Less Penance As Relief

We go to Market on a Sunday, a ritual
endured with make-believe allusions
‘tho less penance as relief from griping
boredom – the sentence which assails
our working week. Our modest stall is
just a booth selling avocados, which we
grow, a sideshow amongst more exotic
wares. Our customers are more or less
the same as customers everywhere; a
river of humanity which ebbs and flows
in focussed mien, whose role we say is
to entertain – although we try to laugh
with as much as at them so they know
that we enjoy their company. Few see
it as affectedness or selfish disrespect,
laugh, relaxed by humour dispensed as
freely as the largess of sensibly priced
first-class avocados. They ask, so why
don’t we see these in a supermarket?
I don’t know, my best guess, perhaps,
is there the humour isn’t free...
© 4 November 2007, I. D. Carswell