Bring me Sunshine

The market

The mix of people, seeming to be at least two and a half meters Taller than me, batted me around like a ball in a pinball machine. I was carrying a wooden crate filled with fresh, sweet and ripe peppers of all different varieties that I'd just picked up from the local farmers' vibrant tea green truck, we usually get our fresh produce from him, we have a special agreement as he's an old family friend "we've known for years and will know for years to come" as my father says. Everyday when I see him his boots are always covered in mud with straw stuck to the dried and crispy soil. He always wears his ragged old straw hat that you'd always picture a farmer wearing with a piece of hay in his mouth. He makes me smile and always gives me a rub on the head which ruffles all my hair.
As I walked further being pushed back and forth I felt the splinters of the dog eared wooden crate dig into my soiled and dirty hands. I new where I was and could easily navigate my way through this street with my eyes closed. I had been up and down this street running errands for my Dad many a times even since I was really little. Our fruit and veg market stall had been running on Grays Avenue ever since I could remember, we had seen so many other stalls come and go in the past but we had always been there even through the really rainy days.
Those days were terribly miserable, we would stand in the pouring, drizzling rain while our sales went down and our produce rotted without anyone to buy our once fresh fruit and veg. It's like the rainy days had some melancholy cloth that all it took was to cover us much like you would with a table cloth and we would all be sad and dreary and mope around.
I dropped the crate at my father's feet and he stared at them and then at me and smiled his sweet smile meant only for me,"good on ya Blue", was what he said,"I thought you'd had a heart attack, you'd taken so long!" He often said things like this but I'd learnt to love it, he meant it affectionately and I always new it.
I then knelt down on the wet and gritty floor coated in soap suds and began to wash the peppers. It had become our routine every market morning. Dad would go and open up the stall while I would run down the cobbled street avoiding the morning rush to catch the Farmer's truck, to pick up our freshly picked fruit and veg. I'd repeat this until I'd collected all the crates but sometimes on days that there were 5 or 6 crates my legs would ache terribly after my trips back and forth. We often had peppers and carrots and apples and pears and strawberries and tomatoes and on rare occasions we would get watermelons and oranges.