly through the various specials we had on offer although she struck me as a bit too nice, putting me in mind of one of my primary school teachers who was sweetness and light – up until the bell rang and she no longer had to care. After a few minutes, Denise started to falter a bit when she ran out of things to say. Paul and I were still positioned in the main aisle and made furious rolling “keep going” motions with our hands when she turned to us in silent question. After a moment of silence, Denise shrugged and restarted her spiel, and we could tell by the set of her shoulders that within the first minute if speaking she had made an important discovery: it didn’t matter if you repeated yourself. Given how many families, pensioners and tourists trooped past the shop doors every minute, Denise could have simply read the price and title of a single book on loop and it probably wouldn’t have hit the same set of ears twice.
When Denise had finally had enough she handed the microphone over to Paul. Now I’ll admit that I wasn’t expecting Paul to be a bad spruiker; being good at public speaking is something that every aspiring lawyer has to master. Denise and I stood and watched as the lanky blonde figure rifled through a few catalogs first, memorizing offers and specials so that he could fill out more than a minute of patter. As we waited in anticipation Tanya came up behind us and risked blowing her cover by whispering to Denise.
“What’s lawyer-boy up to?”
“He’s going to try spruiking,” replied the tawny-haired woman.
“What’s he going to do?” snorted Tanya. “Cross-examine the customers?”
“I’m sure he’ll be alright,” I whispered in reply, feeling the need to stand up for the males on the team. “Lawyers are good at speaking, aren’t they?”
I remember we were all taken aback by what happened next. Paul wasn’t just good at spruiking – he was amazing.
The blonde law student must have watched a lot of game shows growing up because he suddenly turned to the wandering crowd, smiled like he was about to give someone a free car and started talking as smoothly as if he’d been gargling engine oil.
“Ladies and gentlemen it is such a pleasure to greeting you this fine day, and to bring you some of the greatest book savings that A&R can present. If you simply walk into this store-”
“Oh my God, he’s really going for it,” whispered Denise in amazement.”
“Bloody hell,” whispered Tanya.
“Told you,” I replied, although I was thinking Well, I hope he doesn’t knock anyone over and lock himself in the staffroom again.
Sure enough, I was up next.
“You’ll be right,” said Paul with a confident smile as he handed me the microphone. “It’s not like they’re really listening anyway.”
“Come on Chris!” called Denise from the aisle. I looked around for Tanya but she had already disappeared into the milling book shoppers, hunting down her next criminal.
Nonetheless, I picked up the microphone and looked around at the stacks of books for something to say. I had done something similar when I had worked in the fishmongers, using the phone intercom system to try and entice shoppers to eat more fish. It didn’t end well – apparently, harried families trying to get the food shopping done didn’t appreciate being told that they should eat more fish because it’s good for their brains. Obviously I never tried spruiking in my previous job as a dishpig. The sight of a grimy dishwasher standing at the front of the restaurant proudly proclaiming how clean the dishes were probably wouldn’t have attracted many customers.
I started well enough, I politely thanked everyone for stopping to have a look at what A&R had to offer, and tried to go through a few specials on sets of Harry Potter books (again, the boy wizard is a story for another day). I was halfway through describing the latest book when it happened.
I stuttered.
It was only slight, but it was enough to throw me off balance, and once I started slipping I couldn’t stop.
God that was excruciating – it’s been almost twenty years, and I’m still wincing as I write this. You see, as I kept stumbling through a simple “buy two, get one free” spiel, the crowd of Hay Street had finally started to take an interest. Meanwhile I was trapped; stuck in a hot prickly blanket of embarrassment that was slowly but surely smothering me. At first I attracted a couple of awkward stares or confused, sympathetic smiles, but after one too many fumbles a group of teens stopped to start heckling.
“Hey dude! You suck!”
“Stop stuttering!”
“Yeah, you stutterer!”
I kept struggling forward, but by this point even the various spectators to my humiliation had lost interest and had disappeared back into the crowd.
When the ordeal was finally over I set down the microphone with shaking hands and staggered back over to Denise and Paul.
“How bad was it?” I asked glumly.
“Yeah, it was pretty bad, mate,” answered Paul matter-of-fact.
“Oh, I don’t think it was that bad,” started Denise.
“I don’t think it was that good, either,” I replied.
“Don’t worry Scruffy, I think you just need more practice,” said Katherine when she found me behind the till later on (“Scruffy” had become her favorite nickname for me after I had turned up a couple of weeks in a row forgetting to shave). “Try again next week.”
Yaaaaay…. I answered in the privacy of my own head.
