Rees the butcher, Rees the curer and Rees the fishmonger, all in Carmarthen Market - that would make an interesting story, I thought. Sadly, by the time I got there, history had caught up with the Reeses - just as it is about to catch up with the market - and there was only one Rees left. Well, one and a half, but we'll come to the half later.

Let's begin at the beginning. Rees the butcher was Albert Rees, and the shop in the market that bears his name is still there. But Albert retired some years ago, leaving it in the charge of his son Chris, who used to be Rees the curer, with his own spot in the market where he sold ham and bacon and other pork products, and who amalgamated the two. There are other Reeses of the same family in other markets, but I don't want to overcomplicate matters.

The third Rees, Rees the fishmonger, was Raymond Rees (no relation) and the shop here still bears his name even though it is run by Nick Coakley-Greene, who bought it a year ago. The Coakley-Greenes are a dynasty in their own right, but I'll leave that to another day.

So back to Rees the butcher. There were three Reeses at the counter when I wandered in. Chris was cranking the sausage machine ("These are pork and chilli. We also do plain pork, pork and leek, pork and sage, and Cumberland - 80% meat, shoulder and belly. It says 75% minimum, but actually it's 80% or more"). Ann, his wife, was attending to me. And Eleri, their niece, a student who helps out three days a week, was serving a man who was after several slices of coral-pink ham, which she cut thick, as it should be.

Ann was jolly and bright-faced, with a passionate (and well-founded) belief in the family's products. "We're pork butchers: we do sell beef and lamb, but pork's our speciality. Ham and bacon, of course, but also gammon, corners, collars, scratchings, brawn, hocks and faggots." She pointed at a tray of what resembled small black cannonballs. The Reeses have been curing ham and bacon for five generations, and she's been working with Chris for 31 years. "I was a farmer's daughter - pig farmer, actually. Chris only married me so he could get the pigs." She laughed. I didn't believe her.

Anyway, after all that time they should know what they're up to. Sadly, the pork isn't local - "There just aren't enough pigs in Wales" - but it is British. The hams are salted for four months and the bacon flitches for three weeks. Then the hams are wrapped in muslin and hung to dry for anywhere between three months (when they can be sliced and "cooked with eggs or potatoes and onions... lovely") and nine months or even longer, when they are dry enough just to slice and eat like Parma ham. The bacon dries for a month, or longer if the weather isn't right (meat takes longer to cure in wet weather).

Ann was equally passionate about dark doings at the market, which, she told me, was going to be knocked down - "It was only put up in 1981" - to make way for another shopping precinct, so making Carmarthen much like Reading, Preston or 1,000 other identikit British towns. Yes, there is going to be another, smaller market just over the way, said Ann, but it won't be the same. And if you don't want to sign up to it, you're given a week's notice to clear out. They have signed up to the new market, but at their age they don't have much alternative. Still, the way it has all been done, well, you can't help but wonder at the fecklessness of local government.

So the new market will still have Reeses, with their ham, bacon, gammon, corners, collars, hocks, brawn, faggots and sausages, and as I sit here eating some generous slices of their delicate pink, salty, sweet, moist, gently irresistible ham, I for one am pleased that their great tradition will carry on.

Where to get it

Carmarthen Market Mon-Sat. You can also buy Rees ham direct from Carmarthen Ham Arfryn, Uplands, Carmarthen, Carmarthenshire, Wales, 01267 237687; carmarthenham.co.uk