New Life

We tend to do our weekly shopping at Brixton markets. It's just so much more fun than the supermarket (and the kids love to go to Rosie's cafe for a hot chocolate afterwards as a treat http://www.rosiesdelicafe.com/about.html).

One of our favourite shops is Nour. It's a strange shop, stacked floor to ceiling with stuff: sacks of rice, bags of chickpeas, every spice you can think of and many you can't. There are huge bunches of parsley and mint and coriander (perfect for tickling little boys), fruits and veg dependent on the season and about 200 different chilli sauces. Nour is always full of customers so with two children, a scooter & a bike and my massive granny shopping trolley it can be hard to get round.

We were in there other day and the children wandered off, talking to the many staff I assumed. They were quiet which always makes me suspicious; generally they are up to mischief of some sort or another*. Today however there was no mischief, just kittens. Tiny, really tiny, bundles of fluff: white, black, grey, a spoldge of orange; four teeny scatchy, sniffy pink noses; a muddle of whiskers; all cuddled up together in cardboard box. The children were captivated; tentatively touching and stroking, as gentle as only a young child with a small animal can be.

New life: a miracle always, full of promise and excitement certainly. And also, the tenderness my normally rowdy, boisterous children showed with these kittens was a pure and instinctive display of the human desire to protect and nuture. A beautiful moment that left me silent too.

Only the promise of asking Daddy if we could take one home eventually lured them away. (We did ask, he said no!).

*silent mischief has included: feeding all the fishfood to the fish, turning the bath into a swimming pool and flooding the bathroom (the dining room ceiling still bears the brown stains where the water dripped through) and locking themselves in a cupboard!