Exploring
This weekend was, first and foremost, an exercise in annoyance as I don’t have a working digital camera over here; much of what I have to report would have made this blog (which I know is a bit under-illustrated these days) a lot more interesting to look at.
Firstly, on Friday, I went to the V&A Village Fete, an alternative take on the traditional charity fundraiser with stalls run by local artists and artsy folk, amongst them Tatty Devine and Rob Ryan, where instead of winning nothing but glory, participants could take home something desirable instead. As I say, it’s a pity I didn’t have a camera for this as it was the sheer spectacle of it that was most entertaining, so it’s lucky Wee Birdy extensively photographed it on my behalf.
On Saturday I had some rather lovely ice-cream courtesy of Scoop in Covent Garden, because summer officially came to London this weekend (BBC Weather centre says we might reach 30 degrees Celsius today). Later that day I finally got myself to Loop, a shop that’s been top of my list of places to visit for, oh, two months. I went with no intention to buy a thing, partly because it’s not really knitting weather at the moment, partly because I don’t have anything I need to knit at the moment and partly because I don’t have the wherewithal to pay for expensive wool. It was just as well that I had made this decision, then, as the shop would otherwise have wiped me out completely, at least if I had been able to decide where to begin: it is one of the prettiest shops I’ve ever seen with a very good selection of stock and some fantastic sample pieces on display. It is bigger than I was expecting it to be – normally when shops over here are described as “small”, they’re about as big as a car boot – and the cashier was perfectly pleasant to chat to. This is in sharp contrast to my local wool shop at home, which is not local at all, is quite unprepossessing as a building and utterly unprepossessing in its staff. I am jealous of Londoners who can come here all the time.
On Sunday I spent part of the afternoon wandering round Columbia Road Market, which was absolutely delightful. It’s a road in a spruced-up bit of East London with a magnificent flower market every Sunday, full of colours and smells and the deafening cries of real-life Del-Boys trying to outdo each other. I had met my friend E for lunch and we got to the market at around half two, which was just the time that the traders were trying to sell off stock, and I got a good big bunch of something or other for a fiver. The stalls take over the middle of the road while the actual buildings flanking them either side are occupied by a marvellous collection of all kinds of everything: a perplexing map shop, a buzzing and inviting-looking pub, numerous home and garden shops, Rob Ryan’s new real-life base Ryantown and a very enticing little cupcake-and-tea shop called Treacle, selling lots of other pretty paper and ceramic goods (it reminded me very much of the Primrose Bakery, a place I haunted when I was staying in Primrose Hill). I am coming to the conclusion that London, or at least the bits of it that I’m most interested in, only really come to life on Sundays – Columbia Road is quite a different place during the week without the stalls and with most of the pretty little shops also shut up; Cheshire St is fascinating on a Sunday afternoon and absolutely dead at eleven on a Saturday morning. This is completely different to my expectations, in which all Sundays are, if not silent and grey, at least quiet and relaxing. Not so here.
Tonight I’ll be at this. I have to say my stance is sceptical at best, but a fair and balanced report will follow in due course.
