Paddy's Market to Close!

That national shopping emporium, Paddy's Market is due to close today.
For those of you who have never experienced Paddy's Market in the east End of Glasgow you've missed your chance. If you never heard of it just think of the crappy end of Brick Lane or the street market in Bethnal Green where people chuck a blanket on the ground, dump onto it what looks like a dead person's possessions, some old spark plugs and odd shoes from the 1880's and try to sell them. Then multiply the utter crapness of it by 100 and you get something approaching Paddy's Market. I mean its nowhere near as classy as that Glasgow institution: 'The Barras' market.


Paddy's Market was established in the ancient East End of Glasgow almost 200 years ago and got its got its name from the high number of Irish traders there. Most of them came to Scotland during the Potato Famine of the 1840s. Sprawling across several streets, the phrase 'Paddy's Market' became a byword for something truly untidy or disorganised ('Its like Paddy's Market in here' ) and at its height, there were more than 1500 street traders crammed into the area.


In recent years, though, the market has attracted criminals who deal in pirate DVDs and drugs, leading to its threatened (and subsequent) closure. But Paddy's Market has served an important purpose all these years. For decades the market was a lifeline to poverty-stricken Glasgow families, who could only afford to buy clothes and furniture from second-hand dealers. When it was first established you could literally sell the shirt off your back so you could feed your family.


The plan now is to turn it into a 'mini-Camden market' and also try to attract artists into the area. OK the place was a right dump and really needed tidied up a bit, or bulldozed or something but at least it had character.

I bet they do to Paddy's Market what they did to Spitalfields Market. They completely ruined that for me. Spitalfields was my favourite Sunday afternoon outing. I'd have a little wander around, look at all the stuff in the market, chat to my favourite photographer, wander up Brick Lane and go into the Indian Supermarket, walk further up the road and look at all the crap people were trying to flog then have a drink in the Ten Bells (frequented by one of Jack the Ripper's victims).

Then 'they' removed half of the stalls, tarted the old market building up with a 'tasteful' glass frontage and threw in chain restaurants like Giraffe, Strada, blah, blah, blah, blandified. They blandified it! They may as well just make the entire country one huge pedestrian precinct with a gigantic branch of WH Smith at Land's End and a huge branch of Superdrug at the John O'Groats and fill the rest with a big row of alternate Tesco-Sainsburys-Pizza Huts-Primarks.

I'll leave you with a memory I have of Paddy's Market from around 1990. I went there one day for the entertainment value and heard a trader shout the following, "Get yer hauwf deed plaants heeya". That sums the place right up!