This guy called John's wife died last week, over a week ago, and he usually brings the vegetables, puts them out, grumbling, but stoic, and leaves us to do the selling, whilst he sits in the van around the back. Last sunday he didn't work because he was grieving, presumably. So someone else brought the vegetables, apparently (I wasn't there). This week when I saw him he was there, the boxes were all out by time I arrived at 9am, and I said, 'y'allrigh?', knowing that he probably wasn't, and he said that his missus had passed away, and it had hit him like an earthquake. I asked if it was sudden, knowing already that it hadn't been, and he said nahh, but still, it hits you like an earthquake, and I was like yeah, yeah, of course, oh man.
I looked at the veg and lots of it was kind of rotting. The red cabbage was bruised to sludge in some places, and I had to take off layer upon layer of wrinkled, clammy skins that were darker than the customers would've been into. The flowering sprouts were withering, rather than exploding out of themselves and the swiss chard was broken. The acorn squashes had hidden bruises that only hurt when you picked them up and your fingers gently invaded their insides in a way that was embarrassing. John hadn't disturbed the veg for the past week whilst he'd been arranging his wife's funeral, there'd be hundreds at the funeral he said as she had been popular, but everything was rotting like this.