I had almost made it over Cowcross Street before being chased and hailed.
“Good morning, young man, you’re looking great today, I know you’re rushing off to a meeting with Bill Gates, but…”
A bit of what he said was true. I was, indeed, in a rush. I mentioned this over my shoulder as I completed my scuttle from the brand new Elizabeth line Farringdon station into the one opposite. It is old. Even older than me.
Addressing gentlemen in their sixties as “young man” is an interesting ploy. What is the thinking behind it? That we’ll be flattered? Amused? Charmed? How often, I wonder, does it work?
It didn’t work with me. I hastened to the barrier, Freedom Pass in hand, hoping I had conveyed some sense of good humour and well-wishing to my artful pursuer, whose line of work, after all, isn’t one I need to consider.
Guys like him, young, usually black, buzzing with ersatz affability, pouncing evangelically on passers-by, have become a regular feature of this pedestrianised link in a rail chain now used by up to 150,000 people daily.
You’ve seen them there. You’ve seen them elsewhere. You’ve seen the exposes. The complaints. Maybe you’ve made one. If so, it didn’t work.
There’s no escaping them. Your only option is to observe them while rebuffing them and wonder how they come up with their lines. Why Bill Gates? Why me?
An old favourite is “Could I be cheeky…?” Well, you can try. But I’ve got what I wanted from the encounter: a scan of your wares (a magazine full of nothing); a look into your eyes (less empty, more hopeful and more hopeless at the same time). You, on the other hand, have not.
This high-pressure chugging for an opaquely social mission is a modern London thing, but it is also an adjunct to a Farringdon tradition.
For centuries, long before the influx of creatives and tech, this mosaic tile of London, a subset of Clerkenwell and a spit from Smithfield, was a labyrinth of hustlers and hoods.
During the reign of the first Elizabeth, Turnmill Street, which leads off Cowcross, was notorious for crime and vulgarity, which is why playwrights of the era loved it.
The neighbourhood’s narrow streets were nicknamed Jack Ketch’s Warren, because so many who lived round there ended up being dispatched by Charle II’s executioner.
Under Victoria, Charles Dickens fashioned the Oliver Twist pickpocketing scene on Clerkenwell Green, which is a two-minute walk from the station.
The Farringdon chuggers aren’t robbers or thieves, but their methods can make you feel cornered and wary of being fleeced. Presumably, it works – at least well enough for enough of them to keep on trying, picking their targets, zooming in, referring to old blokes as “young man”.
And you have to feel for them. But Betsey Trotwood would not have approved, and even were I Bill Gates himself I doubt I would give them a bean.
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