Tag: canal

Tap Garden At Peddler Night Market

Hamar Williams

Saw my first grown man on one of those scooters made famous by Google today. I’m embracing market stall life at Peddler Night Market in Sheffield helping out a mate at his juice market stall. Let’s call this some free advertising for his tasty, healthy fresh homemade soda juices and punch, all non-alcoholic. Tap Garden it’s called and you can find him on all good social media…Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. #tapgarden #tapgardendrinks

It’s a pretty cool place, one of these old brick warehouses that can be found partly abandoned and partly reinvigorated by wealthy alternative hipsters. I realised after about five minutes that I should have worn my Dr Marten boots like everyone else, certainly feel I missed a trick by yet again being the only person in the building wearing Crocs. One day they will fulfil their destiny and find their rightful place as the only footwear of choice. Until then though I can continue to feel superior as the only Crocs related enlightened being in the place.

Apparently Sheffield is quite a cool city. Lots of students, cheap cost of living, a once vibrant city that didn’t lose its population to Manchester or London now become vibrant in a new way. They call it the Bristol of the north apparently. Bristol without southerners, it sounds perfect. It also has a canal running through it because of all the industry in the past. It actually appeals massively and I’m filing the place away in the ‘possibilities at a later date’ section of the storage unit in my mind. It seems to be the constant issue in life of finding the perfect way to exist. Be in a cool place with interesting people, beautiful, not too busy or crowded, close to nature, relaxed, close to the sea, etc. Sheffield doesn’t have all these thing so it is not perfect but then let’s be honest perfect doesn’t exist. It seems to be about finding some kind of contentment in life whatever that means. I’m sure it will make an appearance one day if I look hard enough, or stop looking at all. I’m sure the answer is somewhere, probably inside of me they say.

Anyway that’s all for today, it feels like a short piece but so be it. Today and tomorrow will be busy days so I doubt you’ll get much more than this again tomorrow but that magic 400 words of wisdom mark can’t be hit everyday. If I know anyone in Sheffield then pop down, come say hello…drink some juice at Tap Garden…the only place for fresh juice made with real ingredients and love.

Nomads

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Everyone has an idea of a perfect life. One part of that perfect life is the perfect home and this is something that comes in all forms. Over the years I have fantasised about pretty much all of them, usually the random interesting ones or even better the non-permanent structures. While I am enjoying living in an actual flat, and have enjoyed living in the little cottage I grew up in, there seems to be something lacking in living in such places. Perhaps this will change as I age, or if I have a family, but there is something too fixed and permanent about it that never sits too easily for me. Of course were I to acquire an old house that needed renovating, and which I could create something cool out of then things may change.

I don’t deny I am a total romantic. I also make fun of romantics for being romantics and find myself being completely practical and unsentimental whenever possible just to convince myself and others that I’m not a romantic. I then go and fantasise about living in a horse box lorry similar to the one I saw in Nepal, or the sailing yacht traveling the world. Even when fixed the romantic dreams of the hob house surrounded by a permaculture garden. The sailing boat actually isn’t that far fetched it’s just I haven’t got money to buy a van let alone a boat. Talking of water though, my most favourite dream has and seemingly continues to be the canal barge.

About four years ago I very nearly managed to acquire a narrowboat but backed out through my own fears of living such a tame life, more than some external thing preventing it’s happening. That fear seems to have passed as I move deeper into my thirties, but I’m now stuck with the issue of the Scottish canals being tiny and expensive to live on and having absolutely no desire to live much further south than I am amongst the English. About a year ago some plans were drunkenly drawn up with a cousin to build something really cool on a barge and sell it’s produce on the canals running through Dublin. I would mention what it is but seeing as I still think it’s a great idea and nobody has done it yet, I’m not so silly to just reveal the secret.

Anyway the point is that the more I’m in Dublin, the more I’m finding myself romanticising over the prospect of living on the canal here. It seems cheap, 175 euro for a one year license apparently, although I’m sceptical there aren’t other costs, but even then with it being over one thousand in England and anything from one to five thousand in Scotland, Dublin all of a sudden starts seemingly looking like good value. I enjoy Ireland too, and a large part of my heritage is from here, I could even get over the fact it’s a poor mans Scotland. It’s not something that will happen immediately but with seeds planted already they have now been watered, certainly a watch this space moment.