everything is contextual

[freckles_and_doubt]

I am made very happy by the way in which pleasure in new experiences is an infinitely varied thing. We can go to the Roundhouse and spend vast amounts on upmarket ambience, attentive waiters and carefully-posed plates of nouvelle minimalism in delicate flavours, and have a marvellous time. Or we can go to the Whole Earth market this evening, and spend not a lot at all on cider from the tap; potato pancakes; giant Portuguese rolls filled with rare fillet steak, salad and mushroom sauce; and crêpes with hazelnut chocolate spread, all eaten from disposable plates while standing around using giant barrels as a table. The level of zesty enjoyment attendant upon the two evenings is exactly the same.

I love that market. It's filled with niche stalls: people who make only two or three things, but who do them very well, and with a rather bloody-minded attention to detail, quality and Seekrit Methods, and who are always cheerfully ready to chat about their particular art. I covet the crêpe-man's giant French griddles. Also, I scored creamy home-made fudge, extremely spicy chorizo, and a rather delectable ruby grapefruit marmalade. I like my marmalade sour, and this qualifies.

It's been a good day. I worked at home, and achieved a whole damned lot while taking an actually extremely needed break from the student angst levels and the continual interruptions. Continual interruptions are incredibly draining, you don't know how much until they stop.

I also bought and read the new Bujold. A Miles novel. Rather fun, and full of cryogenically frozen people and interesting socio-economic implications. Plus, bonus sphinx. But the ending made me cry.

Comments

Miles

[stringgeek.livejournal.com]

I bought it and ate it up in just one night. I cried at the end, too. :(

Re: Miles

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

She's been threatening to do that for years, and I knew it was coming, with a sickening sinking in my stomach, when Miles and Mark started their discussion. Inevitable, and necessary, and still gut-wrenching. One really grows into these characters as family of one's own.

I'm still hoping she'll give us another one focused on Ivan, which she's also been threatening to do for a while.

Ivan

[vesta-aurelia.livejournal.com]

she IS doing a book about Ivan:
http://vorkosigan.dreamwidth.org/21083.html

the drabbles at the end of CryoBurn *broke* me.

Re: Ivan

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Hooray! I have a soft spot for Ivan. In his own way, given his own goals, he's absolutely as effective as Miles is.

The drabbles were incredibly powerful and heart-breaking, I completely agree.

[springonmars.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

"Continual interruptions are incredibly draining"
Yes. This is, to me, the hardest thing about parenting. Or perhaps just the hardest thing about parenting while trying to run a business. Probably that.

V jealous of your food haul. Creamy fudge and ruby grapefruit marmalade? YUM. Possibly not together. But yum.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

The thing I love about the market is that absolutely everyone has samples out in front of their stall, and enthusiastically presses you to try everything. Even the sausage man keeps a grill behind his 'fridge and gives out bits of cooked sausage on toothpicks. That's how I fell for the marmalade. It makes it fatally easily to buy an awful lot of food in the sure and certain knowledge that it's good.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

and, yes, my inability to handle interruptions is one reason why the parenting thing is probably not for me. It makes me insanely irritable, and I think even distressed students can handle having their heads bitten off more resiliently than small children can.

[pumeza.livejournal.com]

Where is this market? When? I want to go too...

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Earth Fair Food Market in Tokai; open on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings. They have a website and everything :>. http://www.earthfairmarket.co.za/ (http://www.earthfairmarket.co.za/). Of course, it would have helped you identify them if I hadn't erroneously labelled them the Whole Earth market in my post.

They have, if it helps, a kiddies' corner with face painting and stuff. Lovely vibe all round.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Do they have ostrich eggs? Not that I would know what to do with a whole one, it just strokes me as odd that the only place that I know where you can buy one OTC is Borough Market, London.

Also, are they open in the week before Christmas?

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Not an ostrich egg sort of place, but an excellent place for jams and pickles and home-made sausage and really fancy mushrooms of types you don't find anywhere else. There's a very good chance they're open in the week before Christmas, it's maximum sellage time for markets, and their website does say "every Wednesday and Sunday". I'll ask if I go back in the next few weeks :>.