Specialist food and drink from all over the world makes its way to the great covered markets on the corner of Kirkgate and Vicar Lane in Leeds (leedsmarkets.co.uk). Given a day or so for ordering the extra-extraordinary, you can buy almost anything here.
At one end, of both market and price range, the modest essentials from offal to carrots are available at prices which still beat the BOGOFs of supermarkets. At the other, you can examine – and pick up if you're not squeamish – the live lobsters on Fishmonger's Row and engage in good old bargaining, or at the very least vigorous discussion, with the canny staff of Ramsden's and the other, long-standing stalls.
The view has two components: place and people. It is hard to say which is the more inspiring as you lean on the wrought-iron balcony and gaze out at the fervour below. Friends of mine from London once drove along Vicar Lane on the way to a funeral with their two sons in the back of the car.
"Mum," said one, as the crowds eventually parted and they picked up speed, "have you ever seen such shopping?" Always intense in Leeds, the nation's favourite hobby reaches a peak under the slender arches and curved glazing of the City Markets' main hall.
This was originally built in 1857 after most of Leeds' then worthies had paid the obligatory middle-class visit to the Great Exhibition at Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. With Yorkshire thrift, they got their own borough surveyor, a Mr Tilney, to sort out a budget local version. Then, in 1904 and after half a century of growing prosperity, they threw caution to the winds.
The Leeming brothers' architectural partnership, responsible for a series of covered markets in the north of England, were given £80,000 (£6.3m today) to expand the interior and adorn it with coats of arms, bright tiling and hundreds of dragons which help to support the encircling balcony. Around the vast conservatory, they created stonework emblazoned and motif'd in the Edwardians' exuberant style. The crowning glory is a roof of minarets and domes which would not disgrace Cairo or Istanbul.
This glorious frame was then filled with hundreds of stalls, each an individually designed island in the manner of London cabbies' shelters; and the process of making money began. It needed to. Both the Leemings and the council had been carried away by their temple of commerce to such an extent that the final bill was over budget by £37,000 (£2.96m today).
A headache for them but a treat for us, whose view encompasses the result of this lavishness; civic spending on a scale impossible to imagine today. And it was rapidly justified by the vigour of the traders who moved in; characters such as Cheap Jack and his unbeatable, bright pink, Complexion Soap; or "Doctor" Green and his bottles of worms, each supposedly the cause of one of the era's many afflictions, both real and imaginary. The only cure, of course, was one of his Elixir Pills which cost a penny a box.
A penny was the key to the fortunes of the markets' most famous graduates, Yorkshireman Tom Spencer and Belarusian Jewish immigrant Michael Marks, whose Penny Bazaar, where everything cost a penny, laid the foundations of today's M&S empire. They have been followed by many less-publicised success stories, including the Scarr family whose pater familias Archie became lord mayor of Leeds, continuing to work at his stall, and an ever-increasing chain of outlets across the north, in between chairing council meetings.
Today's traders are in the same tradition, from Matt Brake shouting out the merits of Kiwi berries, the latest attraction on his family's two vegetable stalls, to the A J Afro-Caribbean outlet, with its plantains, Scotch bonnet peppers and permanent huddle of shoppers discussing callaloo or the best way to make a spinach patty.
Times are not easy for the market, however. A disastrous fire in 1975 wrecked much of the later premises attached to the back of the Leemings' building. Rent and lease renewal take a regular toll. Bureaucracy also behaves in odd ways; several years ago, stallholders were forbidden to call out their wares – the very essence of any market – until 4pm. Protests had the rule rescinded, but it was a discouraging sign.
Use is the obvious answer. Very high parking charges in Leeds and the growth of peripheral malls such as the White Rose are a deterrent, but the markets' range and prices still win new custom. Its street-front shops on Vicar Lane, in particular, are tempting younger shoppers; the range of false eyelashes at Memphis Belle's funky clothes shop has to be seen to be believed. I'm tempted to make it a miniature Best View all of its own.
And it's specially worth putting the "We sell anything" claim to the test. Several Christmases ago, we were in the familiar position of desperate parents whose offspring wanted the favourite toy of that year, but every ordinary shop had sold out. A friend tipped us off about a toy stall in the market's open-air section (a specially lively place these days). Its owner flicked through his mobile numbers, said: "I've got a friend in Kettering. He can have one up here by tomorrow. That suit?" It did. The toy came, joy was all around, and our family has shopped at Leeds Markets ever since.
