THE WORLD ACCORDING TO AUTUMN…..
‘MAKE HAY WHILST THE SUN SHINES’ ….
It is a good enough saying …. ‘Do something whilst times are good’ … In principal anyway … Sometimes you just have to do things in the moment to take your mind off other things and that can make you feel better … In the moments of quiet that is what I have been trying to do and in the last few months it has not always been easy…
Living in Somerset we have a great deal of very good produce around us… So now that autumn time is stepping towards us … I take my usual drive through the countryside to the fruit and veg market sited at the local nursery site… The views across The Mendips landscape are spectacular at anytime of the year and those views are very changeable even in a short time period, a couple of weeks ago when I was driving up here, you almost had to drive into the middle of the road to avoid all the overgrowing, plump foliage tumbling ripely into the road and you could smell the heat on the perfectly formed leaves as they batted against the car…. This week they have died back and look rather tatty and old, a shadowy picture of their former glory, bits of the leaves changing colour to darker greens and browns and the debris of the dried up dead leaves scattering about as I drive … Trees and bushes are now showing their bones and skeletons of who they really are underneath the now spars foliage is falling away … It’s a new season, I accept that, but I hate the change on one level, not least that my husband is a summer / heat lover, but because it brings so much change … I accept it of course… It brings a new chapter with it … But this year there has been so much to reflect on …
Nothing is cheap these days, but at this fruit and veg market, you can always find a barging an if not that then an inspiration for a ‘so called culinary surprise’! The market is set up in an old open barn with boxes as sacks of veg all piled high, it is like a scene out of Corrie or EastEnders, but with a great deal more ‘panache’ … You can potter around and pick up brown paper bags and fill them with the most beautiful produce, naturally each item comes in its own shape and size as opposed to the standardised boredom of the supermarkets, each item in beautiful colours the smell of which is irresistible. The grocer and main man that runs this ‘operation’ marches around issuing orders and pointing at things from the adjoining barn, then returns from one of the barns back to the shop with new huge bags of produce over his shoulder, pulls out a well used knife and expertly rips the sacks open then heaves them up and upturns the content loudly spills into the empty baskets, he always wears a trilby hat, summer or winter, the hat has clearly seen a few battles in its time. He is a bit like a general marching backwards and forwards purposefully, going about his errands whilst keeping a very close eye on what is going on with his battalion, of almost all female staff. These ladies all in mid-age, like me, have entirely their own individual characters, dress all in their own individual styles and although doing an outside grubby job have clearly made an effort to look nice, one with a tweet jacket and jeans, slightly younger than the others and newer to the job, with a colourful scarf tied around her neck, another lady with shoulder length wavy grey hair, who is the most authoritarian of them all, has a collection of over the knee length coats and jackets all very jaunty, today she has on a macramé long coat on with bits of applique attached, she glances around checking that we are all queuing in order. The other lady that fascinates me, has the most beautiful youthful face, sometimes she has a scarf around her bobbed blond hair, today she has well fitting faired jeans and T-shirt and a light jacket, wearing open and tied behind her, I think that she is the generals partner, sometimes she calls out a question to him and if he is very gruff and sharp in response to her, she looks at the person she is serving and pulls a kindly but ‘so what’ sort of expression.
There is on most days about five women working together. I join the long queue, leaning back and sticking my stomach out to counterbalance the weight of the basket. Today there are four ladies working the tills and another lady working at the far end at a pantomime painted kiosk, selling the wholesale boxes of produce. They don’t have tills, just old fashion tin boxes to deposit the money, cash sales here - ONLY! The next person is called the in the queue and we all shuffle forwards accordingly. You place your basket on a large bench table in front of the lady serving you. She picks it up and takes it to the other side of the barn area to another bench table on the far side of the counter that you are standing at, on this table chalk boards are leant against the wall listing the current days prices of all the produce. Each item is taken out of the basket, according to size and weight the lady glances up at the price list and makes a mental calculation, placing the ‘added up’ item to the cardboard box and moves onto the next item which she adds up in her head, depositing that to the cardboard box; much tapping and counting goes on and you watch as her head goes from basket of produce to the chalk board for the correct price and back down again to the next item. It is like watching someone head from behind at a tennis match. She then heaves the heavy card board box back over to the large trestle table and places it in front of me and ask if that is all?
‘Trilby hat man’, buys in bulk, so there are always huge cardboard and wooden boxes of produce such as tomatoes, exotic fruits, water melons whatever is going cheap or there is an excess of these bulk items are sold in the box for anything under £10, Kiosk lady deals with anyone that is just buying the bulk items. I just cannot resist - these offers ever!! Today I purchase a big boxes of lemons, about 50 or so in the box… The lady adds the new purchase to her head calculation and gives me a price. It is never a rounded off price - it is always a pounds and pence figure. Whilst I pay my poor husband makes his way to the car with the first box of veg, returning back to get my barging second box of lemons and take them to the car. ... I am not casting aspersions here! But I do wonder why put yourself through a complex mental arithmetic exercise, 20 times an hour when you could just use a calculator? God forbid you might interrupt them in their calculations moment, I did once… And the one in the macramé coat told me to be quiet in no uncertain terms, as she didn’t want her colleague to loose her mathematical thinking … That put me back in my box! I never interrupted again! It is all the most fantastic theatre!
So what to do with all these lovely lemons, well I can do loads, dry them for decoration, bake lemon drizzle cake but my middle son Ruben who loves this is not here at the moment, use them for cleaning - as if! Put them in a G&T - I don’t drink it… So having filled my craving and obsession with a barging… I fill the fruit basket with them and make lemonade. Which keeps very nicely in the fridge…
WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMON’S
MAKE LEMONADE!
juice of 7 unwaxed lemons
125g caster sugar
2 -2.5l cold water
boil the water with the sugar and transfer to the lemon juice and leave to cool …
transfer to bottles…
Serve with lemon slices ….
Simple as that !
