Yesterday, Sunday, was a day in two halves. The first was a highly successful trip to a new farmer’s market, about 20 minutes walk away, with excellent and varied produce. It will be a regular stop, I think. I had some lovely drinks there as well – it was another hot day: first a watermelon juice, then a sugarcane, and then a chilled shiso tea, magenta and with aniseedy undertones. A highly successful first half of the day, with lots of lovely produce for Monday and Tuesday, the two days of the week we are responsible for cooking dinner.
We took a cab home to drop off our purchases and left almost immediately as we intended to return to the silent cafe with the superb coffee. But on arriving, there was a sign outside saying ‘NO SEATS’. The barrista looked up from inside and didn’t come out, and we didn’t dare to go inside. We hovered for a bit then slunk away. In the square just at the end of the street we saw several others hovering and hoping for a table, but not daring to wait at the entrance.
This park. which I forgot to describe earlier, has some quite excellent statues, including three red robots in a semi-circle staring longingly at a large mosaic of an idealised countryside scene and with square LED smiles flashing on their fronts. We walked around a bit, trying to find a nice cafe, but were foiled at each turn as they were full.
We decided to leave this part of town and go to Flugel, where we’d had excellent cakes some weeks earlier. So we got on the MRT. We arrived there at around 4 to be informed that they were out of cakes, despite having only opened at 2. So the second half of the day was one of failures. This was the second time Mother’s Day had thwarted us – the first was our attempt (before the farmer’s market) to get lunch at a restaurant where every table was occupied by families taking mother out for a nice meal. So another return home, tail between legs, and I made us a quiet dinner at home instead.