Barter report: batteries up, cigarettes steady, onions a scandal

Prices as of this morning at the Camden undercroft, collected by me walking round with a notebook and pretending to be undecided. All prices are in Bureau ration chits, which remain the only currency both we and the Continuance accept, because it has never occurred to the Continuance that we might.

This week's board

• D-cell battery, tested: 14 chits, up from 11. Cassette, C90, sealed: 9 chits; used and degaussed: 4. EF86 valve, working: 30 chits, but Tinker_9 is buying every one, so do not bother.
• Cigarettes, twenty, pre-Handover: 6 chits, steady for the third month running. Nobody is quitting. Tin of peaches: 8 chits. Tin of peaches with the label still on: 11. People are sentimental.
• Onions, per kilo: 19 chits, up from 5. Gas mask filter, sealed: 22 chits. Clean water, per litre: 1 chit.

Analysis

Batteries are up because every relay in the east is stocking for harvest season, when the Tithe barges fly and the couriers cannot. Filters are still dear since the ash front came through at the start of the month; if you have a working mask, keep it. As for onions, I have asked around. Nobody knows. A woman in Sector 2 is rumoured to be holding four hundred kilos in a drained swimming pool. If you are that woman, ring the bell. We only want to talk.

Never sell your batteries for onions. You can't hear the news on an onion.

Watch list: water is one chit. It will not stay one chit. There are stories from the Sector 3 pump crews about chalk in the buckets, and I have been on this earth long enough to know that a story in a queue is a price rise waiting to happen. Buy a second jerrycan while they are cheap, and ask me again in a month.