Meandering

I was going to take you on a trip in photographs down Portobello Road; I might upload some tomorrow, perhaps.
I went round to visit Gina; she's busy editing lots of footage for the Raincoats film that's going to be shown at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival later this month. I haven't seen her for ages and she'd called two weeks ago to see if I wanted to go ice-skating (we used to do that together for a while), but it was McDad's funeral that day.
We drank coffee and had a micro-chat, and her daughter, who is nine, played guitar for us. I showed her daughter a new chord, A minor seventh, and then how to play the Three Little Fishes song, which she has always absolutely loved. That meant another new chord, B seventh. And then I showed her how to finger-pick using just her thumb and index finger, and she picked (ha ha) it up quite quickly.
Time to head off down posh Westbourne Grove, where women have flawless skin and Diptyque candles in their homes.
Portobello was packed with tourists- it was the sun wot brought them out- and I photographed the stacks, rows and piles of everything for sale. It was fun to browse; there was nothing I particularly wanted to buy, although there was a workwear stall that had a lot of interesting navy blue clothes and some very old-fashioned 1940s-looking vests in thick cream coloured cotton. I bought a huge shiny yellow pepper, a thick bunch of celery and a net with gigantic bulbs of garlic in it after waiting in a queue at a vegetable stall behind a man who bought ten pounds of onions which bounced all over the street when the stallholder wasn't paying attentione .
A songwriting student from a couple of years ago was standing on the corner, upset after being sacked from her job; she had been saving up to go to New York to do work experience with a soundtrack composer.
Some ladies in the park had consoled her, and she showed me pictures on her phone of a video she has been making to go with one of her songs. What an enterprising girl! We wandered up to the tube station and she told me all about her plans. Somehow, I believe she will be all right and will have a very interesting life. Apparently, Basement Jaxx had been in the University looking for new vocalists and her tutor, who had arranged the visit, hadn't told her about it. She was upset about that as well, but I suggested she should contact them, tell them what happened, and see if they will audition her anyway. I hope she does!
As I meandered along, I heard a taxi parp its horn. It was Martin, the taxi driver friend who kindly read my book to tell me if it was readable or not (you know they have big hippocampuses, cab drivers!). We said a London Hello (65 seconds) before he drove off to take tourists to Tower Bridge or whatever.
It has been a nice day with random social happenings. I bought some ink at the art shop when I got home and spent the evening drawing a poster for Martin Stephenson's night on the Little Boat in Hartlepool. I've not done any serious drawing since I stopped doing posters for Songbird, and I'd almost forgotten the joys of dipping the paintbrush into my tea by accident and (artists secret!) holding the picture up in front of the mirror so I can look at it as though someone else has drawn it.