My telepathy about when Ma is arriving continued this week, as I came downstairs just as she was coming down the footpath from where she'd parked the car.
From there it was off to the supermarket.
While we didn't end up spending as much money as last week, we did end up with a trolley full of things, and now my fridge is nicely filled up once again. The check-out experience was a little more arduous than usual as they were training new check-out boys, and although we were in the queue for one of the other girls, they actually swapped her out before she started dealing with us and replaced her with one of the new boys. He wasn't too bad, especially since it was only his second time working on the register... the only downside was his speed, but that'll improve over time.
We also wandered over the Coles and grabbed some of the Heston Blumenthal lemon myrtle hot cross buns... they're not bad... I still prefer the ones at Bakers Delight, but the Heston ones are nice warmed up/toasted.
While we didn't have any plans for the day, I remembered that I'd seen something on Twitter about a market on Flinders Street, so we decided to head over and take a look.
And, as usual with almost every single market we go to there were a lot of stalls selling handmade jewellery.
But the most interesting stall, and the one we spent the most time at was a general second hand/bric a brac stall at the back. Clearly the guy running the stall goes to auctions and estate sales and whatnot and buys anything and everything he can get his hands on. So there was a mixture of stuff, it almost looked as though it was the contents of somebody's house.
Which led to some weird headspace while going through everything... it felt a little like you were rifling through somebody's life. Especially because there were about a dozen photo albums full of photos spanning the 1930's through to the 1960's.
I became a little bit entranced/obsessed with the albums... there were captions under most of the photos, but they weren't in English... I worked out later that they were in Danish. And some of the early albums didn't just have photos, I think one of them had the couple's honeymoon in it, and it included the hotel bill and their score cards from mini golf and all those little bits and pieces that go into making up a life.
In amongst the albums there were also some loose photos, and the oldest ones I could find had dates of the 1890's... so I couldn't just walk away from those, especially since the photos were of handsome young gentlemen. There were also a bunch of photos from the 1910's... including one of a group of young men in soccer uniforms and another of a group of people out in a garden.
It felt a little melancholy, all those photos that clearly nobody wanted or were too far away to collect or a family that had lost touch... and I won't lie, it felt a little odd just picking out a few to take away with me to use as decorator objects. But at least somebody gets to enjoy them again.
Thinking about it more later in the day I also couldn't help thinking about what's going to happen to all my photos, both analogue and digital... and whether somebody's going to be going through my albums at a second hand stall one day.
Ahem... on a brighter note...
Ma found a really cool book full of artist sketches... not actual sketches, it's a printed book, but if you didn't look too closely at the sketches you'd never be able to tell that they weren't original. I'm probably going to try scanning them in, or using the photocopy option on my multifunction printer, see what we can do without having to pull the book apart.
I grabbed a nice wooden bowl that I need to give a good wash and maybe a rub down with sandpaper and oil (and interestingly, I just read an article about how to refinish wooden bowls this morning), and we also found some butter knives... and you can never go past a nice butter knife.
It's definitely a place I'd love to go back to again, if only to spend some more time looking at the second hand stuff.
After a brief stop at the highly hipstery tea stall for some ice tea, we headed down to Arndale to take in a movie.
But more on that later.
We had a bit of a wander around Arndale both before the movie and after it was over, and I happened to check my phone after we got out of the movie, only to discover that That Dapper Market was on in the old Clipsal plant in Bowden, basically on the way home from Arndale.
It was also supposed to attract around 2500 people... which I can believe, because when we got there, the place was already heaving and it had only been running for about an hour.
There's a lot of cool stuff... a lot of it stuff we've seen before in other places, but Ma and I do tend to go to a lot of markets, so that's not really surprising.
Points do go to the girl at the tea stall who was telling us about her teas. I know Ma's hearing is getting worse and worse, and the general noise level in the market was enough that I knew Ma wouldn't be able to hear that well so I just cupped my hand behind her ear (which she said later actually did help), and the tea girl didn't even flinch or stop talking or look at me like I was crazy or anything.
I do wonder sometimes if I should see about putting together a range of my photos and applying to be a stall holder. It's one of those things were you wouldn't be sure if it was worth doing until after you'd already done it...
Anyway...
We wandered around the various vintage clothes, artisan jewellery, organic foodage, general artist stalls having a look at bits and pieces. The old Clipsal factory is a great space for the market, and I really wished that I'd had my camera with me... I could have gotten some awesome photos.
Hopefully there will be another one sooner rather than later, although it does appear that it's not a regularly scheduled market like the Flinders Street one.
After we'd wandered around for a while we stopped off at Veggie Velo to get some early dinner/late lunch... it's been a while, but it was just as yummy as ever.
We made a final stop at Four Seeds to pick up some of their gorgeous brownies... and Mim said that they'd seen us when we came in and were waiting to see when we swung past... sometimes it's good to be predictable hehehe.
When we got back here, I showed Ma all of my processed images from Sydney before I sent her on her way.
So while we didn't really buy very much stuff, it was an enjoyable day and definitely something different than the usual.
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