Welcome to my debut, I have been meaning to contribute to this for sometime now but you know how it is, laziness, tiredness, full time job, crap soaps, sleep maximisation on a school night etc etc all seem to take over. You are lucky though, tonight there is football on TV. Perhaps I have very few sympathisers here but I find football incredibly tedious, I'm still reading 'Ladybird's first book of football' I don't understand it (predictably offside rule) I don't know any of the footballers (and not even the fit ones since I left school and could stop feigning mild albeit girly interest) I don't care who wins and I have no concept of how you can hate Man United one day and then say "I support any english teams in Europe" the next, if anyone wishes to enlighten me then please don't, I'll never change.
So, this is why I find myself blogging tonight.
I feel it is my duty, nay, mission, to spread the word on some things that interest me and my latest interest (that is not to suggest it is a fad however) is Bury Market! Ok, 'World's best market' might be a tad generous, Camden, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Barcelona, Marrakesh and Portabello may disagree, but the title 'World's best food market beginning in the North of England' belongs only to Bury.
I won't lecture LE's intelligent readers on why one should avoid supermarkets, particularly Tesco (for no reason other than I just hate them the most and this may stem from the 'Aldi quality-Harrods prices' of Tesco Metro on Market Street which until recently held the monopoly on City Centre food shopping-M&S only counts on payday), other reasons for supermarchephobia should include high food miles on fresh produce, unnecessary packaging, pesticides, not really-so-organic organic food and a desire to support local businesses. Bury market truly is one of the few remaining markets in the most old fashioned sense of the word. The shoppers who've been going for years can't see what all the fuss is about and city slickers like me are acting like tourists. Working class women in fingerless gloves shouting out "2 punnets for £1.50...come and get your strawberries girls..." Three generations of a family cutting fabrics for regulars, bohemian young families from Chorlton jumping on this bandwagon ('cause lets face it who can really afford to do the weekly shop in Unicorn?) buying free range, locally produced, super fresh eggs next to the pensioner from Radcliffe who thought she was just buying eggs! The choice of fruit and veg on offer beats any supermarket in this country, it comes in little brown paper bags, your stuff is weighed on scales, the staff are human calculators as your purchases mount up, you bring your own shopping bags, theres no other packaging, some of the food is organic not in a "Look at us, you simply MUST eat organic darling" way, often they don't even realise, a sign for tomatoes last week read "Local tomatoes pollenated by bees". The greatest thing of all about Bury market is it's down to earthness, yes, it is working class and a real treat for people watchers, every Peter Kaye-esque character that ever there was can be seen there, there's even a few regular crazies with their predicatable repetoires but the food on offer is as sophisticated as it gets. Now take Radiccio lettuce, its just a lettuce, it might have a fancy name but whats in a name? At Bury market they do not believe in fancy names for fancy lettuces, radiccio is known under it's more Northern moniker - 'Posh Lettuce' No word of a lie! See it for yourselves and do your weekly food shop while you're at it! Enjoy.
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