City is not what it once was

Last year I returned to Brighton having been away for many years. Going past the old market site and seeing it razed to the ground was heart-wrenching.

Something died within me that day. Growing up as the only child of a single parent my mother and me would often go to the market for produce and various other things. It was a magical place, run-down and ramshackle, rough as an emery board, full of characters.

I remember many things. The smell of balsa wood and rotting fruit, the dour florist lady with the red nose, the egg shop, the café, the fish section, the stationers, bike repairers, Mr Tuppin’s fruit stall, and Mears, not to mention the men in flat caps shrieking at the tops of their voices in a Brightonian cockney patois.

One was treated to an authentic slice of working class life. The real deal.

Well 20 years on and Brighton has reinvented itself as the place to be. Yeh man! It’s cool innit? I guess it kind of is.

But Brighton always was cool even before. The hideous old concrete statue that looked like a giant Weetabix in Churchill Square, the 60s style design was a lot less claustrophobia-inducing than that new mall. I remember the old concrete skate park in The Level.

As for the new market it’s, well, different. Such a boutique feel to it.

Cities change. Baron Haussmann decimated the slums of 19th century Paris. Now it’s a place of beauty. Will the Open Market become a place of beauty? I’m just glad the egg shop is still there.

Julius Bailey-Augalistas, resident

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