Let’s get ready to Rum Ball!

It is definitely almost Spring. I know this for two reasons. Firstly, I heard bird song as I marched to work down the tree lined avenues of my new borough this morning; secondly, I endured the annual homecoming that is Mother’s Day this weekend.

This time of year offers up two palpable signals of the onset of warmer and frankly kinder months. Creme Eggs are the first, their daily consumption is essential until their removal from shop shelves in turn signals the start of the bikini diet. The second sign is Mother’s Day, which lands like a rose scented atom bomb to remind you how horribly negligent you are as offspring.

This year reminded me a little of playschool, when making a basket out of a yogurt pot and string and stuffing it with a delightful concoction of fluff, copydex and chocolate coated rice crispies meant mother never went without a gift.  Similarly, this year I got creative and baked a Carrot Cake while my little sister rustled up an enormous roast dinner. Of course, there were also cards, flowers and an atmosphere laced with sibling rivalry to keep things traditional.

On Saturday however, before the death grip of familial obligation had completely taken hold, I made the most of the early spring weather by having a relaxed saunter round town. I even decided to take some pictures of the parts of Cambridge that, though probably obvious, encapsulate the town for me.

The market features quite highly, I begun by purposefully seeking out a stall that I was sure had sold my brother his enviably snug and chunky woollen mittens last year. I hoped I might snaffle a pair before mitten season became flip flop season and my chance was lost for another year. I was too late for the mittens but I was rather drawn in to everything else on offer.

Pete the record stallholder was filling his trading corner with deeply satisfying and summery reggae, while nearby freshly squeezed juices and smoothies were touted to over zealous shoppers deluded into already outing the summer wardrobe despite the distinct chill in the air. I was drawn particularly toward the book stalls at first, and then out to the periphery of the rows of striped outlets, and to the sweet stall opposite Don Pasquale, which has been there every Saturday for as long as I can remember.

As a kid Saturdays were almost always wiled away in Cambridge town centre. We would go to the old Heffers on Sidney Street and try my dads patience to its absolute limits by painstakingly choosing new stickers for our sticker collections; fluffys, shineys, and pearlys being the most precious of them all. Then we would have some lunch, a pizza outside Don Pasquale or a huge slab of lasagne at Clowns. Then back into town. Laden with bags, we’d scurry across Christ’s Piece, through Bradwell Court and back into the town centre via Lion Yard with its aesthetically disturbing big red lion on a giant plinth outside the library.

Then out of the shopping centre and into Petty Cury, my sister and I would pick up pace now, as we skipped round the edge of the busy market to the delicious, bountiful and ever familiar sweet stall. A jovial young man was always there to sling a bag of Rum Balls at me and a bag of sticky red laces at my little sister, and with that; my Dad would call time on our outing and we would head back to the car with all our goodies.

The sweet stall hasn’t changed at all to this day, except there stands a slightly portlier jovial young man today than there was then, and I’m sure there used to be more Rum Balls in those little bags?