Castle Market sits embarrassed on the edge of the city centre, sliding down towards the commuter hotels on the ring road. It's fascinating - tired and bonkers, hiding it's function well behind the concrete and wired glass of our past's future.
Outside, redundant bridges connect the upper levels to locked gates and ghostly shuttered shops above my head. The entrances, hidden in corners, around corners and god-knows-where, open to stairwells that lead wherever you aren't going. Signs promise goods that no longer exist, sold in sellotaped paper bags.
There may or may not be natural light inside. Above are false frosted celilings and grills; between stalls, prisms of smoked glass and tight netting. The lower levels are staged at half-storeys downwards, a food market first and then a bottom part that made me ask, oh lord why did I bother walking down here? A pigeon with a cankered foot waddles past a cobbler's. An old man coughs. It is noon.
After a £5 wet shave I go up to the Rooftop Cafe, a tight, wide pod on a landing that seems to arrive too soon for the stairs that take me there. Its space age feel reminds me that the space age is over. My breakfast, delicious and cheap, is served by a woman in a tabard. I close my eyes and listen to the radio and know that in the future our Castle Markets will be gone and whatever we see on every other street in every other city will be all we will have and I will sit in a more comfortable chair and remember Castle Market.
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