What moving away from a familiar market taught me about what home actually means
There is a very specific kind of London Sunday market energy that I did not properly appreciate until I moved away from a market adjacent flat and suddenly found myself missing it more than I ever expected to, and I want to try to explain what exactly that energy consists of.
The specific sounds that started it
It begins, usually, before I am properly awake, a distant murmur of stallholders setting up that gradually resolves into distinct voices, distinct calls, a whole specific soundtrack that I did not realise I had come to genuinely rely on until it was no longer there most Sunday mornings.
I have tried, in my current flat, to recreate some version of this soundscape, and it simply does not work the same way piped through speakers. There is something about the actual, unmediated presence of it that no recording quite manages to replicate.
The vendors who knew my order
There was a specific fruit stall where the vendor, after enough repeated Sundays, stopped asking what I wanted and simply started preparing it as soon as she spotted me approaching, a small act of recognition that made an entirely ordinary transaction feel considerably more like being genuinely known by a place.
I still think about her occasionally, wondering if she has noticed my absence, whether some part of her Sunday routine has quietly adjusted around a regular customer who simply stopped showing up one week without any explanation.
What I have found instead
My current neighbourhood has its own market, technically, though it operates on a different day and with a genuinely different character, more polished, less chaotic, missing whatever specific ingredient made the old one feel the way it did.
I have tried to give this new market a fair chance rather than simply comparing it unfavourably to what I left behind, and it has slowly, gradually started to earn its own small place in my routine, even if it has not yet fully replaced what came before.
Why this particular kind of loss surprised me
I expected to miss my old flat’s space, its light, its specific quirks. I did not expect the market to be the thing I actually grieved most, and I think that says something genuine about how much of what makes a place feel like home has very little to do with the four walls themselves.
More market nostalgia at Fiona MacLeod, Bohiney.
The specific smell that does it every time
Certain combinations of specific market smells, one particular spice stall in combination with fresh bread from a nearby vendor, can still transport me instantly back to that old Sunday routine whenever I happen to encounter something similar elsewhere entirely by accident.
I have started to genuinely appreciate how powerfully smell attaches itself to memory in a way that visual recall simply does not manage as effectively, an entire Sunday morning reconstructed in an instant from nothing more than a passing scent.
Whether I will ever go back to visit
I have thought, more than once, about deliberately returning on a Sunday morning simply to see whether the specific fruit vendor is still there, still recognising faces, and I have not yet worked up the nerve, half worried the visit would somehow disappoint the memory rather than confirm it.
A closing thought
Maybe I will go back one Sunday soon. Maybe I will keep putting it off indefinitely. Either way, the memory itself remains intact regardless.
What other regulars must have noticed
I sometimes wonder whether other regulars at that old market noticed my absence the same way I noticed the market’s, whether there is some small gap in someone else’s Sunday routine shaped exactly like the space I used to occupy.
It is a strange thing to consider, that leaving a place behind might register as its own small loss for people who barely knew you beyond a weekly nod and a familiar order.
If you have your own version of a place you did not know you would miss, I would love to hear about it.
One more small thing
I have started noticing similar market energy in other cities now too, a small echo of what I am really looking for whenever I travel somewhere new.
More soon, presumably, from wherever the next postcode leads.
What I would tell someone about to move
If you have a market or routine you love where you currently live, appreciate it properly now, before geography quietly takes it away from you.
Thanks, as ever, for reading this far.
The very last word
Maybe I will go back this Sunday. Maybe next Sunday instead. Either way, I have decided the memory itself has already earned its keep regardless of whether I ever return.
More soon.
Truly, one last thought
I suspect a whole quiet ecosystem of these regular relationships exists across every market in this city, invisible unless you happen to be standing on the inside of one.
End of this entry, genuinely, for now.
See you next time.
Thank you.
All the best.
Speak soon.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
