Yesterday, Christmas Eve, was my last working day. I worked, for the first time Teddington Farmers’ market ( https://www.lfm.org.uk/markets/teddington/ ), a new and very promising market it seems, normally around 20 stalls with everything you need for your weekly – organic/locally and lovingly produced – shop.
Today there were stalls, but the customers stayed away – it was empty. I served one man at the end of the day, and he told me the nearby supermarkets (tesco especially)Â were packed, the isles had long queues of people grabbing their last minute shopping.
It is sad, that farmers markets are still not a way of life in this country like they might have been generations ago, and like they are still on the continent. Only the savy, and health conscious (and people from the continent) seem to regularly buy their food from quality local producers in this country. We have lost the art of buying food, cooking with natural ingredients, and the whole art of living it seems in this country, to me.
I am thinking of the many people i have spoken with from countries such as: France, Germany, Portugal, Poland etc… where their traditions are still alive and well along with the modern consumer culture that has spread the world over, and we in the UK are so enamoured with (and have more money than sense at times, to know any alternative way of life).
Today just goes to remind me of how much, we in the UK, “The First Industrialized Nation”, can learn from other countries of the world, about culture and how to live.
How to buy, how to cook, how to eat and live and drink sociably, how to celebrate our holidays, to remember how fortunate we are, to live in one of the richest countries in the world, and what traditions we have lost, and why we should be thinking about reclaiming or starting new, better ones.
Kent Farm Life 