There’s a crack in everything - that’s how the light gets in………
Poor old supermarkets - they try and tell us that they can supply us with everything. But if you like your produce local, if you like your food fresh, if you like to make things yourself, if you shop for surprise and not out of habit, if you like old things, if you read books, if life is a sense of discovery, if you have imagination, if you like people and talking and if you just enjoy what life brings every different day, then supermarkets come nowhere.
As Leonard Cohen wrote, and sang “There’s a crack in everything - that’s how the light gets in”. If you like it hermetically sealed, stick to the supermarket. If you like the cracks and the light - use your market. They are and will be important places - social spaces, food hubs, centres of local identity, small business start up opportunities, focus of market town regeneration etc. If we lose sight of that, and there is no investment & interest in town centre independents & markets, then we lose the small things that matter and hand the whole production, retail and consumption game to a monopoly of supermarket majors.
All these images where taken on one day in Powis Hall market, Oswestry. It was an exceptionally bright, light and sunny day.
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January 31st, 2010 at 6:34 pm
What stunning and inspiring photographs! I suddenly feel I want to print them all and make posters, postcards, even tiles to publicise The Market, Oswestry and the beauty that lies in everyday things. Thank you for sharing them.
February 1st, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Lovely pictures, Editor, though a slight elegiac feel? I hope the market, small independent traders and a busy town centre is the way forward. Sometimes it feels as though, ” The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of a passionate intensity. The coming month is an important one.
February 1st, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Chas, I’m completely certain that town centres and markets are a way forward, and have a crucial role in shaping society and communities! There’s always space for poetry and beauty though - and if elegy prompts anyone to act on what’s at stake, I reckon there’s space for a modicum of elegy too.
February 2nd, 2010 at 5:27 pm
The “elegiac feel” is exactly what the Market has for me and therefore these photographs are a perfect representation of it. What I find poetic is the imperfect, the unpolished and the unique. Poetic are the voices and tales of the stallholders; the nature of some stalls and their appearance, contrary to every established rule of display or order; the garish colours, the hand written signs. An elegy to humanity, to little people, to “fuck the supermarket I only want a lamb chop and can you cut me one two pound in money please John”.
Watching old ladies choosing one metre of carpet for the landing and imagining lives in some sheltered home. Watching old men waiting for wives, sitting and chatting in the only bench around. The flowerman Bernard who, after thirty years in the same stall, finds the time to explain which lily smells sweeter, where it comes from and how to revive sad tulips. All this is poetry to me. It speaks a language that is human and it is for that humanity that we need to fight against those who want our towns and villages to become clones of each other and slaves to supermarkets. There are arguments that are won entirely on economic and environmental terms. This one ( Markets vs Supermarkets)
should have Poetry as an additional weapon in favour of markets.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:04 pm
Today’s market report: When I asked the lovely Joanne, who runs the fish stall,
when her dad was coming back, she replied that there is not enough business for 3 workers any longer. The recession, she said, has taken its toll and the arrival of Morrisons has taken customers away. I could cry…The fish stall was particularly impressive today: octopus, John Dory, shiny sea bass and gorgeous trout, prawns, tuna and so much more. What was there at Morrisons? Did they notice your new haircut? Did they remember you were poorly last week? Did they say: if you haven’t got enough you can pay me next week?
On the Poetry corner: Bernard at the flower stall said, sniffing and wrapping up my purchase: don’t you just love the smell of jonquils?
February 4th, 2010 at 10:29 am
The poetry, love of life, appreciation of its details are all just as much part of an opposition movement as all the technical arguments, floor size comparisons and govt. planning guidelines. It’s exactly those sights, details, interactions that are lost when independents go because they can’t compete with neon lit aisles of identical product and “Have you got a Nectar card?”.
February 14th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
elegy, expressing sorrow for something now past.
Not yet.
February 14th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Elegy. Not as lament but as ode. Not as requiem but as song. You are right Rachel, no time for nostalgia, not yet. Time for elegy as in poetry, if expressing joy for something alive, human and true: always.
I use the thesaurus for optimists, special edition. An invaluable tool for these sad times.
Ps:didn’t the Market look fantastic this friday?
February 14th, 2010 at 10:17 pm
Sorry for my pessimism, I have been privy to rumours of a ‘dying’ market for some time.
Saturday, however was fairly vibrant and the market does seem to have it’s regular clientele.
It is ‘alive, human and true: always’ and has stood the test of time so far..
Rachx
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