Supermarkets to Offer Love for Sale – with Loyalty Points (Satire)

An news item some time ago reporting that prostitutes in the Hungarian capital Budapest could soon be touting for business in shopping shopping malls and supermarkets. Hungary’s Interior Ministry, the news story said,was considering allowing some malls and stores to provide areas where prostitutes could offer sex for sale, as long as (and I love this bit) they and their clients “move to a place of their own to enact the transaction.”

A spokesperson for the Hungarian government says there is “nothing intrinsically wrong” with an entertainment centre without gratification.” Now what exactly does that mean? I have never been morally opposed to prostitution although I could never get my ego round the idea is paying someone for “gratification” but can cruising the red light district really be considered entertainment? I suppose so, a visit to Amsterdam is not complete without a stroll down the famous Canal Street just as a visit to London would seem pointless without a stroll around Harrods, Harvey Nicholls or along Regent Street. In both cases one is not obliged to buy.

My only encounter with a street girl was entirely accidental (you may believe that or not as you with, but it’s true. I was walking from the offices of a company I was contracted to as a consultant in London’s Mayfair, down to Trafalgar Square to meet a colleague and took what looked like a shortcut, straying into the notorious Shepherd’s Market. There are several areas in London where the authorities re willing to turn a blind eye to ladies of negotiable affection plying their trade discreetly. Most of these cater to the kind of trade offered by girls offer the service that in the eighteenth century was known as “a tuppenny upright.” The world has moved on of course and now the putains of Paddington Green, Kings Cross and Greek Street are more likely to say “Fancy a good time dearie, ten pounds but you have to find your own railings.”

The Ladies of Shepherd’s Market will take you to a room in a decent hotel but rates begin, according to the book Belle du Jour at £200 an hour. The women are however considerably less frightening and the one who approached me wearing a velvet beret, a metallic silver bomber jacket and a skirt that stopped before her thighs started was very attractive. “Are you looking for some company,” she asked.  She had a French accent I described in a poem Chasing Bubblesas ” an accent as phoney as sincerity”, and she was charming and coquettish, eventually responding to my polite excuse by saying “another time maybe.” Before that she spent several minutes trying to persuade me she could offer a much more enjoyable way to spend my evening that talking business with a colleague Well there was not another time but I did make of her a metaphor for the city that likes to style itself the financial capital of the world.