Career History

by Simon Stratton

In the end I decided to launch myself as an antiques dealer. This involved the purchase of vast amounts of "stock" - small articles of furniture, Chinese ceramics and metal ware, were all enthusiastically purchased at auction. The quality fell rather short of the "fine art" that I had visualized, but then so did the cost. I attended numerous antiques fairs and rented space at antiques centres. It was hard, stressful, physically-demanding work. Unfortunately, my stock did not appeal to either "the punters" or other dealers, and it was after one particularly grueling two-day fair on the third storey of a grim building, when I achieved a £20 profit and a bad back that I decided to end my association with the antiques trade and take up the job of ridding the streets from the human detritus that collected there under the eyes the damn narcoleptic government, which is how I earned the name... The Vigilante.

6S

Simon Stratton, author of True Story, lost his MA in Creative Writing in a curry fight.