Friday 14 August 2009

Parcel Shelf

As today is a second Friday (in the sense of "every second Friday") and the day after the fortnightly ship arrives, we went over to Santa Cruz as the shops will have been re-stocked.

We're parking outside Supermercado Braga when Carol says "Don't park here" and I ask why not. "Because it's in the shade." Gah! I'd forgotten that I'm not driving a car but a moving tomato drier. Once re-parked in the sun, I took this picture:-

You have to look closely to see the tomatoes sun-drying on the back parcel shelf (is that the right word? Cars in the 60s had "parcel shelves" although they were usually in the front as hatchbacks hadn't been invented yet. You kept your AA Book of British Birds there (the AA Book simpliciter was in the glove box above) along with a forgotten packet of fruit polos which had rolled into a corner and decayed into an irremoveable glutinous glob (which, in fact, Ford made standard on the Mark 2 Cortina). You had to be jolly careful that the AA BoBB didn't come into contact with it or else the back cover and a goodly chunk of "Fresh Water Margins and Marshes" would be rent asunder and sucked into the maw of the polo blob never to be seen again if the BoBB ever had to be deployed in a hurry to identify a passing bar tailed godwit ...

But I digress. Where was I? Oh yes - the photo of the SDTs is rather indistinct because just at that moment the sun went behind a cloud. But as there was an element of embarrassment about (a) being seen in public with trays of SDTs on one's parcel shelf; and (b) taking photos of them, we didn't tarry ...

2 comments:

Kathie said...

While cats generally have a reputation for disliking to ride in motor vehicles, our late and highly personable Gomez -- who fancied himself a small human in a plush black fur coat -- loved to sleep on the back window shelf of our car whenever we took him anywhere (usually just to/from checkups at the vet). Other drivers, who could scarcely believe their eyes, would tail-gate us just to catch a closer look!

Kathie said...

Have missed your posts this past week, hope you're just keeping happily busy. Are the tomatoes finished drying yet?

I'll be emailing my latest book manuscript to the publisher for layout this weekend -- hooray! -- although that means I'll soon be having galleys to correct (surely one of the most tedious jobs known to humankind).