Francis Frith

My very first job was working in Lewisham for Fred Morris. He was a huge fellow that used to drink in the pub my mum and step father drank in just on the Lee high Road. He was a wonderful man who knew that mum was struggling to buy me the things I needed as I got older. He offered me a Saturday job working on his fruit stall, to work every weekend and that gradually became every night after school too. The atmosphere in the market was wonderful. The sights and smells of market, the people that used to come to the market were unbelievable, perhaps the reason why I'm not introvert now and not afraid to be upfront with people. Some of the people that I met in the market (stall holders) were a close knit group and if anyone had problems they used to come together to try and sort the problem out. The winter was bitter as the wind used to blow on the market from Blackheath and more often that not we used to get horrific chills in our hands, but somehow it didn't matter as we were working and used to soon warm up. I worked there when cheesmans was still open and when it shut it had such an impact in the market stalls. Christmas was truly an amazing time on the stalls, we used to have so much going on, very busy but it seemed that the market stall holders used to just crack on with it. I learnt a lot from working on the market. It was an experience I shall never forget.