Day 12: The Happiness Project

Yesterday, we were in the city centre, running errands. Whilst M. was off sorting out his things, I went to the market.

I really like the fact that Leicester has a proper working outdoor covered market, the kind that isn’t for tourists (hell, Leicester isn’t really for tourists, except maybe fans of Richard III or the Elephant Man or Daniel Lambert or amazing Indian sweets). It’s all about the cheap socks, vacuum cleaner attachments and a ton of fruits and veggies of all sorts. Some days there’s a west Indian table open, selling all their fabulous tubers and unEnglish fruit. There’s also a properly authentic Thai table run by a guy who has never been to Thailand but who s really into Thai curries. He’s your man for galangal and kaffir lime leaves.

I was there, with Thwacky strapped to my chest, to find enough tropical fruit to make a crumble for dessert. Unfortunately, this visit coincided with a government decision to ban the import of mangos from India due to a crop infestation of some sort.

I searched dozens of tables, but found no hint of tropical fruit.

I did, however, hear one of the shouty vendors barking out, ‘Strawberries! Two for a pound!’ (just ignore the consonants for proper Leicester accent). Was this two berries for a pound? Why no, it was two large punnets of perfect strawberries for a pound!  I bought four, figuring half could become crumble and half breakfast for a few days. They were beautiful.

Then I turned around and came face to face with a table loaded with enormous Costa Rican mangos, 70p each (they are a pound each for smaller ones in the shops, by comparison). I bought 3. They weighed the same as Thwacky. They smelled amazing.

Score, as the say.

The vendor lady gave me my change and looked across the table at Thwacky, who was snoozy in his sling. ‘How old is your lovely little girl?’ she asked.

Did I mention that the poor boy is mistaken for a girl by 98% of the general inquiring public? I’ve stopped correcting them, because I don’t really care about gender stuff when it comes to 9 week old babies and it’s rather sweet that they bother to ask about him (though, inexplicably, they never actually ask if he is a boy or a girl, which would help). I even once told an old lady who asked that his name was Sarah because I hadn’t the heart to correct her initial assumption.

I left the market with a ton of amazing, cheap fruit and the knowledge that my little baby girl was just beautiful.

The whole Happiness Project collection of posts can be found here.