Totnes Market

Reposted January 2022 after being lost on Photoblog. 

by Gethin Thomas MAY. 11, 2021

This post features the wares at Totnes Market, as I have decided to do two other posts, Totnes People and Totnes Town, as well as Totnes Signs, already posted.

Wares- Articles offered for sale. Small products for selling, especially in a market or on the street. From Middle English ware, from Old English waru, from Proto-Germanic *warō (“attention”) as in beware, in the sense of “an object of care, a valuable”, from Proto-Indo-European *wer-, whence also ward. Cognate with Dutch waar (“goods offered for sale or use”) and Swedish vara, with the same meaning.

All of this from one two hour photo walk. Even I was surprised by how many photos I took in such a small town. All photos were taken within a minutes walk of the main street. Two main streets in fact as what appears to be the main street changes name at the town gate. Below the town gate it is Fore Street and above the town gate it is good old fashioned High Street.

The stalls at this market fascinate me because you never know what to expect as most are selling recycled or second hand items. What fascinates me is the way each stall is curated by it's owner and how the diverse objects are displayed.

There isn't really much need of any commentary as the photos mostly speak for themselves.

OK, so the no commentary thing didn't last very long. This is the display of the Wand Man, below. This travelling man sells hand made wands, not something you see every day. His portrait is included in my next post Totnes People. I first met him before Christmas 2020 and had wanted to go back to buy some wands from him after Christmas as New Year presents for friends, but of course on December 31st we went into our, hopefully, final lockdown, which lasted a miserable four months, so no Wand Man and no wands and no presents. But last Friday, there he was, back in his usual spot with a beautiful selection of wands, one of which is already on it's merry way to a friend who should have received it at New Year.

On the subject of lockdown, the government has kindly announced today that we are allowed to hug each other from next Monday. It's all very surreal but nobody laughed, even though it is pure comedy. On the news tonight they announced that we are headed out of the epidemic but are still in a pandemic, whereupon they announced almost as an afterthought that today, officially, there were no deaths from Covid in England. The first time since March 2020. No deaths, and we are "headed out of an epidemic"? You work it out. Fewer deaths than in a non Covid year, but we are not allowed to hug today, but we can next Monday. Why is nobody laughing at the total ludicrousness of it. Polls show the majority of people are not listening to government advice anymore, I can't think why.

You can also try to work out why the main headline opening the BBC news was not "No Deaths Today" which seems to be the pretty obvious headline, just like when it was 1200 deaths and the opening headline was "1200 Deaths Today". It is almost like in the world of journalism no deaths is bad news.

As I said no commentary.