Saturday, December 05, 2009

Portobello

How exciting! After weeks of waking at 5.30, a habit that I developed before moving due to having to get up to pack boxes before work, I overslept this morning and I've had a fantastically relaxed day.
I went to Portobello Road Market by a roundabout route after reading the Saturday papers, and wandered round the stalls looking for Christmas presents. I noticed a couple of stalls with Japanese designers who had made lovely neat little tweed dresses and coats out of different colours and designs of tweed. I tried a dress on but almost got stuck in it, so gave it a miss. There were some lovely vintage Nordic sweaters (quite literally perhaps: they are often rather stinky), and lots of checky shirts (they must be in fashion). I could have spent a fortune on junky jewellery and foetid but exciting shoes. There were lots of nice smells floating about  making an aromatic cocktail- mulled wine and Thai noodles! And music- reggae from one stall fused into jazz from another, a stall where a Rasta kept time with percussion as a saxophone melody snaked through the crowds.
It's the best market in town, partly because it quite obviously hasn't changed that much since the Sixties: some stallholders perched on their stools looked as though they hadn't moved since then, merely getting older gradually and still wearing their Sixties finery and make-up. Their particular stalls sell Indian smocks, perhaps, or Tibetan jewellery, or perhaps vintage handbags from the Sixties that have sat there with them all this time.

On the way back I was struck by this jolly rockabilly Santa whose costume didn't even bother to try to look like a disguise! Perfect for a silly Saturday afternoon.
(Zoot, I hope your cat is OK)

2 comments:

Phil said...

I'm hoping he's going to be OK, but unfortunately he's still in a cat hospital recovering, after a huge tumor was removed. It's cost us an absolute fortune, which we don't have so we're spending the money that should be sending the kids to college. I'm going to go and visit him again today, after he's had a blood transfusion!
Thanks for the thought, I hope you are doing OK.

Phil said...

OK, I brought him home for a few days, but he didn't make it. I'll miss him; handsome and friendly ginger tom.
xx