Best and fairest in life's egg and spoon race
They say victory belongs to the most tenacious but are we missing a prize if we overlook non-scale victories?
Every week, except for the flood times, the farmer sets up his stall beside the village hall. By 6.30 a.m I am there. If I reach the stall later, even by 6.40 a.m, I may be too late, and I’m not the only one on this quest. Others will walk through the village along the river or drive from the south. For a long time my closest competitor was the tall bearded man who drives a red SUV and wears cycle shorts in all weather. I don’t know his name, circumstances, or where he lives and I suspect he knows nothing about me. We nod and mumble hello.
The egg race is never spoken of or announced.
‘Victory belongs to the most tenacious,’ La victoire appartient au plus opiniâtre, say the signs on either side of Courte Philippe Chatrier at Roland Garros in Paris.
For a long while I’ve believed I am the most tenacious in the egg race.
Why an egg race? I can hear you say it, that supermarkets carry eggs. Yes they do, free range eggs and some fancy eggs. And cage eggs. When I think of cage eggs I think of breakfast in a Kyoto youth hostel in June 1985 when a young man held up a cracked egg with an insipid yolk and said ‘Here we have an egg from chicken who never sees sun’.
Yes supermarket eggs are always an option - all of regulation size.
At the farmer’s stall I fill my recycled cartons with eggs of varying sizes, with shells in assorted hues of brown, white, duck egg blue and grey, placed in a hand-made basket lined with a floral cloth. The date of laying is marked in pencil on each egg above a three-stroke smiley =) face. When I crack the eggs, the yolks will be deep orange, and I may find a double-yolk. This never happens in the supermarket. For a double yolk egg to slip through there is a rebellion.
In the supermarket everything must comply to routine sizes and shapes, colour and glossiness. Carrots must comply.
In the supermarket we never see carrots entwined in embrace in their own version of Gustav Klimt’s entwined couple in The Kiss.
Two incidents sparked the egg race.
The first a couple of years ago when I arrived to find the red SUV man already loading eggs into his carton. I hovered nearby feigning focus on cherry tomatoes. When the tomato harvest is small, there’s race for them too. Orange, yellow, ruby, and tomato red, they’ve a tang that pops and tingles in your mouth. As SUV man selects his eggs starting with the largest, I add the tomatoes to my cardboard tray, masking my agitation - easier when we had to wear masks. When will he stop? When he stops, only four eggs remain. Could have shared mate, I want to say.
The second incident occurred as I arrived at 6.42 a.m to find SUV man nodding hello as he carried his haul of produce to his car. I nod and as soon as I’ve passed him scamper onto the verandah. No eggs were left. I knew then I needed to raise my game, fine tune my race prep. I needed to be there by 6.30 a.m, or before.
I’ve kept to the same prep ever since, even though supply issues eased when the farmer acquired new chooks [Australian/British for hens]. Though it ebbs when the farmer’s wife and daughter are running simultaneous market stalls.
Through it all the price of eggs has remained unchanged.
I still arrive by 6.30 am, even though the stall’s opening times are always listed as 7 a.m. When I tell a friend this she says, ‘Oh no, Don’t say you go early.’
‘Why? what’s wrong with that?’
‘I used to run a stall,’ she says. ‘Early-comers are the worst, I hate them.’
The farmer doesn’t mind, I say.
‘That’s what you think. Early-comers are a pain, wanting to buy things when you’re still trying to set up.’
My mind leaps back to the mid 90s to that boot fair in Lewisham, London, in the damp multi-storey car park with gales running though on five levels, and I can understand her vehemence. I’ve never forgotten the other sellers circling my car when I was a boot sale virgin, peering through the windows, buzzing about like flies at a bush picnic, before I could even park.
‘I’m not like that,’ I say. ‘I don’t interfere with his setting up, I know all the prices.’ Later I wish I told my friend that the farmer rounds his prices down for me or throws in something for nothing. And to add that the stall is not like a supermarket with automated just-in-time delivery. The sooner he sells out, the sooner the farmer packs up and heads home.'
Justification complete. Actually, not quite.
I also remember the farmer’s late mum, and the scores of hours I spent cooking under her instruction in high school home economics class. Keeping the classroom toasty warm so the yeast would do its magic on proving our hot cross buns, while we slipped out to run the cross-country race and came back hot and sweaty. We used recipes from The Commonsense Cookery Book compiled by the N.S.W. Public School Cookery Teachers' Association. My group cottoned on to decorating our table beautifully each week with our mothers’ best tablecloths to garner extra marks for presentation.
The first dish we ever cooked in that class - eggs. Swiss eggs.
Justification complete.
This week, arriving at my customary time, there’s no red SUV but hello, there’s other cars. Several customers are already mid-shop, and the farmer is creasing his brow as he adds up a purchase in his head. I don’t see eggs in that woman’s selection and smile at her.
I hotfoot my way onto the verandah. Already I can see the floral basket lining and a sparse collection of eggs. I make haste to fill my recycled carton.
I hear movement and a voice behind me.
‘Eggs,’ says the voice. Here is a new entrant to the race.
I turn. A dad is holding a small child by her hand, and his look says he wants me to evaporate.
There’ll be plenty left, I say. He does not know his luck because this week I need only a dozen rather than the 18 I often buy. Is he under firm instructions to return home with eggs for their breakfast? I think I hear him say ‘leave some for others’ but my imagination sometimes fills in the blanks in my hearing.
I had the sharing debate with myself long ago. The guilt-ridden self argued that 18 eggs are too many. The self-focused self said, ‘Get real, would you find eggs left in the basket if you arrived later? Why worry about people still in their beds while you've headed out before first light? That’s a real effort you make.’
But shhhh! Don’t tell a soul I what I am about to say. The drive is a delight, the golden light, the luminous clouds, and the misty view across the river to the mountains, spirit-lifting, mind-altering every time except if raining, and even then I will find a redeeming joy.
‘Victory belongs to the most tenacious.’
It was me but now with the egg basket depleted again, could it be that red SUV man or persons unknown are the most tenacious? Is red SUV man pulling on his cycle shorts in darkest hour before the dawn to arrive even earlier than me? So early that I never see him? Do I need to raise the stakes and go earlier?
At what cost? Am I prepared to forgo the pre-dawn and sunrise to win the egg race?
I consider it and say no. Being runner-up or not placing at all can still be a win, if you frame it so, if it gives you something that lifts you. It’s a choice. Like the friend who was close to earning a first class degree, but accepted they would not because they didn’t want to miss every party.
If I forgo the golden light of sunrise, I might reach the eggs first but lose something not conventionally measured. In weight loss circles, the recognition of NSVs, non-scale victories is encouraged. The scales may not have shifted but you can fit into your jeans again or you’ve got more energy, or you simply feel better.
For me seeing the golden light, looking at something outside of my goals and material needs, is a prize. Seeing the shimmering river and the pink sky gives me a bright start snd transforms me. Yes the farmer’s eggs are best but if I come last in the egg race, I can go to the store and fetch eggs laid by chooks that see at least some sun.
Do tell in the comments about a non-scale victory of your own?
I loved this so much Marian. I pictured every person, every moment.