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I don't know whether it's to do with the lockdown & Covid precautions and we are mainly staying at home but much of the site recently, has been taken up with photo's, videos etc of what's happening in the city centre now. Others may feel differently but I personally am not the slightest bit interested in today's modern Sheffield because I feel that the council and planners have ripped the heart out of everything this city meant to me. There was a bit of chat about the old Coles Bros etc but many seem not to care too much about the resulting demise of John Lewis and think it was too expensive anyway. As Debenhams has suffered the same fate, the result is that If you like wandering around department stores, then apart from Atkinson's (long may they survive), there is no point in going to town at all. In my early days of marriage, I was lucky enough to get the tenancy of the house next door to where I was born. It was left full of very good quality but quite old furniture. The first thing I did was chop it all up and buy modern, early 60's furniture throughout (the thought makes me shudder now) and only in later years did I realise my stupid mistake. I don't think Sheffield Council have had that realisation yet but, as in my case, it's now too late to rectify it. I view lots of old videos and photos of old Sheffield and it brings one close to tears when you see all those MASSIVE crowds of people scurrying about like ants in the old city centre, and compare that with the lifeless and soulless scenes of today. You would think we had endured a nuclear holocaust and the end of the world was nigh. I remember crossing the footbridge, (never seen any photos of this) to the old Castle Fish market with my Grandma in the early 40's and enjoying cockles or mussels or, better still, chips, pie & peas from a stall which I still took my family to more than half a century later and basked in the nostalgia of those poor but happy days. The old Rag & tag market was equally as much loved. What will younger generations get nostalgic about in years to come but a dead city centre which will look nice although soulless until it's covered in graphiti, beer cans and litter.

You really would have to have been born into a certain class of society and in a certain period to really appreciate the benefits of the rag n tag, Norfolk Market Hall and Dixon Lane. It wasn't about prices (which were as low as they could get), nor was it about quality (which was as varied as you chose), it was about COMMUNITY. A community that travelled together on trams and buses, not cars, that walked long distances without thinking it extraordinary, that faced hardships such as coal rationing, very long snowbound winters and basic foodstuffs and which above all related to one another. This last part applied on the streets, in the pubs, in the churches, and in the mucky, disease provoking workshops of an industrial city which was proud of its name. Those contributors here who denigrate the atmosphere of the Saturday markets can not have had a life rooted in such fertile ambience. You could not go "to town" on a Saturday without meeting several acquaintances or relatives. It was a village atmosphere in a city. Now such puritan architecture experts try to re-create such an ambience with false identities like Poundbury. You can't. Meadowhall will never be like the rag n tag. It was there. We loved it. We missed it and will miss it for all our remaining days along with the colourful characters who you see in the historic black and white photos. Cherish the photos. Regret that you didn't experience it. For it was US....US SHEFFIELDERS...us carrying coal from the canal wharf in a barrow, picking up horsemuck for the tiny rosebed in the backyard, clearing the snow off our front, spreading coke on icebound steep footpaths, and visiting family every Saturday on Sunday, unannounced but always welcomed. This WAS life! A postal order from your grandad at Christmas was like a win on the treble chance. An apple and an orange a fruitful bounty. Everything that came after that was, by comparison, shallow and lifeless. You can have your nightclubs and your cocktail bars. You have NOT lived. The writer's grandmother sold flowers in Dixon Lane from an upturned fruitbox. She was killed by an unlicensed teenage driver as she crossed East Bank Road on her way home . RIP Martha Westnidge. RIP the best days of our life.

That’s roundaboutright.

Gravestones and the like are becoming increasingly unlikely to be a permanant memorial to anybody. With vandalism and the weather doing the best to destroy them. However even those set up to maintain them are pressed by money concerns or issues such as keeping them tidy. Closed burial grounds of long dead people have no-one intrested in protecting them and the public (due to the connection with death) don't want to provide charitable funds to keep gravestones in good nick. As we have seen with many graveyards in inner city areas, these can be re-used as public parks for ball games etc. But the stones have been removed for this to happen. In St John's Park, the stones have been used as paving slabs. Some cutt up and used to make steps! Because graves of ordinary people are not seen as heritage or important to the nation many destructive acts have taken place, some very recent. I personal feel that the persons in the City Council who authorised the clearance of areas in Burngreave and the General cemetery are just as bigger vandals as those youths that are reported in the Star vandalising City Road etc.

I think I'll have my little brass epitaph engraved now, - DaveH Remembered ALWAYS NEVER forgotten Well, not for 25 years Then we will forget he ever existed. Something seems a bit wrong about that to me <_<