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One Saturday morning, I accompanied my mum to the local market for our weekly produce shopping. Mum was still looking around when I offered to take the shopping back to the car, which was packed into a small rolling cart. It resembled a Mary Poppins bag – rather compact, but it was surprising how much you could fit inside. Or so we thought.

With the trolley heaving under the weight of an already full load of groceries, my mum rested a box of honeydew melons on top. She warned me to be cautious taking it back to the car.

All was going well as I made my way through the throngs of shoppers and out of the market. But as I was navigating the hectic main crossing into the market, the trolley became lodged on the traffic island in the middle of the road, and the box of melons fell to the pavement. They scattered, spectacularly rolling out towards passersby and waiting cars.

As the pedestrian signal changed from go to red, I was shocked, mouth agape, trying to figure out how I was going to retrieve the melons rolling in multiple directions.

Out of nowhere, a band of three or four elderly ladies sprang to my rescue. White hair, head scarves and one with a cane – they looked like they had stepped out of the same nesting doll. They weren’t deterred by the cars inching their way towards us. Utterly fearless, they just raised their hands to stop the traffic, in both directions. They collected all the melons for me, retrieving a single one, as I fixed the box to contain them.

I thanked them and they didn’t say a word, just grinned and waved me goodbye. I didn’t eat the melons – I was never a real fan of honeydew – but I share this anecdote all the time because I love it so much.

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