St Ives: long-live our market

Tawdry tales

Apparently, the term tawdry is a St Ives derived word meaning cloth that is cheap and cheerful. It comes from the cloth sold at our town’s famous markets. For nearly 1,000 years the centre of St Ives has hosted some of the largest public markets in England. The tradition of low priced cloth, albeit of better quality, is now carried on with the modern market traders coming from all over the country to sell their wares. There you go, another piece of useful information I’m sure you’re glad I passed on!!...

 

So I wandered down to town early on Bank Holiday Monday to avoid the crowds us locals usually expect and to pick up a cheap bargain or two from our famous market. However, it was eerily quiet - I could have taken my car as there was no need to park on the verges; the car parks had spaces aplenty. I soon saw the reason why. There were no stalls along Station Road and I heard that this was because of the guided bus traffic. Let’s hope someone can sort this out so we can still have our famous traditional market for people to travel to both by car, and on our famous modern transport link!

 

I had another pleasant walk up to the polling station (handily next to the pub), saw people I hadn’t seen since the last election and voted for someone who had written something relatively sensible on the numerous flyers I’d had through my letterbox the previous week.

 

But enough of politics…except did you hear in the news about our Prime Minister not knowing what LOL meant? He should have been at the Burgess Hall this week for an excellent Am Dram production from the town’s Centre Theatre Players, where we were all “laughing out loud” at their rendition of the Farce “Run for your wife” ending the week on a cheerful note…..