To Market, To Market

Walking to work today, the air was cold enough so that every breath I took escaped as what I called ‘dragons breath’ when I was a little girl. I love days like this. I have had a lot happening over the past few weeks (a dear Aunt has had a stroke, I have been under the weather and Carl has been working late an awful lot), and had fallen into the habit of catching the bus to work, but lately I have started to walk again, and am getting so much pleasure out of it. I leave ten minutes earlier than I need to so I can really absorb it all, and have time to be diverted on the way. I love to scuffle through the leaves, which are really crunchy at the moment. I adore the sweet almost coffee scent that rises up from a path of freshly scuffled leaves.



The light has that wonderful quality of being somehow sharp and hazy at the same time, and the sunshine is brilliantly dazzling. This morning I had a particularly lovely walk into work, as it ended with a quick trip to the market. I love the feeling of having some pennies in my purse and a shopping list of lovely things. First of all I visited the cheese stall, to buy some goats cheese. Tonight I am cooking roasted peppers filled with goats cheese and lentils, and then for lunch tomorrow I am making my favourite goats cheese, roasted pepper and chicken salad. When I got there they only had 1kg logs, which (as much as I do love goats cheese!) was just way too much for me, so the lovely man cut me a smaller slice instead. Then I moved on to the flower stall, as at this time of year I get a yearning for what I think of as Mrs Miniver chrysanthemums. I was torn between a deeper brown, a bright firey orange, and a smaller-flowered bronze somewhere between the two. I chose the bronze, and enjoyed carrying them through the market in their heavy paper wrapping. My last port of call was at a stall that sells all manner of dry goods, where I bought a tub of hot chocolate for my sister.

I really wanted to buy a new pair of slippers, but the slipper man was not there today, and I would have loved to loiter at the wool stall for a little while, but the clock was ticking, and work was calling.