to the Central Market yesterday. For those of you who do not live in Adelaide this is a fresh fruit and vegetable market in the CBD. They also sell smallgoods, cheese, tea, coffee, nuts and a host of other strange items. Most are edible items but there is some clothing (mostly New Age) thrown in as well as incense, soap, shoes and secondhand books.
The building which holds the market is old and dark. The floor is uneven and the aisles are narrow. When the market is in full swing it is noisy. Spruikers, shouters, screamers, chatterers and children all try to make themselves heard at the same time. You get jostled and trodden on as you try to buy the temptations that surround you.
Yesterday there were the yellow-green mountains of bananas and the red pyramids of tomatoes, the jumble of capsicum, the neat hooded rows of mangoes, and the soldier like rows of celery and asparagus standing stiffly next to the lumpy, grouchy mounds of potatoes. There were deep, deep red cherries too, still wildly expensive, strawberries in little boxes, peaches, nectarines and apricots in little rows. It all looked luscious but - I think the apricots did it - unreal.
I headed for the place which sells coffee beans, ground coffee, flavoured coffee, coffee in bags and boxes, coffee from Africa, New Guinea and South America, coffee which is dark roast, medium roasted, light roasted and everything in between. They even sell chocolate for drinking. I am not sure where that comes from. I look along the rows and find the 'fair trade' variety to put in the Christmas baskets. Tea comes the same way at the tea shop. I can buy almonds by supporting a local grower. I add some other items.
Eventually, clutching my purchases, I manage to retrieve the tricycle from the little parking place under the escalator and escape without getting knocked over, dropping anything or losing my purse. Outside I carefully repack the rear basket and lock the bags on. If I look back I can see the lights, the untidy ebb and flow of people and the bright maze of colour. I can hear the market symphony. It IS fun for a short while.
I pedal off feeling both reluctant and relieved.
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3 comments:
Cat,
I get to the market about once every three years ...... but that coffee shop is to die for when your choice of coffee in the local supermarket leaves lots to be desired! The hardest part is making a decision about coffee styles and brands you have never heard of!
Judy B
I actually like the smell of coffee more than I like the actual liquid - and,if it is too strong, I tend to feel 'hyper' for the rest of the day or not sleep at night!
Imagine if the forty thieves were green grocers: you were Ali Baba on wheels! Except of course you weren't because you paid...had the wheel been invented back then....?
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