Neither of us are morning people. Why, then did I set an alarm for 0630 on a Saturday? And why did we actually get up? I blame Melbourne. See, Melbourne has the world’s best market. We had heard that Brisbane had a similar feature. Since good markets open early, and the best stuff goes fast, the alarm woke us at 0630. At 0730 we were browsing. By 0732 we had preserved our marriage by acquiring a strong flat white with sugar. By 0800 we had learned four important things: (a) Produce is excellent, fresh and expensive. (b) You can get sunburn before decent people are awake. (c) Chilli plants! Two dollars! (d) It appears to be legal to sell these:
Ostrich Tendons!
At least one of my sisters will find this intriguing.
Maybe I should say something reasonable about how a month ago the entire market was under three meters of floodwater, and haven’t they made an amazing recovery and so on. But I shan’t. Getting up at 0630 on a Saturday is not conducive to ‘reasonable.’
After a long, lazy soak in the pool, we were munching breakfast before ten. By then, we were feeling that superior sense of self-righteous virtue common to all early risers. “See, we’ve already done half a day’s work!”. “Well done,” say the noontime risers. “All we’ve done is snoozed for four hours while you worked. Pass the bacon.”
So we went to Manly.