The Market That Never Closes

The market runs the length of the harbour front and, as far as you can tell, the length of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. A woman in a Regency bonnet sells rhubarb to a man in a cagoule. The brass band plays everything ever requested on a Thursday, in order. The stallholders greet you without surprise. You understand, gradually, who they are: everyone who ever followed the…