Deborah Forster

It was very early on a Saturday morning when we last went to a farmer’s market in Melbourne. The cold sat heavily on us and the wind moved across the long flat grass like a glacier. Sleet threatened. I noticed a good car park near the gate and said to Alan ‘wouldn’t that be a good spot for the kids to park?’ Alan is a man of firm action. He whipped out the phone and called our son: ‘Where are you?’ he bellowed. I could see Chris down the road a way when he waved. He was about ten cars away with his wife Susannah and son Johnny. They were okay, they were getting to us. I shivered more than expected. When Chris arrived he said, ‘What’s up with Dad?’ laughed and nicked off to source an egg and bacon wrap which he got down at the speed of light.
You wonder in life if there are many lessons left to learn as you age but I think I found some that morning. Leave wintery things a bit later if you must do them at all. Sleep in on a winter morning and be kind to stallholders. There must be so many more. We were the first there and so the merchants looked at us dolefully, hoping for the best and trying to keep their hands warm. Alan was invited to taste someone’s prize marmalade on the end of a little icy pole stick. The stallholder, shaggy-haired and many-coated, asked ‘what did you think of that?’ ‘Don’t like it at all,’ said Alan, the market’s version of a judge from The Best British Bake-Off. Silence. And yet further down the stalls, a woman caught him with the offer of four small jars for the price of three that he didn’t taste. I gave up judging and looked around. At another market I once bought a dark honey coloured bowl from an old man. The bowl was made from a fallen Manchurian pear tree in his garden. He called it ‘own bowl’. I look for things that measure up to his work.
At this market, there were dogs on leads all over by now and Johnny ran in delighted circles on the straggly grass, as we kept sight of his beautiful little head. He likes dogs. In the distance the cars on the freeway moved like trains, cars glued to each other, the sky closed in and some hockey players arrived for games at the field next door with shin pads and sticks. Winter warriors.

So, you wander around going from here to there and seeing a lurcher (like a hairy greyhound), you see your grandson, you remember the days when you let the kids watch ‘Heartbeat’ their first grown-up show. They were all tucked up on a weekend night, allowed to go to bed a bit later. Now our kids can’t take any time even to queue up for Taylor Swift on line because they’ve got so many things to do. They must feed their kids and themselves, work and even get their own car parks! Life moves on with a speed that is frightening and time’s arrow is unwavering.
Because it was so cold and I was getting thoughtful, Leonard Cohen came to mind with his song ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’, all mystery and longing:
‘New York is cold but I like where I’m living, there’s music on Clinton Street all through the evening.’
A few years ago, Alan and I walked miles from the hotel to Clinton Street in NY to see if there still was music on Clinton Street all through the evening. This was about forty years after he’d written the song. Unlikely, I admit. Everything seems further when you’re looking for it. And it was so cold. I wore my own famous blue raincoat but wished for more layers. We finally found the street, long and thin and quiet with the odd golden light in windows. No music though. Still, it was good to walk through the cold dark night remembering lyrics to FBR. We found a chemist shop on the street, all lit up like some luminous beacon of America. Inside the glowing store we got Melatonin, then not easily available here. Outside, rats foraged in the rubbish bags and leapt aside politely as we passed. We slept well on the way home on the plane.