Seville season Part 1 - Late night adventures

At last Seville orange season is here and it's time to turn last year's successful experiment with making bitter orange rum into a reality. I've taken the week off work with the plan of making about 40litres of liquid drunken marmalade!

First a ride out on the N26 to New Spitalfields wholesale fruit and veg market with the shopping trolley in tow. To start with a bleak scene round the back of the now closed Olympic Park. Midnight rain at the tipping point of sleet, sodium glow and slick shining black roads. Once through the gates the buzz of the market is felt, and the light of the big warehouses pulls me in. Inside a wonderland of brilliantly coloured and high stacked vegetables and fruit, twirling balletic mini forklift trucks zipping in and out of the aisles, traders and buyers chewing the fat, and down a small side corridor boxes of wonderfulknobbly Sevilles.

We struck an excellent deal and filled the trolley to bursting with bitter and sweet oranges and hauled them off into the wet East London night.