The Cornmarket

On the way to a high Latin mass at The Oratory of Oxford, I saw a great deal more of the route than I did the previous week, when it was pouring down rain and the city was obscured by a combination of grey rain and people’s umbrellas. As we walked down Cornmarket Street, I saw a stand set up there, from which hung silk scarves, pashminas, and hair bands. The table portion of the stand held silver jewellery. I couldn’t see a price for the pashminas, but they were pretty, very colourful and delicate.
On the way back, I saw the stand again, and noted the price, which wasn’t terribly high. I was tempted to purchase one, but instead got lunch at a fast food sandwich place called Pret a Manger and returned to the college.
I did laundry that afternoon. While my clothes spun in the dryer, I wandered into the quad near the “laundrette,” where I found a bouquet of flowers in a garbage can. Fool that I am, I pawed through the bouquet for still-living flowers, but eventually had to admit that they really had all seen much better days. A short while later, I noticed yellow stains on the only clothes I’d saved out from my batches of wash, the ones I was wearing. I’d covered them in pollen. This meant that my only sweatshirt was dirty, and this left me with only one other option for a warm top, and it is not particularly warm. I decided I’d best find something else to keep me warm, and I thought Primark, a British equivalent of Wal-Mart, would be a good place to start.
On the way, I decided I’d check Cornmarket again for the pashminas. It was already five thirty in the afternoon, so I wasn’t certain that the stand would still be set up. It was, though, and I examined the row of pashminas, debating colours.
A little girl darted out from behind the booth, which was evidently run by her family. She had one of the hairbands, made of beads and silk, bound round her forehead, hanging in her eyes. “Is there anything you need help with?” she asked, her accent charmingly British and her voice light, merry, and friendly.
She made up my mind. “I think I’d like this one and this one,” I told her, touching a sky blue and a gold.
“Okay,” she said, her voice still full of childish exuberance. She dropped to her hands and knees and pried open a plastic box beneath the stand, through which she pawed vigorously. She bounced up with a blue square in a plastic pack, which she handed to me. She told me that the gold pashmina on display was the last one, and it could be taken down for me to buy. She sprang up on her tiptoes, reaching high above her head to undo said pashmina. I reached out to help her, but she insisted that she could do it herself, and she did.
I pulled my money from my wallet, and offered it to some of the adults behind the stand. One of them instructed the girl to get a bag for my gold pashmina. She darted beneath the stand again, searching through more boxes until she found a pashmina-appropriate bag. When she re-emerged, she had more hairbands tied around her arms and legs. “Very festive,” I told her. “Thank you,” she replied.
I left the stand very happy, both in the pashminas and the memory of the sprightly little girl-child. In the end, I turned the wrong way, and never made it to Primark, but I was utterly contented with my expedition (and did make it back to the college by dinner).