What a market day does to you

Last spring, we asked a hundred visitors what a day at Le Marie Marché did to them. We expected answers about stalls and purchases. We got something else.

The top three were not what we thought

1. "I slowed down.", mentioned 41 times.
2. "I talked to strangers.", mentioned 33 times.
3. "I saw things I didn't know I wanted.", mentioned 29 times.

Only in fourth place came the purchases themselves. And even those were told by most visitors as stories, not as products. "A bowl my mother could have found at a flea market in Aix in the eighties." "A little chain I gave to my friend on the evening she came back from Paris."

Why we keep doing this

A market is an excuse. An excuse to wander through a morning that would otherwise be swallowed up by errands, laundry and washing, and short messages. We know that our visitors don't come just for the peonies. They come for what a market does to them, what it does to time, what it does to pace, what it does to the mind.

"I bought nothing, and I left with more than I had."

What we're doing for the next edition

Three small things, on the advice of the respondents. We're setting up one extra sitting area; we're asking the music acts to start a little slower; and we're placing a small writing table with postcards, free to write, free to send, for those who want to tell someone things they wouldn't otherwise say.