Junk Drawer

Every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday a fruit and veg stand pops up on the curb next to Coop and feeds the biggest cross-section of the community of any business on the high street. It’s cheap, got everything you need, and the trio who tirelessly run it ring up your total instantly in their heads.

Today Luna helped me pick, grabbing kiwis, nectarines, bananas and courgettes for our basket, groping some end-of-life raspberries and mint that I didn’t need but bought out of guilt. I chatted to an older woman in hiking gear who was charmed by my helper.

While I waited in line to pay, Luna bounced on a wooden platform in an empty aisle. A solemn woman with a wet bob behind me shook her head and tutted—one of the most comical acts of British passive aggressivism, in close competition with the loud sigh. I played out the conversation in my head:

Do you have a concern you’d like to share?

It’s just not right.

What’s not right?

She’s too young to be bouncing on that plank of wood / You shouldn’t let her get in the way / she’s disturbing the no one that’s there.

How old is old enough to move around a veg stall freely? / In the way of who? / Disturbing you, by being here?

It was difficult to imagine what she was perturbed by. I said nothing, purchased my goods and let Luna be.

I had to return because I forgot lemons, and then remembered onions, and also asked for tomatoes, kept next to the till. “You say tomAYto, I say tomAHTo,” sang the one of three with an enviable messy up-do. Her colleague joined in. I said something clumsy about how with a Scottish dad and American mom, she’s torn between the two, and he switched from cockney to broad Glasgow and winked as he topped up the lettuce.

Luna asked to pay, so I handed her my phone. “Here you go, Lu” echoed up-do as she bent down with the card machine, “just tap there, Lu. “Bye Lu!” all three called in succession as we walked away. Next time I’ll get their names.

I carried the three bags of produce in my arms and Luna on my shoulders. We plonked up the stairs of a bridge over train tracks, where Luna always notes “that’s a good sound!” On the other side, we passed a mum and son who needed to watch a train go past in both directions before they could go home. Just before we arrived home, I noticed a blue lighter encased in cement in a crack on the pavement.