Hi nuttyboy pat.
Three Card Monte and the puppies being sold out of the crates brings back some great memories of East Lane. You would always get a Del Boy who thought he could outsmart the card man; they never did but like idiots they would keep trying.
Regarding the puppies and how times have changed, I knew many people who bought a puppy from there, which we would call mongrels, or a Heinz 57 variety. They fed it anything and everything, never took it to a vet, it lived for years and it probably cost a couple of Bob.
Now you supposedly go to a reputable breeder pay sometimes 2000 pound or more, feed it all the recommended food which costs a bomb, it spends more time at the vets than it does at home and then they tell you that its got this, that and the other wrong with it.
It seems to me that today certain people have got a lot smarter and a lot richer.
I have a story about the old bill down East Lane. I played football with several of them in the late 1950s & 60s. After the game we would all go to the nearest pub but if we were playing locally, say Kennington or Southwark Park they would give it a miss, "saying can’t stay got to collect my beer money off the tie man down East Lane". I never could work out what they meant.