Dino's Grill & Restaurant
This swaggering Italian with the Fred Flintstone stubble and the Antonio Banderas hair is Matthew Ribeiro of Dino’s Grill & Restaurant, 76 Commercial St. You may recognise him from last Wednesday when he delivered a bacon sandwich to Jimmy Cuba, the music dealer in the market, and experienced some of Jimmy’s playful rough and tumble in return. Since Rossi’s Cafe closed this year, Dino’s Grill is now the last of the cafes to remain in business out of all those that once served the Spitalfields Fruit & Vegetable Market.
If you are weary, and the howling gale is blowing down Commercial St and you need a bolt hole, this is the cafe to escape to for a quiet cup of tea.The unremarkable frontage and the wholesale clothing stores on either side ensure it is a place where nobody goes to be seen and thank goodness for that. Once you get inside and take your place in one of the snug Formica booths, no-one can see you from the street and you can let the world recede. There is a pleasant geometry and sense of order which is calming, the honey-coloured interior induces repose and posters around the walls introduce sufficient gentle diversion, should you require it.
Quite simply, in Dino’s Grill you can relax because you are not on show, it is an unreconstructed place where everyone is a regular and tourists never stray. The clientele comprises office workers, tradesmen, and builders. Dare I say it? It possesses an exotic quality that only true connoisseurs can fully appreciate, it is not fashionable – in fact, this cafe is almost unique in Spitalfields because it is completely unpretentious.
Opening in 1958 as Nando’s Cafe, it was run by Peggy Bragoli and her husband Nando Bragoli who was the chef. The couple lived upstairs above the cafe where they brought up their son Dino who was also born in 1958. Such was their pride in their boy that in 1972 when he began to work there at the age of fourteen, they renamed it Dino’s in his honour.
Innumerable stories confirm that Peggy was the leading light, even if she never got her name on the front of the cafe. You can see the only picture of her below, taken in 1996 with Matthew, who is the current proprietor. He remembers Peggy fondly, evoking her spirit by raising his eyebrows, waving his hands and deepening his voice for dramatic effect,“She was like the devil, she would do everything, run here, come back – a small woman but a very hard-working person! To begin with, they used to open at four in the morning and shut at seven in the evening. In 1993 once she retired, she would come and work for free. She wouldn’t accept anything from me because it was her life to be here, she’d say ‘No, no please!’ when I tried to pay her. And in 2003 when she returned to Piacenta in Italy, she cried because she didn’t want to go, it was her husband who wanted to leave.”
“I started working here in 1992 and I worked very hard, and they loved me like I was family, I was the only employee and I used to go to them for Christmas.” continued Matthew in an open-hearted spirit, in explanation of how he came to take on the running of the cafe.“Business is steady now,” he confirmed, adopting a professional tone before admitting,” I had a very bad year in 2009. Many of my lunch customers are from RBS and about fifty got the sack last year, now they have other jobs they come back to me. I am lucky because Dino is my landlord and he understands. The rent increases around here are crazy, every year my office customers change because companies move in and out as the rents rise. If you have the freehold you can survive in Spitalfields but otherwise forget it.”
For years, Gilbert & George dined at The Market Cafe in Fournier St. Then, when it closed, they transferred their patronage to Rossi’s Cafe in Hanbury St and now that is also gone they come to Dino’s Grill twice a week. There was a brief limbo after Rossi’s shut when I spotted them dining at The Luxe but it just did not seem right. Now they can now be reassured that no further accommodations on the catering front will be necessary because the Bragoli family bought the freehold of 76 Commercial St in 1964 for £4,000 which means that the future for Dino’s Grill is secure.
I followed Matthew as he sprinted up the stairs to the first floor kitchen with a familiar ease that I could not quite match. There I met Enzo, the head chef, who works here with his assistant preparing full English breakfasts, liver and bacon, steak pies and pasta sauces made fresh every day, all ready to be winched down in the dumb-waiter and served piping hot to hungry customers. “Spaghetti Al Dino” is the popular house speciality, spaghetti with Bolognese and a Bechamel sauce with cheeses, topped with ham, eggs and mushrooms, and baked to perfection in a metal dish.
I was touched when Matthew handed over the photograph of him and Peggy behind the counter in 1996. Even here, working three years after her retirement, Peggy doesn’t spare a moment to look up to the camera to show us her full face because the coffee machine is a more crucial object of attention. There is something all-consuming about running these small cafes, providing a loyal service to regular customers, and now Matthew is gripped too, as he confessed to me, “I couldn’t stay at home, even if I chose. I don’t think of myself as coming to work – I love it!”
