See, last week Olive and I were tooling around Camden Passage, and we came across Mr Christian’s, with its table of breads and baked winnings outside; and the Scandinavian design shop, all clean white and woodgrain inside; and the handsome purple chocolate shop with its chocolate display winking and beckoning from the display window—and there Olive said, “Il-est-là-il-est-là,” and I turned around and the Mr the Chocolatier was taking a break on the vintage shop bench across the five-foot-way. He wasn’t smoking a chocolate cigarette, as you may expect a chocolatier to be doing on his break, but he was talking to a girl, the way you may expect a girl to be doing with a chocolatier on his break.

We were tooling around Camden Passage, see, and I think it was inside, in the gourmet deli cool of Mr Christian’s, when finally, with the fancy fruit juices behind me and the deep dishes of prepared salads in front of me, one more enticing than the other, it was then, finally, I said, “Goddamit, I can’t believe Emily hasn’t told us about this.” “Yeah,” Olive said, and I said, “Shit!” “Yeah!” Olive said, and I said, “Yeah!”

We went ’round the corner and knocked on her door, and she made us tea, and I showed Olive how to drink a Tim Tam, and it made my head feel a little funny, and then the next week she invited us to Saturday brunch in Camden Passage.



Elk in the Woods is forest-shack chic, with vintage mirrors on one wall and milk-glass lamps with nipples, beat-up straight-backed schoolroom chairs, and wallpaper in the back room to make a girl want to buy a house and do it up nice. We were four for the table by the door, half in the sun and half out, and we ordered lattes that melted brown into white, and pineapple cocktails sweet and luscious, and homemade lemonades that were actually Sprites. Emily’s friend Kelly had dark hair, and laughing eyes, and a tattoo between her breasts. At work she monitors the model of a lung. “I need to think about this some more,” I said, “but I foresee I will have many questions.” The sun was streaming in the wide windows, and I was warm on the shoulders.



I ordered the kippers and egg salad, because I remembered that at Tesco you can get a couple of kippers shrink-wrapped with a pat of butter in the shape of a flower; it was a kippers and egg salad “with coriander”, and it turned out the salad was the coriander. Unexpected!, but so tasty, and at no point did it taste like bugs.