I landed a role with a promotions company. It was distributing double-glazing leaflets in Northern town streets and shopping centres. Sales engagement was boosted by the leafleter wearing a bright silk costume while walking on two-feet-high stilts. Lunch was not included but transport was provided to and from locations, and the stilts were also provided. I needed the money. I lied on my cv about my stilt-walking ability. They drove me in a Ford Panda to Wigan. ‘The windows of Wigan are 87% rotten,’ Barry, the area sales manager said, while scoffing a vanilla slice, ‘and we’re going to make a killing here. You’ll get cash in hand at the end of the day, and a five pounds bonus for every extra sliding door sale.’
I sat on a wall. They strapped the stilts on, shoved a couple hundred leaflets into my hands then drove off with the other sucker who was down for leafleting Bolton. I waved them off. I was confident. I had belonged to a circus once; it was a while ago, but I assumed stilt-walking was like riding a bike: once learnt, never forgotten. I got up off the wall. And wobbled like a new-born giraffe. This might be a long day.
If the window frames of Wigan were 87% rotten, the people of Wigan were untroubled by them. There were few takers for my leaflets. The stilts did attract the attention of Wigan’s low life though. Two leapt out of a car and tried to push me over. I fell onto a red Royal Mail post box and clung to it. The duo found this hilarious, took photos, jumped back into their car and sped off. My leaflets were scattered and wet and useless now. I pulled myself upright off the box and tottered over to sit on the wall. I pondered my situation. I was dancing for coins. I could as well be beaten up and what did anyone care? We black folk have always tapped spoons for a living. I knew a man in Manchester who played guitar for midnight clubbers. I could play harmonica, I could walk on stilts, it was the same difference. I was a song and dance man and as close to minstrelling as made no difference. Just another soft-shoe shuffler scraping a living in a street full of glass.
My mind turned to the existential. Jean-Paul Sartre says we emerge into this world from nothingness. The drama of life rolls over us. We experience struggle, joy, bills, break-ups, assaults. We go about our lives with as much dignity as we can muster, placing one foot in front of the other, riding out the humiliation, the jubilation and the angst. At the end, we die – roll back into nothingness. What do I gain, I thought, pace Sartre, by risking life and limb to proselytise the citizens of Wigan on the benefits of double-glazing? Was not the ground here too stony for the message? Was not the whole of life itself an invitation to walk on stilts, to embrace precarity? I unstrapped the stilts.
I had no sooner unstrapped them than sales manager Barry pulled up in his Fiat Panda with a broad grin and a set of donuts. ‘Well done, pal. Sales have been off-the-scale. Here’s a donut. You’ll be getting a ten-pound bonus for today. Same again tomorrow?’ ‘Sure,’ I said.
(Photo: Moko Jumbi stilts band - I'm the guy 3rd from the left)
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