As a child in the UK I remember the village fetes, garden parties and the occasional Church Bazaar, all attended in ‘Sunday best’ that made sure we “kept up with the Jones” where you could look, see and occasionally buy home made cakes, craft works and items that helped contribute to the charity or cause. Halcyon days!
Suddenly, in Paphos, with the arrival of “austerity” it would appear that “Needs must when the Devil drives”, now all and sundry are becoming involved in Car Boot Sales, Sunday and weekday Markets in addition to all the Charity functions. There are now Boot Sales and Markets on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays selling everything from garden plants, pet food, electrical appliances, Video tapes and DVD’s, dodgy looking food plus a plethora of redundant items, discarded clothing, old pots and pans and things that I’d be ashamed to leave in any of the assorted waste bins that scar our streets.
Why do people buy tat, come to that, why do people sell tat? The street Market at Timi and the Chloraka Duck Pond Wednesday and Sunday sessions have become enlarged by stalls that have no regard for taste or quality, just the requirements to hopefully make enough euro’s to have a little over after they’ve paid the site rent.
You may think its part of the social scene but I wonder!
Are we really so driven because money is so tight or are we really so tight that we’ve got to have more money? When I look at the stall-holders they look fit enough, corpulent waists, rosy cheeks, others quite Dickensian, I can’t believe their needs. Or is all just a bit of fun to pass the time and give the punters the opportunity to find that elusive bargain? You certainly won’t find a Matisse, a Picasso or that piece of Clarice Cliff here, no it will just be another piece of rubbish to hoard and accumulate until you have to hire that €10 table to sell it on to the next mug that will buy it.
Happy hunting!
Sofa Man