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Authors: Ray Winstone
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funds to restore it, because I know it had fallen into serious disrepair. There were a load of depressing photos online showing how it had been squatted by some junkies who’d made a horrible mess of the place, but you could still see the beautiful interior underneath. If I had the money, I’d do it up myself.
CHAPTER 6
THE CAGE, SPITALFIELDS MARKET
My new primary school in Enfield was called Raglan, and as I may already have mentioned – probably three or four times – I didn’t like it much there at first. Things only began to look up once I got into the school football team. We were a pretty good little side and managed to get to a regional cup semi-final. We lost 2–1 in that but my mate Colin Bailey scored.
Even as young as nine or ten, I was already looking for any excuse to get back to East London. So when my dad asked me if I fancied getting up early and going down to Spitalfields Market with him before school, I jumped at the chance. It wasn’t really to work at that age, it was more just to meet his mates – they’d all bring their boys down to see how life was and show them there’s a great big world out there. This was at the time when he had the shop in Bush Hill Parade, so we’d be back for Dad to open it and for me to get to school. The other kids would be at home having their Ready Brek and I’d be down the market, drinking in the local colour – a commodity of which there was not a shortage, in fact ‘colourful’ is the politest word you’d use.
Spitalfields Market was as formative an educational experience as any boy could hope for. I used to shadow-box down there with a real gentleman called Sammy McCarthy, who had boxed as a pro and will turn up in the story again later on in somewhat less happy circumstances. There were a lot of old fighters around who my dad had known as kids, and I’d have a spar with them all. My dad’s pal Archie Joyce’s older brother Teddy would throw a few imaginary right hands for me to fend off, and that’s when the ‘Little Sugar’ nickname really started to stick.
Another thing I loved down there was the special market coinage which you could only spend in A. Mays, the big shop on the corner. It came in triangles and 50p shapes, but before the 50p had even come out – I suppose they were tokens more than anything – and I saved loads of them when I was little. Until recently I still had thousands of them in boxes and tins in the garage that I was going to polish up and get framed, but then when I was having some work done at home the fucking geezer threw them on the fire and they all melted. I could’ve killed him.
The breakfast you’d have on that market early in the morning would taste better than you could get anywhere else on earth. To this day I still love a bacon roll – a good crusty white one with brown sauce in it – and the place we’d get them was the Blue Café. It’s not there any more, but it was just up from Gun Street, along the south side of the market, and it was owned by Vic Andretti’s dad Victor – we called him Uncle Victor. His son, who was a mate of my dad’s, won a European boxing title, and gave me the gloves he wore, which still had the claret on ’em.
By coincidence it was outside Uncle Victor’s café that I saw the longest street-fight I’ve ever seen in my life. Two fellas had what we used to call a ‘straightener’, which is like a formal stand-upbare-knuckle fight where someone’s got a grievance and everyone backs off to let them sort it out. I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating – and I probably am a bit, because I was only a kid – but I swear this fight went on for twenty minutes. Now, that might not seem like a long time to you if you don’t know anything about boxing, but if you think that even a fit professional fighter will be blowing after a three-minute round, then you can imagine that twenty minutes without a break feels like a lifetime.
Not that they didn’t have the odd pause
CHAPTER 6
THE CAGE, SPITALFIELDS MARKET
My new primary school in Enfield was called Raglan, and as I may already have mentioned – probably three or four times – I didn’t like it much there at first. Things only began to look up once I got into the school football team. We were a pretty good little side and managed to get to a regional cup semi-final. We lost 2–1 in that but my mate Colin Bailey scored.
Even as young as nine or ten, I was already looking for any excuse to get back to East London. So when my dad asked me if I fancied getting up early and going down to Spitalfields Market with him before school, I jumped at the chance. It wasn’t really to work at that age, it was more just to meet his mates – they’d all bring their boys down to see how life was and show them there’s a great big world out there. This was at the time when he had the shop in Bush Hill Parade, so we’d be back for Dad to open it and for me to get to school. The other kids would be at home having their Ready Brek and I’d be down the market, drinking in the local colour – a commodity of which there was not a shortage, in fact ‘colourful’ is the politest word you’d use.
Spitalfields Market was as formative an educational experience as any boy could hope for. I used to shadow-box down there with a real gentleman called Sammy McCarthy, who had boxed as a pro and will turn up in the story again later on in somewhat less happy circumstances. There were a lot of old fighters around who my dad had known as kids, and I’d have a spar with them all. My dad’s pal Archie Joyce’s older brother Teddy would throw a few imaginary right hands for me to fend off, and that’s when the ‘Little Sugar’ nickname really started to stick.
Another thing I loved down there was the special market coinage which you could only spend in A. Mays, the big shop on the corner. It came in triangles and 50p shapes, but before the 50p had even come out – I suppose they were tokens more than anything – and I saved loads of them when I was little. Until recently I still had thousands of them in boxes and tins in the garage that I was going to polish up and get framed, but then when I was having some work done at home the fucking geezer threw them on the fire and they all melted. I could’ve killed him.
The breakfast you’d have on that market early in the morning would taste better than you could get anywhere else on earth. To this day I still love a bacon roll – a good crusty white one with brown sauce in it – and the place we’d get them was the Blue Café. It’s not there any more, but it was just up from Gun Street, along the south side of the market, and it was owned by Vic Andretti’s dad Victor – we called him Uncle Victor. His son, who was a mate of my dad’s, won a European boxing title, and gave me the gloves he wore, which still had the claret on ’em.
By coincidence it was outside Uncle Victor’s café that I saw the longest street-fight I’ve ever seen in my life. Two fellas had what we used to call a ‘straightener’, which is like a formal stand-upbare-knuckle fight where someone’s got a grievance and everyone backs off to let them sort it out. I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating – and I probably am a bit, because I was only a kid – but I swear this fight went on for twenty minutes. Now, that might not seem like a long time to you if you don’t know anything about boxing, but if you think that even a fit professional fighter will be blowing after a three-minute round, then you can imagine that twenty minutes without a break feels like a lifetime.
Not that they didn’t have the odd pause
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