Day One

The day is just warm enough in the sunshine to make me drowsy and careless. The steps I take, loud in my own head, are drowned out by the heartbeat of the crowd. Men in suits and ties, teens in dark clothes and spiked hair, and ladies dressed in the long robes and head coverings of their faith pass me. Suddenly I am trapped between the tall buildings whose centuries-old façades block out the sun and the green and white medieval tents that fill the center of the High Street. I am crammed in between strollers and tendrils of cigarette smoke, between girls in short skirts and old men in top hats and canes. Languages swirl around me like eddies in the waters of the river over which I pass. Even if I choose otherwise, the crowd carries me forward. Groups of foreigners gather in excitement; dogs and men covered in tattoos drink lager under the shade of the pub umbrellas, but eagerly crane their necks to watch. It is Market Day.

I look for a place to sit and listen, a place to escape the crowd and seek to understand the sights and sounds of a busy English High Street on Market Day - but there are people everywhere I look. Every spot of shade is filled with bodies stacked upright. Vendors hawk their wares to the vertical dead. "Flowers! 2 bunches a pound!" "Cigarettes - Get your fags and cigars here!" Stalls, rainbow fields of colour, act as the market's own façade: hiding the stacked boxes filled with emptiness behind them. A tub of watery marbles entices passers-by with a sign that says, "Touch me - but do not squeeze." As I pass, a small girl sticks her hand in the tub and shrieks shrilly. She tugs at her mum's ample skirts, but they are swept away in the crowd, her hand caught in the folds, her voice fading to a whisper on the wind. The vendor calls to me, "A bag is only a pound, why don't you take some home?" I back away, shaking my head.

Bees drone complacently at the baker's tent - pastries tempting them with bright colours and sweet icings. These lures work on other creatures too, for there is a line forming and dumpy pigeons peck at the crumbs dropped by those who have gone before. Enough have plunged their coins into a cup for their desire to stuff themselves, without a thought for what might come afterwards, that the cup splits, spilling coin. While young apprentices scurry to gather the fallen coins, the people only shuffle in the line towards their reward. Nearby, a small table holds a sign on which is written "Children's DVDs" and houses Ghostbusters, The Darkness Within, and Home Alone side by side in a silent, emphatic statement. People pass, oblivious to the warning.

As I walk, I am tempted by the old, familiar smell of blue coconut. Visions of sno-cones and blue lips fill my eyes - marks of innocence and childhood that are buried in my olfactory sense. I thought this was something I'd left behind - but as I turn and walk past again, the smell reveals a sour undertone and my stomach rolls. Eventually, I end up in the small bit of America in the midst of Market Day: Starbucks. There are tables at which to sit and absorb, though I am no more safe from Market Day than I was before. The words I write, punctuated by the screams of a newborn desperate for suck and darker than I thought, make me wonder if there is more to Market Day than meets my conscious brain. But the people who walk past my watchful eyes don't even seem to notice. After all, it's Market Day.