Market Day

The Market In The Square, Helensburgh. 30th October 2021.

When I was about 12, I went to a market with my mother and my birthday money burning a hole. One stall was selling beautiful semi-sheer muslin blouses with smocking at the neckline, embroidered panels, strings and tassels to tie at the neck, shirred waists, and poofy sleeves with floopy cuffs that were quite popular in the early 80s in liberal East Anglian villages if you were an aspiring but slightly confused new romantic. They had them in all sorts of colours but I wanted the white one with the white embroidery. It was nearly all my birthday money but it was beautiful. I had to wrestle with whether or not to buy it when we’d only just arrived at the market and who knew what other treasures there might be. The stall holder told me it was the last white blouse he had and couldn’t guarantee it would still be there if I came back later so I boldly decided to make the purchase. He took it off the hanger, reverentially folded it into a pink and white striped plastic bag and handed me the precious last white blouse. Only about twenty minutes later we’d circled back around and its identical replacement was hanging exactly where mine had been.