The market was located in the parking lot of a community centre; it was close to the middle of town and across the street from a cinema / bowling alley. When it was raining, if my mother got too antsy about me getting wet she would often buy me a ticket to see whatever was showing and go do the shopping, waiting for me by the entrance as the movie finished. When it wasn’t raining or the only things showing were too violent for me, I was allowed to walk with my mum through the market, to me at the time it was massive. Each stall consisted of four towering metal poles holding a tarpaulin above a table, stocked to the brim with exotic fruits, vegetables and nuts. Mostly it was stuff you can’t get here in the UK; bitter melons, drumsticks, Chinese cabbage and lotus root (which I hated the look of), to name a few.
Stockpiles of bananas or sugar-apples were held in plastic milk crates, the colours often clashing with each other and the tarpaulin above. Meanwhile a hoard of nuts would be lying underneath certain tables. You’d ask for a certain prices worth and they’d measure it out for you. If you wanted meat or fish you’d have to travel to the centre of the market, as there was a tent set up for holding the generators vendors with freezer or fridge units would bring. My favourite stall was near the middle where the meat was kept; it was uncle Fuad’s stall. He sold perangs to farmers, and was a close family friend. Sometimes I would sit behind his stall whilst my mum went off into the market, and he’d tell me stories of when he was in the army or chuckle as I tried my hardest to husk a coconut with my bare hands.
My favourite fruit, which we would always get if I went, was a bunch of rambutan. Rambutans come from the same family as lychees do, so they are very similar. The best way I can describe their outsides is as a hairy lychee with splashes of yellow mixed into the red. The insides are similar too, a milky-white pearl of flesh held within an easily peel able skin. Rambutans are much less sweet, and they lack the watery texture the lychee has. Its seed is coarse and rough with a consistency reminiscent to a trees bark, so it’s important you either remove it or eat around it. My mother on the other hand would always get a bag-full of mangoes, she would use them to make chutney throughout the week which she would try desperately to have me sample. I hated, and still do hate mangoes though, so that never happened. We would always pick up a dragon fruit for my dad too. The insides of which always reminded me of chocolate chip ice-cream, white and soft with small black seeds dotted throughout.
We would take the same route every time we went to the market. We’d move around the market as if it were a spiral staircase, moving inward gradually as we bought from as many stalls as possible. We’d find uncle Fuad talking with the fishmongers near the middle, and he’d always hand me a coconut that he had saved for me. He would have cut into it earlier and drank the sweet nectar, but keep the flesh handy for whenever I came around. My mother would then with great disgust (she is a devout vegetarian), acquire some mince for my dad to cook with. He took control of the kitchen every Friday so my mother could go and play bridge with her friends at the Boat-Club. Then we’d head to the Blender-Man’s stall.
The Blender-Man’s stall was unique; it was different to the rest of the market. One could be forgiven for thinking it wasn’t a part of the market in the first place as it was near the entrance of the community centre and not in the parking lot itself. Unlike the other stalls the Blender-Man had a tent, it had a bead door that would chatter in the wind, and I would often play with it before we entered. The tent was always the same whilst the market stalls changed over time, some stalls would buy a scale as the years went by to measure fruit, some incorporated ice-boxes to keep their fruit fresh, some even bought fans that they would place on the table, its cable jacked into a neighbours freezer unit. There was always a table in the middle with a blender atop it, a very small one, maybe the size of a bedside counter. Then there was a freezer unit in front of this table, its glass cover revealing a huge assortment of different ice-creams within. Finally there was a chair behind the table.
We’d enter the tent and he’d stand up from his chair, arms akimbo and look expectantly at us. You’d hand the man a bag of fruit you bought at the market, pay him two dollars and say if you wanted syrup or not. He’d take the fruit and prepare it next to the blender, he’d take out the rambutan seeds, or skin the mangoes, or husk the coconuts, and then he would chuck it all into the blender. He’d add some ice, milk and syrup if you asked for it and blend it for a minute, he’d stop the blender and look at you again, you then had to pick an ice-cream from the freezer unit and he’d scoop it up and put it into the blender. The Blender-Man would pour the contents into a bag, hand you a straw and sit back down, waiting for the next customer. He would put it into a bottle or cup, but only if you brought one with you, otherwise it was a plastic bag. I can say with a clear conscience it is the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted, the flavours of fruit and ice-cream melded perfectly together.
Two years ago I returned to Brunei, my dad’s contract with Shell there was running out, and I was about to head off to university, so I knew it might be the last time I would be there. My mum had changed her market days to Thursdays, but I asked if we could go on Wednesday so we did. We arrived and I followed her around like I used to do, if she strayed from the path we used to take then I subtlety nudged her in the right direction to make sure the illusion wasn’t broken. I was a kid again, back home away from the cold wet UK, without having to worry about my grades, or getting a job or a steadily dwindling love life. We met uncle Fuad again and talked for what seemed like hours, he asked about my A-levels and IGCSEs, I asked him about the stories he used to tell me from the army. As we began to leave he passed me perang, he said he was sorry he didn’t have a coconut for me and he hoped this would make us even, I still have the knife in my drawer in Scotland, much to my parents displeasure. Finally, once the shopping was done my mother headed for the car and I asked if we could see the Blender-Man. She said he wasn’t there, he had stopped showing up the same month I had left for Scotland. So we got in the car and headed home, mum asked me if I wanted to stop at Jollibee and get a milkshake, I didn’t.
That night, I watched the Simpsons on Star-World with my father, a lychee smoothie in my hands. It tasted awful, the syrup made it too sweet, I had put in too much milk. It was naught but a grim slimy and sugary paste and when I finished my cup I went back into the kitchen to see if there was any more left in the blender.
