Deborah Forster

One windy Friday afternoon, in a break in our lovely summer, we go to the twilight market in Anglesea. Blue grey clouds hold the hot sun back and maybe a storm will brew. We might miss it anyway because due to our grandchildren, we are very early.

In what looks like a carpark, the stalls gather close as families: Vietnamese, Spanish churros, Pizza, Tibetan, and one lonely butcher.

A gets three small pizzas stacked on each other proudly bears them back to us at the table we snared, when a gust of wind frisbees the ham and pineapple away. Proving that times are still hard, whatever anyone says, the pizza people insist he pays full price for the next pizza and go to the back of the queue. Act of god clause, I suppose.

S and I order Vietnamese vego Bahn mi at a little van, pay and leave. The sun is making it through the cloud now and it feels like a laser.

Johnny our four-year-old grandson and I buy some blueberries to tide him over while he waits for the new pizza. Naturally he only wants the sample box which isn’t for sale. A lengthy struggle of wills ensues.

S and I go back to collect our tofu Bahn mi only to be told by a very small distressed stall holder that she forgot the tofu! ‘I am so sorry,’ she says many times. I could barely see her inside the  van and was beginning to think she might be a recording but then she changed to ‘How could I forget such a thing?’ We didn’t know, but self-flagellation helps no one we thought primly. We change our order to rice paper rolls and get five dollars back.

Meanwhile over at the oyster stall one woman is single handedly shucking oysters for three men, one of whom wants a dozen!

A gives up in his quest and he and C, our son, go  free-range foraging. S and I guard the table and two men both with a dozen oysters wobbling before them on cardboard trays, try to sit with us. S is having none of that, ‘No, I’m sorry those seats are occupied by our husbands’. She’s not mad on oysters anyway. ‘Just give me a moment to catch my bearings,’ says one man. S is not impressed. And then A comes back bearing non-alcoholic blood orange slushies. Basically, icy cordial.

Well of course I hop in throwing caution to the wind, and within minutes a profound searing pain tears at my  right eye. ‘Well, here it is,’ I think ‘the stroke I’ve been waiting on for years. I suppose I’ve lived a good life.’ S is talking about kids, which is a big topic for her at the moment. I’m quiet as I deal with my possible stroke.  I decide that if this pain goes past a few more seconds, an ambulance will be called. Seconds pass and I wonder if my brain would still be working if this was the big one and then slowly the pain recedes and it feels like it leaves a silvery trace like a snail trail in my face.

Then poor S is felled and with no small amount of fear cries ‘what the hell is this?’ Clutching her face above the baby carrier in which is snuggled our latest grandchild. ‘My God, the pain! I can’t believe it.’ I try to stay calm, and the baby doesn’t stir. ‘I don’t think you’re dying, it’s just the slushie has frozen your poor brain’ which even as I say it, I doubt helps. She still in a lot of pain and then slowly it dials itself down. We talk about pain, noticing that when it’s got you, it likes to hang around.  We have shared the stealthy pain of the ice-cream headache and now we’re veterans.

A, who has glimpsed a break in the queue at the oyster shuckers, nips over and orders half a dozen like any normal person should when there’s only one shucker, and goes off to get a slushie for himself. We warn him, but of course doesn’t listen.

He gets back, happy that’s he’s held onto the slushie in the frantic wind and gets right into it. Within a minute, the pain has got him pinned down and he fairly writhes under his borrowed red baseball cap. Then, recovered, he goes to get his oysters and the shucker says, ‘I would have delivered them to you, but I saw you were in the grip of the slushie brain freeze’.  So, diagnosed by the shucker; an expert in two fields.

Meanwhile Johnny who is nearly four has demolished most of a ham and pineapple pizza and is ready for some fun. He’s  standing near the fence listening to someone singing ‘Walking in Memphis’. J doesn’t have his mind totally on the singer though, he’s throwing the occasional banksia leaf over the cyclone fence. By the time  the singer is onto Hootie and the Blowfish, he’s got a partner in crime, a little girl, whose granny comes over to speak sternly and is casually ignored. Bonnie and Clyde are now throwing leaves at the Churros van!  And then, a kid in a primary school uniform clambers across the cyclone fence wearing a bike helmet and briefly gets stuck in the banksia. At which point C (dad) steps in and stops it all. He’s the only one who didn’t have a slushie, maybe that’s why he’s so clear-headed. Johnny doesn’t mind though he  does make a quick break for the little girl as she plays (daringly) by the side of the Churros van. C apologises to the owner who says it’s alright, and then shares a couple of guilt trips: he’s just bought, and it cost a lot of money and it’s hard to earn a living.

We walk home past a stall selling fat clean beetroots and tiny pears grown by the stall holder’s neighbour (Angela) and French shallots long with brown and mauve stripes. I touch one but can’t bear to take it home to die in the fridge while I forget  it.

Then we  walk past community gardens,  disarmingly lovely tucked away behind high fencing, all tended carefully and in the late afternoon glistening with shiny greens like seaweed.