Quite a Striking Woman

Everyone agreed Pollygraph Hott-Metal was quite a striking woman. Although it was not just the hat - a bright black bowler hat, worn at a rakish angle, not was it the black stockings and suspender belt. Many did say – however – that it was more the fact that she wore nothing else and had the kind of body that makes men walk into lampposts and forget how to form coherent sentences.

Anyway, whatever it was, it made her the most successful street newspaper vendor Wolverhampton had ever known. She could sell out her entire stock of the local evening newspaper within less than five minutes of setting up her stall on the corner, right next to the Wulfrun Centre. Even though after only a few minutes it was hard for those wanting to buy a newspaper from her to manage to fight their way through the crowd to get close enough to her to hand over their money. Many of then, found that once they could escape the crush their new newspaper was ripped, torn or otherwise mangled before they could even open it.

On Saturday evenings, of course, she also sold the pink sports newspaper, bought by so many throughout the Wolverhampton area for the football results. They bought this paper both to check their pools coupon and to discover just how badly Wolves had done in their last match, at least until publication of that paper was halted when the publishers could no longer face printing the results from those Wolves matches.

Unfortunately, though, her very popularity was her downfall. Fights sometimes broke out as the crowd grew unruly and she was down to her last few papers. Consequently, the police were called several times; however, there was – then – no law in Wolverhampton outlawing public nudity, or – shockingly - the public display of a bowler hat with intent to sell newspapers. Therefore, there was little the police could do except arrest those caught creating the disturbance and to take several photographs of Ms Hott-Metal for their archives and solitary late-shift perusal.

The problem of the disturbances around the newspaper seller, Ms Hott-Metal eventually died out of their own accord, especially when the new All-Nude Whoppa Grease Burger Emporium opened on the Wolverhampton ring road, offering extra fries with every full-frontal nudity-based eating experience encounter.

Such retail innovations soon brought about the end of the naked newspaper seller, as those few young women who relished standing naked on street corners shouting incoherently at passers-by went instead into politics and other such sordid vice trades.

Still, though, whenever people from that fair city gather together to remember the Wolverhampton of yesteryear, it is not long before the name of Pollygraph Hott-Metal comes up and several gentlemen of a certain age excuse themselves to go and have a few minutes of quiet solitary contemplation as they remember her.