I’d wanted to go to Bath, to see the pretty Pulteney Bridge, to flounce around pretending I was checking in for a day at the thermal spas, to maybe have tea and some cake at the fancy Pump Rooms, but the National Rail man behind the glass window wanted forty-seven pounds for a day return ticket. Forty-seven pounds for a whimsy! I took the Circle line instead (£1.50) to Portobello Road and the sun coming out on George Orwell’s old house.



The Portobello markets on a not-Saturday are a different beast from the weekend crush – a gentler beast, a less shouty beast, a nicer-smelling beast. The red antique shop on the corner is ripe for discovery and adventure, with vintage bicycles hanging from the ceiling and seamstresses’ models at attention in stripes and plaid, with sailboats and queens, with pharmacists’ bottles labelled Cough & Cold Mixture, with old delivery crates so polished with age their wooden splinters have been worn down into the handsome sheen.



Up and down and up the street, in piles and rows and bundles and stacks, on shelves and hooks and stools and makeshift tables – in gorgeous battered suitcases, even: delicate, engraved fish knives with creamy bone handles; silver tea trays and silver teapots; great gold mirrors; wooden galley trays from print shops long gone; jewels enough for many a magpie’s eye; torn hardbacks of England’s Botanists and England’s Rebels and England’s Wildlife. (There were hot Nutella crêpes as well.)



I sat outside at Gail’s for an eggplant-feta bureka and the smiley manager man said, “Shopping today?” “Oh, no,” I said, “no-no-no, after this bureka my wallet’s staying in my bag.” I’d forgotten about the food market down the other end of Portobello, you see – fifty-pence artichokes and brown paper bags of figs and eggplants going cheap. In my Celia Birtwell tote – pushing aside the mega guide to Grande Bretagne and the paper fan and the notebook for notes and the Didion and the sunglasses and the fountain pen and the Kapuscinski – I found my blue market bag. Good day to you, sir, with the bowl of fragrant greengages piled high.