I took a gander down to the Ridley Road market, because it has always looked like the kind of place where a girl can get a deal. A pound for a crate of mangoes, someone told me once, though I wondered, later, what I would do if ever such a proposition came my way. How many mangoes does a crate make? And what is a girl to do with such wealth? Mango bellinis, one assumes, mango jam, mango cake. Mango curry? Mango salsa? Mango peeled and eaten over the sink, juices running down your arm?



The fruit sellers and veg sellers were at it Wednesday afternoon, calling “darlin” and “sweetheart” and “luv”. The egg sellers and cloth sellers and pot sellers and sock sellers were at it, too. The fish sellers were quiet. The stalls lined both sides of a dirty street, and jewelled globe grapes and green melons and flame-coloured peppers burst into the day. Fat oranges were fat and orange as if a kid had come round and drawn them in the morning. (The mangoes were two for a pound.) (No deal.)



Under a sign saying “African Caribbean Nigerian Specialities” I paused by a man transferring large shells from a bucket to a cardboard box on his display. “You know what it is?” a passing mother said to her child. “Snails!” she said, and my toes curled. They walked on, this woman in her print dress and her wide-eyed son, but I couldn’t move. The man was holding a snail in each of his palms, and he turned to me. “You like?” “Um,” I said, and I couldn’t move, and the giant snails in their shells were each larger than my fist. They were as large as my two fists put together, maybe, though probably larger still. They were at least as large as the churning in my stomach. The man was transferring the shells from the bucket to the cardboard box, he’d toss one shell on top of the pile, and then another, and another, and each time the shells moved and adjusted themselves unaided I wanted to scream. “Where do you find these?” I said, instead of screaming. “The bush,” he said, and still he moved the snails one by one. Look up insouciance in the dictionary and you see a picture of a man with giant snails in his hands. “How do you cook them?” I said, the scream was within me, and he said, “Like meat. With spices. You stew, add spices.” “You cook them with the shell on?” I said, and it was a twisted curiosity that kept me rooted. “No,” he said, “shell off.” I could feel the snails crawling up my leg, I could feel their giant sluggish sluggy slug slug slugging up my leg, and all around me that heavy odour of dried fish, of dried salted fish and their dried, salted fish eyes. “You like?” the man said again, and I felt I had to flee. “I think,” I said, “I’mnotquitereadyforthisyetthankyou!”

Down by the veg man behind the hand-tied bundles of herbs, nothing was moving in a slug-like manner. He sold me some leeks with a wink and a smile.