Market Atmosphere - Place

A piece of prose written on the theme of Place in class.

The atmosphere at a market during the winter is what you may expect. Frenzy. I walk with my Mother and Father down the narrow gravel path to enter the market. The pirate that is normally there to welcome all the small children has sailed away back to the tropics. The winter cold doesn't like him and the feeling is mutual. 

Mother likes to stop at every stall, much to my Father's displeasure, and look at everything being sold. I think she likes to have an inside debate about whether or not to buy something and to determine whether or not Father would allow to bring the item back into the house. 

Mother starts at a statue stall and I hang back with Father; many years of watching Doctor Who have taught me to be wary of statues of angels and not to go near them. Mother holds up an angel-like statue up to show us and Father shouts:

'No way!' 

Whilst I train my eyes on the statue that Mother is holding. I will not blink. I will not allow her to be taken by this evil angel statue. 

After coming away, empty handed, from the statue stall, Mother drags me over to a massive clothes stall. I give my Father an apologetic look as he mutters:

'Now come on!' 

Mother insists that she buys me some item of clothing. Now, however much I protest and say:

'I will just have a pair of jeans thank you,' 

She insists and tells me to close my eyes and for a split second I am enveloped in darkness with the harsh winter wind biting and chipping away at my face and arms. I shiver. I will surely have a deformed face after this. After that split second of darkness, crude images fill my mind of what my Mother could pick me to buy and worse make me wear. I still remember that pink tutu she bought me in year seven and made me wear it to school on a non-school uniform day. This time, when I shiver, it is not due to the cold. A tap on my shoulder brings me out of my dark reverie and I see Mother holding a bag. So she has already bought it. I look past her at Father and see he is biting an already short nail. Cautiously, I look into the bag ... revolted by what I see I snap the bag shut and push it into Mother's hands. Okay, I like purple ... but purple and LIME? In a swirling pattern? That dress is enough to make me sick and I know it already has a place at the back of my wardrobe. 

"Thanks, it's lovely," I lie.

Mother grins and we head off to the next stall.

Next was the toy stall. We don't spend long at this stall but Mother likes to look at the toys and reminisce on how I used to use my toys as a boomerang. I must say Suzy, my 3ft bear never made that good of a boomerang. However one toy catches my eye. A panda. I love pandas and I used to have a panda toy. You heard that right. The keywords in that sentence was 'used to'. I won't go into the details. Lets just say add a panda, one sister who wants the panda, one sister who wants to keep the panda and a tug of panda war and what it equals to is a gory upsetting tale and one decapitated panda. I still have not forgiven her for her crimes. I snatch up the panda and plunge my hand into my coat pocket where I find a £2 coin. I hand it over and cuddle the panda into my chest. I am it's defender against the bitter wind.