Up The Market Brew

How do you describe melancholia? The dictionary states thus,"a mental condition marked by persistent depression and ill founded fears". Well that about sums it up! It's exactly how I felt as I approached the steep brew up to the old market place. It had been many years since I had been out like this; well past midnight, soaking wet, missed the last bus home and totally broke. The idea was to take a shortcut home through the old market, the very theatre where I had spent so many lost years.

From my right I could detect a familiar aroma. The Fish Shop. The same stink hanging there, as it had been doing for hundreds of years, just as my granddad would have sampled on his way to the Pack Horse every Saturday lunchtime to play don with his mates.

I wondered how the girl who worked in the shop was getting on? I remembered that time I was in Dublin, one of the first pubs I went in I heard a loud,"Fitch!" I turned around and there she was, in the middle of a crowd of inebriated Irishmen. Needless to say it would have been rude not to join them, especially after travelling all that way.

Memories eh! The rain dripped down the collar of my soaking jacket, which by now weighs as heavy as a cobblers last. Shortness of breath makes me reach for my inhaler. Thank God for chemicals! I'm sure this hill was never this upright. I could see the bright lights and hear the heavy thud of the live music, it was willing me on and upwards.

Finally I reach the summit. There, outside the Bakers Vaults, not sherpas but man-mountains dressed in black, huddled together under "Stella Artois" umbrellas. The full moon, at that very moment, found a gap in the clouds and then, for a split second, I new how Jake and Elwood felt that time they went to church.

After a few seconds getting my breath back, I took a long disbelieving look around the empty market place. Bloody 'ell! What a change. At last it seems someone from the Town Hall had finally got off their backside and done something.

The place was spotless. There I was surrounded by freshly painted history. I always knew it could be like this. What a pity it couldn't have been done years ago, when there were still people around!

Ah well! I hitched up my collar, only another four miles to go......!