Wordmarket

It’s midnight at the London Library and the Wordmarket is in full swing.

Some of the small stalls are stacked precariously in the entrance hall. These are mostly newcomers, pedalling a range of neologisms (and a few cunningly disguised mispellings). You’re going to have to dig around through all the alots and twerks to find a rare gem like an omnishambles.

A little further in, tucked away amongst the stacks, you’ll find some of the more reputable vendors. Here you can buy yourself a new name, for the right price. Names finely wrought to be weighty with power and authority, or lighter - more whimsical and carefree. Whether you want to be more of a Stapleton or a Strawley, a Tobias or a Bluebell. If you have enough to offer, you might even get something bespoke - a name that will fit you better than any you’ve worn before. Most of these vendors only take payment in kind, so think twice about just what you’re giving up, and where your new name might have come from.

The stacks are also a good place to browse for a bargain. The lady with the tattered dress and enigmatic smile - no-one has ever quite been able to place her accent - will sell you elisions. Bits of lamb and vegetables and castles and the like. She says that these ems and ees and els were carelessly dropped by their original owners, but there are those that will tell you that she just went out and took them, and it’s just that no-one has noticed yet. If you ask her, she’ll just give you that smile. They say she even has a collection of old vowels from before the Great Shift, but you won’t find anyone who’s heard them.

If you’re looking for something a bit more playful, the gentleman in the top hat and tales will set you right up with some tmesis any-old-how you like. Don’t let his refined appearance fool you, though, nothing amuses him more than slipping unexpected profanities in for the unwary customer, and there’s nothing that will derail an otherwise well-crafted phrase than a ri-goddam-diculous infixation. They can be quite incongruous.

Here you will find the Wordsmith himself. His arms are thick and grimy from working long hours at the forge, and his stare can melt any lazy, ill-considered cliché, quick as a flash. He offers solid constructions for a fair asking, and he has fixed many a faulty phrase for the literati over the years.

The truly experienced visitor to the Wordmarket knows straightaways where to go. If you make your way up to the reading room, you’ll find all the old hands of the market. Stalls most prestigious and ancient, some still trading in languages that have been thought extinct for centuries. Those words always fetch a high price.

Here you will find ‘Taunton’s Tautologous Pleonasms- all words bought, procured, sold and traded’. His stock may be at an all-time low right now, but most of the great and the good have come through Taunton’s at some time. Shakespeare got his ‘tomorrows’ here, and Taunton nearly cleaned himself out trying to fill Proust’s orders.

At the back, there, between the sofas, you’ll find Ponsonby’s - ‘Esteemed and Ancient Purveyor of Purple Prose’. Those who are too hard-up to afford Taunton’s extravagant prices come here to buy florid and flowing adjectives by the pound - alas, too often lurid and overdone, for my tastes.

There’s Aliya, with her alliterations, shilling and selling her well-worn wares to whomever wanders by her stall. And there are Rhymers trading faded, aged pages and refined primers with old-timers and relative neophytes alike.

Beyond those doors right there, so well-loved and worn by the hands of readers and writers alike, you’ll find the largest stall of all. No common word-merchant hawking his wares, the appearance of the silent man beyond may trouble you, for a while. You’ll feel certain that you’ve met him before, though he’s different every time. There’s not a word in sight at his stall, just shelf after shelf of objects of all shapes, sizes, colours, with no further explanation. Some of them will be familiar, too.

These are the allusions, and the man makes no charge for them. You can just take whatever you need, but the polite thing to do is to return here one day with something of your own to offer. Everyone you ask will tell of a different great author whom they once saw here, but the truth is that all will come through here, in their turn.

Some time towards dawn, the market begins to slow. Those who have met their count for the evening break down their stalls first and trickle off into the trailing vestiges of the night. Those who have been, shall we say, ‘up against the block’ linger a little longer in the hope of shifting just a few more measures. Before long, they, too, are gone, and all that can be seen of the market is a few dusty footprints, and a few scattered, stray commas.