#110 | Market Hall, Victoria

So there's a place in Victoria station called Market Hall. It lies over a historic market, I suppose. Closing our eyes, we can imagine this Market Hall was the local hubbub. But I was there last week. I stood there in Market Hall for half an hour or so, eyes skipping from table to table. One of the staff came over and tried to move me on. I confirmed I was not as rough as I looked. "Do you want anything to drink?" With the noise and the crowd, I couldn't consume. My senses were full, overflowing and overwhelmed. 

Imagine back to 1800, when London spread about as far as Hide Park and the market was some filth of caged chickens sold over straw between stalls. Pigs halted and led past cows kicking back into stables. Vegetables (potatoes, carrots, and cabbage) hurried from the countryside, unloaded from carts, and piled on barrows. Greengrocers' hurrying, hawking their yield. 

Later that century, in 1860, the station opened. From then, products arrived not from Harrow and Hayes but from stranger places (Hull, Macclesfield). Carriage loads of spun cotton and coal from the north—along with Scots with scotch. 

As today's modernity creeps towards us, we can picture the stalls becoming exotic. Carpets carried over the channel from Europe. Animals from the far East, or their hides, hung up by fur-sellers. Yet, at the end of each day, a stillness: While the sun set, street sweepers swept their way home to the spired villages around Victoria.

The sun had already set when I was there this week, and the historic hum had become a roar. The stable doors have been stripped out, shaved down, and re-set as a bar. The barrels are now screwed to the floor. The patrons? Screwed to the barrels. Piles of veg are now stacks of plates of battered fish, chips, burgers, and beer. People shrieking at one another about their colleagues or ex. "He's ghastly". 

I was waiting for a friend. I felt, for the first time in a while, I was in the midst of a bad trip. Had I taken something? The grimness took hold: The low yellow light cast a sad shadow down each cheek. Talking, then shouting, then checking their phone in a frantic, manic kind of way. And the music got louder as another tube load arrived. 

Proximity does not equal intimacy. The crowd was puffing and, in doing so, suffocating itself. We are naturally social creatures, but Market Hall is not a natural place to be social. All these wonderful humans, with soft pink lips and egg-white eyes. They blinked innocently in the chaos. 

The room, a battery pen; us, the chicks. In this pen, the only eggs laid are Klarna points, which will hatch into tomorrow's problem. Consider the furnace in every armpit. I'm reminded of the H.G. Well's Eloi, who spend their days peacefully frolicking naked. Then I imagined the crowd naked, in bright sunlight, with mint tea; the pack would look much more at peace. They'd be freer, lolling about in tranquil ponds. But I was looking at Morlocks buttoned in Charles Tyrwhitt armour. 

When I first meet someone, I hardly believe there's a world within, harbouring dreams and insecurities. A million thoughts unsaid inside their head. As a human, I'm (inexplicably) driven to sip Earl Grey, to apologise after a sneeze, to pull crackers at Christmas, or cry when watching Notting Hill. I'm out of control; I dream, suffer, and laugh out loud. So do you. 

So when I stand in Market Hall, I'm astounded by how unnatural our distractions have become. We are simple and profound and need a simple, nourishing green space. Yet aside from the limp lettuce in the starched burger buns, there was no leaf in sight. Every sense was distorted.

When the battery farm is in full swing, there's no space to be a soft, loving, crying human animal. What about the natural soft underbelly of humanness? What about looking up at the stars, wondering about nothing for no reason, or getting wet in the rain and not minding a bit?

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My week in books

Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury. Such a wonderfully inspiring book from the author of Farenheight 451. Recommended for anybody who likes or wants to write. 

"If anything is taught here, it is simply the charting of the life of someone who started out to somewhere — and went. I have not so much thought my way through life as done things and found what it was and who I was after the doing"

Live well,

Hector