Every Day Except Christmas (1957)

Alun Owen narrates this rather lengthy, but still quite interesting documentary about twenty four hours in the life of London's world-famous Covent Garden market. From the dead of night when mushrooms and flowers start to arrive until the early dawn when buyers descend on the place and the bustle gets into full flow, this illustrates how everything from an artichoke to a daffodil gets supplied to restaurants, cafés and florists. Daniel Paris provides quite a jolly score to underpin this - and what's really noticeable is the well mannered-ness of it all. People drink their tea from cups and saucers, they say please and thank you and even at the height of the market-making, they are civil and respectful of each other. By eleven o'clock, they all look ready for a pint and their beds but they still have the late-coming bargain hunters to accommodate! It's perhaps not the quickest paced documentary you will ever watch, but it's still quite an entertainingly delivered piece of community-based nostalgia featuring folks who started their working lives when Victoria was Queen and where the Salvation Army band do the cheering up before, well it all happens again - except on December 25th!