Actually the dealers had monopolised the only good coffee stall. There are two tables, sixteen chairs, ten dealers. Should be some space left over. There would be except that the old rockers gather at the same time. These are a wonderful collection of grizzled guys with tats and pony-tails and out of tune guitars and ukes, mumbling everything from 'Hey Good Looking' to 'Georgia On My Mind'. There are six of them.
So there we are. Dog on lead, ready for a burst of caffeine, and nowhere to sit. The dealers are not moving. Neither are the musos, now into 'Who's Sorry Now?'. We should have brought our own chairs.
This is the time we usually compare bargains, look at each other's treasures and gently hum along. (The set list never varies, by the way - forget romantic requests!) But there's nowhere to sit.
I refuse to pay one pound for instant coffee scooped out of an open tin when there's good Italian Americanos up for grabs. But today we move on. We'll have coffee at home.
Past, present, future: why so?
I found a dog-eared book of photographs of my home town on one of the stalls. A second collection according to the cover. The smell was tolerable, so a quid did it. And the images inside were worth a whole lot more. Nothing past 1947, just an evocative collection of places and faces from a time before I was born.
My current project, 'Red House' is set partly in the place - it doesn't survive the book - something had to go! This collection of images will offer me a wealth of inspiration. I grew up with some of the store fronts, the factories, the parks. It took the planners from Peterborough (100 miles away) to finally destroy that wonderful heritage.
I will achieve much of the same with a few well chosen paragraphs, but when you close the book, everything will still be the same. Or maybe not!
So, in short: no coffee, no sing-along, a few deals done, some ideas hatched and home before the rains came.
Time travel is all in the mind.
Casimir Greenfield at Amazon
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