Look, I promise I’m not going to make a habit of this but this is another of my MyT blogs, this time from the end of 2008. I’m in the process of copying all my MyT blogs over to my blogsite here just in case I’m the next one to be consigned to oblivion over there. Apologies to Tina who I know does not approve of such retentive behaviour but hey, we’re all different and entitled to march to our own drum, in my opinion.
My excuse for inflicting this one on you is that it is, I believe, relevant to omg’s blog. It also explains the avatar which I am using here and which is on the way out in the near future, for your information.
I really hate haggling, dickering, bargaining or whatever else you wish to call it. I would have been a severe disappointment to my Highland ancestors who thought that a good day out could always be had by nipping over into the next glen to negotiate the transfer of cattle from some neighbouring clan, usually at the point of a claymore.
Even though my Lowland mother was also an inveterate seeker after a good price, my aversion is probably a classic example of nurture over nature. When my Dad was stationed in Singapore, I was, apparently, at home speaking in English or in the dialects of our Chinese cook and my amah. I am reliably informed that Mum used to drag me around all the stores and markets, relying on the traders’ favourable reaction to a little, blond-haired and blue-eyed boy, prattling away in a childish mixture of Malay, Hokkien and English. My elder sister tells me that my mother got some really great discounts as a result.
I obviously suppressed the whole thing and I lost my linguistic skills on the troopship home – by the time the ”Empire Trooper” docked in the U.K., I was a monoglot. I had, however, developed this deep and abiding detestation of all aspects of haggling. In due course, I followed the usual route and married a girl just like my mother. I have spent what seems like a large part of my adult life hanging around shops and stalls in various foreign countries making helpful suggestions like ”Just pay them what they want and let’s get on’, while she enjoyed the cut and thrust of striking a bargain.
The Arab quarter in Jerusalem, Turkish bazaars, Thai and Egyptian tourist traps, flea markets in Athens and elsewhere, and street markets in too many cities and countries of Europe to list. You name them, and I’ve been haunted, hunted, harangued and harassed through them. The red mist of bargain-hunting has only descended on me once.
On a Nile cruise, our group went off to visit the temple of Hatshetsup (pre-massacre). They did the usual trick of driving right up to the temple and then parking on the other side of the stalls so that we would have to run the gauntlet on the way back. My wife got back on the bus with one of those little black Egyptian cats for her feline-crazy sister-in-law. When she told me the price, it seemed a lot. It had been a long day and something inside me snapped. I got off the bus and bought an identical one for half the price at another stall. She then got off the bus and came back with one that was even cheaper. The sun was hot and we had time to kill before the stragglers got back from the temple. Those other tourists who were already back on the bus entered into the spirit of things. The stalls were suddenly busy with people buying nothing but cats. It got nasty towards the end. Traders were grabbing cats off each other’s stalls to satisfy demand and we had to drive through reinforcements hurrying up the road with fresh supplies when we finally came to our senses.
Thailand sticks in the memory as well. I once went out without my wife in Bangkok. My watch strap had broken and I had seen a stall selling them about 50 yards from the hotel. I still blush to think of the many and varied delights that I was offered during the short walk involved.
And so to my avatar.
In summer 2008, we went on a month long visit to my wife’s cousins in South Africa. On our third day in, we stopped at a small town in what is now called KwaZulu Natal. Aforesaid wife and cousins went to the tourist stall and found some items that they wanted to buy. Not a lot happened because the two guys running the stall were too engrossed in their chess match to come across and sell us anything. When they did finally wander over, the prices quoted were so cheap that even my wife could not be bothered to argue. I thought that I had finally come to a country where I could find true mercantile happiness and I took the picture to commemorate the event. It was, of course, far too good to be true. When we got down to Durban and in amongst the Indian market stalls, we were back to the haggling and my wife was happy again.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Now don’t tell me John, being ‘retentive’ and buying all that tourist tat, your house must look like the old curiosity shop!
God how I hate tat and clutter, I’m always banishing everything to the office or garage, (his department)
We need a good fire round here!
