Twix

Mr and Mrs Cole have returned from London Town. Good Lord, we walked miles and my fragile and ageing limbs are aching from the effort. It was a fine weekend though and we managed to pack a good deal in.

On the Saturday we travelled to Notting Hill where we browsed in the shops and perambulated down the busy streets where the Portabello Road Market makes its bustling home. The experience was spoilt after witnessing one the most vicious and vivid fist fights I’ve ever come across. A nasty little incident. The rest of daytime Saturday was spent at the Victoria and Albert Museum and on the splendid Tottenham Court Road where an hour was spent in the Fopp Megastore (without buying anything apart from an invigorating cup of tea and one of those pleasing Twix chocolate/caramel/biscuit bars) and in one or two of the many electrical retail emporia that permeate the area where I managed to purchase the very headphones (they are smashing) I mentioned in my last posting. Saturday evening saw us sauntering to the Haymarket Theatre to attend Pinter’s People, a veritable curate’s egg of a production and from there to a packed Chinatown where New Year was being celebrated with no little flamboyance. We ate there.

Sunday was spent shopping. The Brick Lane and Spitalfields markets are full of interesting and varied stalls. I picked up a vibrant and exotic lime green shirt that I can imagine wearing slightly self-consciously to a concert party one evening and a copy of Son by Toiling Midgets for a pound piece. The shirt cost three pound pieces. Brick Lane market is very ‘East End’ and full of rather interesting characters; Spitalfields is more upmarket, more expensive but still full of fascinating wares. They complement each other well. We also sneaked to the Tate Modern and, from there, to Oxford Street for a bit more retail therapy. We departed for the west of England then.

I typed the above while listening to Funeral by Arcade Fire.