Markets to Marlow

The Valley Markets on Saturdays are always crowded with hippies and tourists. The wares are nice, but not usually cheap; and the atmosphere is laid back, but feels a tad contrived... Sundays are much more pleasant. There are many fewer stalls, and proportionately less new-age, alternative, and kitsch clothing and clutter. On Sundays, there is a nice old guy who lays out a carpet of comic books (none of them worth buying, but a cool visual effect nonetheless). Also, a few worthwhile book stalls. This morning I picked up a 1930 copy of Youth by Joseph Conrad. I've had a strange attraction to this guy since being forced to read Heart of Darkness (on which the film Apocalypse Now is based) for a first-year English Literature course. And later I read Lord Jim - set among the ports of the East Indian trade route - while backpacking through Java in January. These turn-of-the-century men's tales about journeys on the high seas to foreign lands, I think, are a but unfashionable these days. Maybe due to Imperialist guilt, or the dismantling of the male gender role (though neither was discussed in my English Lit course). But I love the grandiose language and the romanticism of the sea.