Actually the boy was a great collected of embroideries from round the world and I have been lumbered with all of them, too sentimental to get rid of them!
G’day, Mr Mackie, Sir.
Just correcting a comment you made elsewhere – there is no bar here against you posting about MyT, about personalities there, or anything else you choose, so long as it’s within the WordPress ToS. Whatever gave you that idea?
… but if you keep regurgitating old blogs I may change their date-stamp to match their origin! 😉
Frankly, I have to be totally outspoken here, John. I HATE haggling. It’s demeaning and embarrassing and anyone indulging in this awful habit in my hearing makes me want to KILL them, especially if it is a member of my immediate family 🙂
I’m with you on this one, JM.
(I can’t bear it, always believe the sob stories, ‘my bother makes these and has six children to support’ … etc)
Tina, good evening.
Not a problem really. Accidents can always happen if I really don’t like some of the stuff she has acquired over the years. And she has this slightly flaky friend who she humours by letting her feng shui the house from time from time. That usually involves the culling of a lot of memorabilia that I am quite happy to see being put to the sword.
Bearsy, good evening.
It’s this joshing thing again which you Aussies of English extraction never quite seem to get. Janh1 and I never have had, and, I hope, never will have any ‘issues’. We just enjoy winding each other up and that was the sole purpose of my welcoming comment (apart from being genuinely glad to see her here).
And, being a Jock, and quick to take offence, could I just point out that I date stamped this blog (approximately) in the Italics?
Only joshing, of course. Smiley thing.
Ara, good evening.
I have always supported you in your commendably green attitude to unsatisfactory or expendable staff. Recycling them into the compost heap seems to me to be an eminently sensible approach in this day and age when we should all be doing our bit for the environment.
I do, however, feel that you should cut your nearest and dearest a bit of slack, whatever their faults.
pseu1, good evening.
It really is a great divide, isn’t it? You either love it or hate it. A bit like Marmite, I suppose.
About the CW competition this month. I’m working on something, but I’m a sensitive wee soul. Is it absolutely necessary for anybody commenting to say something bad about my entry if I do enter?
Chuckle, John, they are all still here, the family I mean, so I am the epitome of tolerance, within certain definable and Very Clear boundaries of course. No haggling within my hearing 🙂
Och John, will ye stop yer havering, man!
When I address you as “Mr Mackie, Sir”, there is no way I’m being anything but flippant, though admittedly in my dead-pan Aussie fashion.
Imagine how difficult it is to wake up and see dozens of comments, some with questions, all which I feel I should respond to like the helpful cuddly Bear I am, but with a leavening of good humour, only to find myself reprimanded by the granite halls of Embra?
Default condition for interpreting Bearsy’s comments – he’s being silly! 🙄
Hello John: Can one buy a car in the UK without haggling? It is not possible here, and I always scarper back home and take a long hot shower and try to forget the whole nasty experience. This is generally the public view of car buying in the US, car salesmen rating lower than Lawyers in the opinion stakes, so why is the process perpetuated? I do not have to haggle for my new washing machine, why should it be necessary for a new automobile?
Bearsy, my profound apologies. You have outjoshed me.
LW, good evening.
The last car we bought was about six months ago and there was no real haggling. I had a diesel Citroen ZX which I loved with a deep and abiding passion (not really a car person). But, although it was in perfect working order and sailed through its MOT every year, it was also over 10 years old and the Road Tax was about to go up considerably. So we went with the scrappage scheme.
We were paying cash for the balance and we got a fair enough deal on the car we eventually plumped for. But there just did not seem to be any leeway for the dealers to offer cash incentives. Lots of offers in terms of extended warranty, free servicing and monthly valetting but not much cash off at any of the dealers we approached. Got the feeling tht they were all a wee bit desperate and on tiny margins of profit.
Or just better than me at haggling, of course. Still, they’ve got to make a living. And I still feel a bit unclean about consigning the Citroen to oblivion, if truth be told.
Aha found you here, and inadvertently the answer to one of my questions just posed.
All the best.