We've been together for nearly 4 years and through all this time David has been working shifts. It means we can go days without seeing each other (except in bed) and he works two out of four weekends. At least in theory. In practice it varies and it's not been unusual for him to work three or four in a four week period.
For us weekends are precious, but I really love Sunday's.
I know that they say Sunday's are a day for rest...and well that's definitely true for us. We tend to become hermitic and lazier than normal on the Sunday's we have together, but we have a few traditions that we always do.
One of them is the local farmer's market. That's it below.
It's not the biggest market in the world and doesn't take hours to get round. In fact if you were going to be quick about it you could make your way through all of the stalls in about 10 minutes. But why would you?
There's something really wonderful about being able to talk to the person who baked your loaf of bread that morning. Or the seller who made the cheese by hand that you've just tasted. I love talking to sellers and vendors at the market (much to David's annoyance on rainy days) and finding out about them, their businesses and more importantly, their goods. It's a personal level of buying you just don't get in other places.
We've lived in our current place for two and a half years now and almost from day one would wander over to the market and pick up things for dinner or a few treats for later in the week. And the produce really is better than the majority of what you can find in the supermarket.
I've been a supporter and advocate for local businesses for a long time and feel that a weekly trip to the farmers market is a good way of showing my support. And we've tried and found some amazing things we would have otherwise come across.
For example, today we bought some garlic goat's cheese (they also do amazing orange and rosemary or lavender goat's cheese!) and some French pastries.
Now I know that you can get these things in multi-chain supermarkets up and down the country and pay less, but it's not the same. And it gives us something to share together. Most of the stallholders pegged us as a couple quite quickly...though that could have been because we forgot ourselves and David fed me a sample bread once...
And on the topic of markets, there's another coming up that we go to every year: the Bath Christmas Market!
It's absolutely huge, takes place in the shadow of Bath Abbey and the Roman Baths and is a great festive day out. Now I'm aware I'm about to sound like an advert for Bath Tourist Board, but let me assure any cynical minds who may be reading this I'm not on their payroll. But those are a few places that we love going to (especially the Roman Baths!) so figure others may also enjoy them.
For four Christmases we've been trying to get David a Belgian chocolate waffle at the Christmas market and have never succeeded, so fingers crossed for this year! We've decided this time around that it'll be fun to get a group of people together to go, so invites are going out to friends and my mother-in-law so it should be fun!
Future plans aside, this lazy Sunday is going to be finished off with a roast chicken, something that is rapidly becoming my speciality it seems, and a film we can curl up to on the couch, suggestions welcome for the latter!
No comments:
Post a Comment