Matthew Ribeiro in 1996 with Peggy Bragoli.
John William, fashion editor
In Nicolai Gogol’s drama “The Government Inspector”, Khlestakov, the young playboy from Moscow who turns up to cause hullabaloo in a provincial town is described as having hair that resembled “a rabbit on fire.” For many years I puzzled, trying to imagine what this could be like, until I met John recently and saw his hair. Conservatively short around the sides but with a spectacular mass of long curls erupting from the crown and spiralling recklessly in every direction, it is like a fountain in the wind or even, you might say, like a rabbit on fire.
Although, as editor of Pigeons & Peacocks magazine, John William presents an appearance that is striking to behold, there is far more to him than meets the eye on first impression. Upon introduction, when John talks, it is with a maximum number of exclamation marks, so it was no surprise to me when I received an email from him that commenced in the same way, “Hello!!! John here!” I can only admire how John has made audacity into a style because I surmise he is at heart a shy person who has adopted this demonstrative self declaration as a means to overcome his natural reserve and engage with the world openly. As such, John’s construction of himself represents an heroic and engaging triumph of style, qualifying him as a one of life’s true fashion pioneers. He is a true original voice in the barren wilderness of conformity crying out, “Hello!!! John here!”
On the day we met, dressed down for the working day, John was rocking a chunky eighties sweater with images of cocktail glasses, carnival streamers and harlequin masks knitted into it, accessorised with a gold chain round his neck displaying the name “Divine” (referring to the star of John Waters’ masterpiece “Pink Flamingos” who is John William’s personal inspiration). Baggy trousers rolled up to his ankles revealed two-tone wet-look and suede brogues with Forget-me-not blue socks. Yet in spite of his loud clothes, when John settles down to a conversation he speaks quietly and thoughtfully, presenting his opinions lucidly.
Speaking of his unremarkable upbringing in Liverpool, John revealed, “I knew what I wanted to do since I was ten, at thirteen I bleached my first pair of jeans, cut them up and safety pinned them back together again, and it was the first example of the power of presentation – because it completely changed the way everyone saw me and taught me the power of constructed identity. Monthly, I wrote to every fashion magazine from Sleaze Nation to Vogue asking for an internship and when at fifteen I was invited to do work experience at Dazed & Confused, I worked at McDonalds until I saved up the money to come to London for the first time.”
Clearly an operator, John was disappointed by the lack of initiative shown by other students on his fashion journalism course and went out and won commissions, submitting a portfolio of his published work at the end of the year. With equal aplomb, he persuaded the London College of Fashion to give him the budget they would spend on their prospectus to publish his magazine, Pigeons & Peacocks, and allow him freedom to pursue his own innovative editorial policy. An enlightened decision that has proved to be a sympathetic reflection upon the college itself.
I wondered if John’s ambition was to pursue the fast track of success in fashion journalism, but he dismissed it. “I don’t want to be Anna Wintour!” he protested, as if the unlikely transformation were literally at hand, before he proceeding to elaborate upon his own more egalitarian philosophy of fashion, “Pigeons & Peacocks is not prescriptive, it is a collection of diverse opinions and stories, I want people to feel they can become involved and I get emails from fifteen and sixteen year olds submitting ideas. It’s not about selling someone the shoes they can’t afford or the sweater they don’t need. Fast fashion is horrible and people are wising up to it. As a weirdo, at least you are spared the pressure to accept the package that is being sold to everyone else through advertising, because as a weirdo you don’t want it in the first place. I think that whole Tom Ford idea is embarrassing now. Who’s got that money to spend? And who wants to live that life that’s presented top to tail and floor to ceiling?”
John is twenty-two and articulates the voice of a generation who have seen the excesses of consumerism and reject the waste of resources and the human exploitation it represents. In its place he proposes a manifesto of do-it-yourself creativity that does not involve spending a great deal of money but requires thought to decide who you are and how clothes can be part of your individual expression. I was inspired to meet someone who has grown up through the sordid events of recent history and emerged idealistic.
When he proudly rolled up his sleeve to show me the fine tattoo on his arm of Casper, his beloved blue-eyed Siamese, and the one on his shoulder that reads “I want to be the girl with the most cake”, I could not help smiling because there is a rare playfulness about John that is equally disarming and appealing in its candid emotionalism. All John’s thoughts are in motion, pursuing his ideas about people and the culture of clothing open-mindedly, to see where it will take him and what he can learn.
