Losing Myself

I run an artisan market, which means I’m supposed to be the one in control—the organiser, the early riser, the problem solver with a mental map of every stall. But every now and then, I lose myself in it.

Not in a dramatic, existential way. Just… quietly. Completely.

It usually starts mid-morning, when the rush softens and the air shifts from frantic to friendly. I’ll wander “just to check on things,” but then I stop at a stall—maybe it’s hand-stitched bag or a new T-shirt and I fall into conversation.

And that’s it. I’m gone.

Because behind every table is a person who packed their car the night before like a game of Tetris. Someone who set an alarm for 5am in the dark, loaded flasks of coffee, and drove through empty roads with a mix of hope and routine. You can hear it in the way they talk—not rehearsed, not polished, just real. They’ll tell you which batch went wrong, which one surprised them, which product they almost didn’t bring but now everyone seems to love.

I never get tired of that.

Running a market means thinking about logistics: spacing, footfall, H&S, footfall, weather forecasts that refuse to commit. But being in a market—really being in it—is something else entirely. It’s slower. Warmer. Human.

I’ll ask too many questions. How did you start? Do you do this full-time? What’s your bestseller? And somewhere in there, the roles blur. I’m not the organiser anymore. I’m just another person who showed up, curious and a little bit in awe.

There’s something grounding about meeting the maker. In a world where so much is instant and anonymous, here is the opposite: time, effort, fingerprints. You can trace a product back to a person standing right in front of you. There’s no abstraction. No distance.

And maybe that’s why I still love it so much, even from the “other side”.

Because no matter how many markets I run, I never quite lose that feeling of discovery. That small spark when you realise this thing—this loaf of bread, this stitched bag, this bottle of oil—exists because someone cared enough to make it, pack it, wake up early for it, and bring it here.

So yes, sometimes I lose myself at my own market.

And honestly, I hope I always do

Jackie

Managing Director