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)