Visiting a quaint English market | Exploring Faversham, Kent
I had appointments and errands to do, a coffee to take with me and no particular filming idea I was excited about. So I took the camera out for a day around Faversham in Kent. The sky was overcast, and I hoped the rain would leave us alone. It was still early, and I was tired.
The outing in this March 2021 account included the outdoor market, enormous savoury pastries and a wander around the streets. Afterwards, I thought about how strange it had been to see people again. I’d spent so much time at home that a visit to a market was something I wanted to talk about when I got back.
A market means buying savouries
I couldn’t go to a market without buying something savoury. This time, we came away with one of the largest sausage rolls I’d ever seen. It was absolutely beautiful. There was also a steak slice, which was equally giant. Buying pastries was a very good part of this little trip outside.
We bought bread too, and a coffee to walk around with. It felt nice to support local businesses. I enjoyed markets for the fresh air as well as the food, and wandering around Faversham gave me a chance to get outside. This wasn’t a grand trip away. It was an outing around a town in Kent, where I lived.
When we came home, I ate a load of the sourdough and took a nap. Adventures and naps were both accounted for. I filmed my thoughts on a different day, back in my office. My update also covered the strange experience of seeing people again after so much time at home.
An unfamiliar amount of company
I was lucky to be able to work from home. We were also getting most of our groceries delivered by Ocado, so there wasn’t a regular shopping trip taking me into a busy supermarket. Apart from going out for walks or hikes, I really hadn’t been seeing people. The outdoor market was the first time in a very long time that I had.
It felt strange. I had been thinking about it the night before I filmed the update, and I wondered how returning to more ordinary social life would feel. At the time, I was looking forward to restaurants and pubs opening again and people being vaccinated. I thought getting back into that sort of life was going to be weird.
That was the situation in my 2021 account, when some shops couldn’t yet let people inside. In Faversham, I saw businesses putting a table out and serving a long, socially distanced line. They brought things out of the shop to sell. People were trying to make it work, and I hoped the shop owners were doing all right.
Back in the room, looking forward to more outings
Other than that outing, I was spending most of my time at home in my office, working and making things for my channels. One of my recent attempts had been homemade pottery. I could only describe the result as horrific. I joked about hiding it in old bags before throwing it away, so nobody would discover what we’d made.
The market and the walk around Faversham’s streets made me want to film more outside. I wasn’t planning to rush out and do that immediately. I was looking ahead to when more exploring was possible, whether that meant travelling abroad or visiting towns, cities and villages around Kent and elsewhere in the UK.
I was excited about those possibilities. For the moment, this was a small snapshot of life: I went outside, visited the market, bought food and came home again. I looked forward to enjoying beer gardens after such a long time without them. Until then, I had work to do in that familiar room, and a very large sausage roll had at least featured in the outing.
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