On Saturday morning, after an early morning trip to the Edinburgh Fruit Market, Andy, the organiser of the Edinburgh Food Festival and I set up a fruit and veg stall near Bristo Square. It was set up like a still life painting - fresh corn cobs, crisp kernels in relatively strict formation, staring soldier-like, defiant from between the torn-back leaves of husks; ripe passion fruit - each with a unique texture of skin - some pitted, one which looked like it had warts, others smooth - all hard, the outer casing protecting and hiding the soft juicy pulp and seeds within; clusters of grapes - pale green and blushed burgundy laid out, some in bunches, others singly like scattered jewels on a richly-patterned cloth. There were no prices on display - but the products were for sale and it was up to customers to determine the value of the individual items they wanted to buy for themselves.

Questions which we challenged people with were,

'Would Cezanne have painted a still-life of apples set out as they would be in a supermarket display today? And if not, why not?'
'What makes the essence of appleness? And where does it reside?'
'Which would you value most highly; A single ripe, green grape; a red-hot chilli or a large, fresh, orange carrot?'

The response from passers by was fascinating - red chillies brought out lots of comments, as did the rather large carrots and ripe bananas we had on display. Most found it refreshing, if hard at first, not to set values on the basis of supermarket prices, but to value a single piece of fruit or veg as an object in its own right. We had some great conversations - and many were memorable, but two incidents stand out: a young girl who was on a student budget of £10.00 a day bought a plum for 25p - because she thought it was beautiful. She passed by the stall later and drew the plum out of her pocket, polished to a gleaming shine and smelt it - again, just for the sheer pleasure of it, as she had been doing at intervals since she'd bought it. The other was one of the chilli incidents which inspired the poems below:

For many, perhaps sadly, it was a very different experience of shopping for food.

It made me wonder about the amount of respect we have for the basic, simple things around us and inspired this