A Market Day Walk

Spring has come to Highbridge. As I walked to my parents home last evening, it was possible to detect the curious smell of drying pavements, which reminds me of past springtimes here in Somerset. Highbridge on a warm Monday evening is a confusion of smells - the competing and always tempting fumes of the two fish and chip shops mingle, as passing wagons from the cattle market discharge the damp sweet smell of dung. It's warm, quiet and calm here, despite being the busiest night for the emergency services for a long time. Of course, the market will soon be gone - and another purposeless plot will fall into the hands of the developers.

The surprise closure-by-stealth of the railway bridge on Market Street has brought a strange calm to the streets. Church Street still throbs with bursts of traffic, squeezing it's way around the diversion near the war memorial, but things are a little quieter and a little less hectic - a bus calls at the makeshift stop near the church and the town grinds to a halt. I'm face to face with boggle-eyed cows staring out of the slit window of their stranded market wagon.

It strikes me that on almost every day since October I've been leaving town in the dark and arriving home after sunset. Seeing Highbridge in the daylight again has reminded me why I live here, and how much more there is to discover.