If Tanya had anything to say about the performance, she kept it to herself. I don’t know if that made things better or worse.
I went home feeling pretty despondent, and wracked my brain trying to think of someone I could model a good spiel off. Paul had already cornered the market on “The Price is Right” impersonations, so I didn’t think I could compete with that. With not much else to do, I decided put on a DVD to forget about the whole thing – and the movie I selected turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made.
Does anyone remember the film “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”?
Set in the backstreets of North London, this dark comedy about four small-time thieves trying to pay of an enormous gambling debt was one of my current favorites back in early 2000. The film opens with Jason Statham working a small crowd to fence some stolen jewelry, and the confident, mercenary and fun patter was music to my ears. I think I watched that opening scene more than a dozen times before I started to feel the rhythm.
I had the north London accents running through my head all week at uni until it was time to get back to work on Saturday. When my worksheet rolled past midday and Katherine pulled out the microphone again, I put up my hand right away.
“Chris, are you sure about this?” asked Denise worriedly.
Paul just shrugged and smiled. I think he had already decided that it was a dog-eat-dog world and if I failed again, it was my own responsibility.
“Trust me, I got this,” I replied confidently, although inside my heart was already starting spasming.
Katherine smiled. She was always good at reading people and the twist of her mouth suggested she knew exactly what I was going through.
“All right, Scruffy,” she answered, dropping the microphone in my outstretched hand. “Ten minutes. Show them what you’ve got.”
So it was that I stood back up in front of the multitude of Hay Street shoppers once again, closed my eyes, channeled my inner Jason Statham and started to speak.
“You see these books, Ladies and Gents? You see these books? Let me tell you, you ain’t never seen specials like these since Granddad was knee high to a grasshopper and TV was in black and white. Give me thirty seconds of your time to pursue the goods we have in stock, and if you don’t see a bargain here today then there’s a shop a few doors down where you can get your eyes checked. Feeling a little amorous? Gents, over here we have Romance novels guarantee to keep her warm on cold winter nights; buy one for your girlfriend, buy one for your wife – although that’s a lot more fun if they’re not in the same room at the same time. Step right up Ladies and Gents, don’t be shy, I won’t bite unless that something that you’re into. Lord of the Rings! We’ve got the full set of the Lord of the Rings books, they’re about a guy who has a ring put on his finger and slowly transforms into a heartless monster, I’m seeing a few nods from the Ladies to suggest they’ve already been there, done that! Grab yourself a bargain, Ladies and Gents, grab yourself a bargain. Any other grabbing and you might get more than you bargained for…”
I remember hearing some shocked laughter from Denise and Paul, but once I was riding the spruiking express I couldn’t afford to even turn around to see their expressions. I continued on, letting my mouth run wild as a few families stopped to listen to the odd banter. After a few minutes I started to get a few chuckles and even a laugh or two from the old men who probably heard similar spiels when they were young. Most importantly, a handful of the onlookers smiled, shook their heads and wandered into A&R to see what all the fuss was about.
After ten minutes of pure electricity my nerves were burnt out, and I smiled, thanked the small audience for listening and shakily passed the microphone over to Denise.
“That was awesome,” she whispered as she took the microphone and turned to face the crowd. Paul nodded as I took up position next to him.
“Not bad,” he murmured with a wry smile. “Although some of the jokes were perhaps, probably, just a little bit, wildly inappropriate.”
“Uh, yeah, perhaps just a bit,” I confessed sheepishly. I risked looking over at Katherine where she working behind the counter, and she held my gaze for a second. Honestly, I was wondering if I was about to hand over my badge, but the shock of purple hair twitched and instead she smiled and returned to the old man she was serving.
I breathed a sigh of relief. From the corner of my eye I spotted Tanya, quietly shadowing a teenager with a suspiciously large overcoat. The shoplifting spy caught my gaze, cocked her head in thought, then gave me a thumbs-up.
Other spiels followed at A&R over the coming months; some doing the London patter, one where we all tried out the “auction house” style of speaking as rhythmically and quickly as possible, and one hilarious but probably unsuccessful attempt to act out famous Aussie beer ads but insert the word “book” instead of “beer.” When passers-by heckled we learnt to heckle right back, and almost two decades later I still use of lot of public speaking in my current job.
Writing all this down I can still feel some of the old patter coming back to me, and I remember the sound and rhythm of A&R.
Of course, when I bring the sounds of the bookstore to mind, I still remember this one song.
This one damn annoying song.
The song about milk.
But that’s a story for another day.
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