The Barter Archive aims to preserve the stories and collective memories of the people working at the Billingsgate Fish Market at Canary Wharf, London. The archive begins as a series of observational drawings which are gradually exchanged for the fishmongers’ stories, memories and personal objects.
My name is Deepak Choham. I’m from India and I have lived in this country for the last 11 years. I worked 7-8 years in the fish market. My shop name is Fishnet (shop no. 8, 9).
There are roughly sometimes 4-5 people working with me. Sometimes, at busy times, we call 2 more extra staff. My previous job was making sandwiches in the company. But, suddenly I choose to work here and just love it. Here is peaceful. They are all friends, now we have been working together. So basically, we become all friends here. Also, I won’t feel tired, I’m used to it.
You share some memories or talk to each other.
Mostly we like the cafe the most, because when you’re tired, you want to take some break outside with the coffee, tea, something to drink and enjoy with the friends. Then, come back after 10, 15 minutes to start work again. We’re used to this. Normally, you know, during the week or during the weekend time, we ordered some food in the shop.
We were eating together, enjoying everything. You share some memories or talk to each other, like sometimes basically customers come and take our food as well. Normally our meal contains seafood, which is available in our shop like skate wings, tilapia fillets, seafood fillets, salmon fillets, this kind of stuff. We give the seafood to the chef of the cafe. They cook for us and deliver to us.
Nobody has told us about the relocation.
We know the market’s moving but we didn’t know when it’s moving, nobody has seen the Dagenham market. I prefer to stay here because customers know the area exactly now. When you are moving, some customers won’t know where they should go to buy the fish, where it’s exactly placed. So too much difference. So people coming here would be good because when you’re moving to Dagenham, if the customer comes late or less customers come, we’ll get less business over there, in the starting years.
Nobody has told us about the relocation and we haven’t told the customers yet. Because there’s still two more years left to move to Dagenham, and I will probably move with the market. The Canary Wharf is a very nice location. We can enjoy outside and have a coffee outside.