Pigeons & Peacocks is currently preparing an East End issue that looks at the role of clothing and style in the diverse and complex cultures here, far beyond the realm of fashion. We look forward to it with eager anticipation.
The Barrows Of Spitalfields
When I saw the wooden carts and barrows in Mark Jackson & Huw Davies’ pictures of the Spitalfields Fruit & Vegetable Market, I realised that some of these old-style barrows have been sitting around in Sclater St for the past couple of years, used in the Sunday market and quietly rotting for the rest of the week. My eye was drawn to the wooden wheels, every spoke individually chamfered, an attention to detail that recalls those magnificent gipsy caravans of a century ago. There are still plenty of these barrows in use around London, from Portobello, Berwick St, Seven Dials, Leather Lane, Chapel Market to Roman Rd, though now they are relics of another age.
I asked Paul Gardner whose family have been trading as market sundriesman from the same building in Commercial St since 1870, if he could tell me anything about these carts. He recalled there was a company called Hiller Brothers that manufactured barrows in Bethnal Green and a wheelwright who repaired them in a workshop under the Bishopsgate Arches. And he had some phone numbers, which he called to seek further information but both numbers were discontinued.
You find these barrows and carts in museums and sometimes in gardens with Lobelia and Geraniums trailing out of them but I prefer to see them in use, though without wheelwrights to mend them their days are numbered as the makeshift repairs to the wheels of the Sclater St examples testify. These wheels are a smaller version of cartwheels that were once standard when all street transport was horsedrawn, sustaining the attendant wheelwrights’ and cartwrights’ trades.
That afternoon, I was walking through the empty Leather Lane Market where I came upon a couple of these barrows. Trading had ceased for the day, so I was able to squat down and take a closer look. I discovered incised lettering in an elegant italic hand that ran along all sides of the barrow and in some cases around the wheels too. The name and location of the market “Leather Lane, Holborn” plus the manufacturer and the status “On Hire.” To my surprise I came across the name “Hiller Bros” and an address in Bethnal Green, “64 Squirries St,” just as Paul Gardner told me.
I photographed a fine market porter’s hand cart in the Bethnal Green Rd Market, loaded with fruit and vegetables for sale. Paul Gardner remembered that all the local greengrocers had these to wheel down to the Spitalfields Market and collect their fresh stock daily. Years ago, he traded a trolley from his shop with an old man from the market in exchange for a huge handbarrow with heavy iron wheels that now sits in his back garden. Examining my photo of the hand barrow in Bethnal Green, I saw it was also incised with the name “Hiller Bros” and when I did a google search I even got a phone number though, to my disappointment, it no longer functioned.
So I decided to take a walk up to Squirries St, but first I took a detour to Hoxton where a friend lives in the former Lambert timber warehouse in Hoxton St and here I was able to photograph the cart which has been disassembled but stored safely under a lean-to in the yard. This one is remarkable for remaining in its premises and for its beautiful signwriting – and again I saw the incised italic script that is the standard means of identification for these carts. The script resembles the handwriting of a century ago and I wonder if once someone simply wrote in chalk along the side of each barrow and someone else followed along to carve it out. Returning to Sclater St and squatting down to read the inscriptions on these carts, I learnt one was a stray from London Fields, eternally “On Hire” from Leach Bros.
Arriving at 64 Squirries St, just off the Bethnal Green Rd, I found an unremarkable locked-up building without any signeage beyond its street number. It was padlocked from the outside, so there was no point in knocking and I could not discern any sign of recent activity. Like some frustrated detective, I was deliberating my next move when I noticed there was a small glass panel (no bigger than a postcard) in the tall steel shutter closing off the yard and I peeked through the dirty pane to discover the picture you can see at the end of this feature. I wiped the glass on the outside with my handkerchief and took a hazy photograph, filtered by grime, of broken carts in the abandoned workshop that was once the centre of a thriving trade. Please do not tell anyone about this glass panel in the steel shutter, because no-one wants lines forming on Squirries St to ogle the charnel house of carts and barrows.
Let us not collect all these carts and put them on display. It can be our secret. As long as they are around we can be gratified to see them disregarded on the street, demonstrating stubborn longevity. Injecting a little arcane poetry into any unremarkable cityscape, they are vestiges of when the world was driven by horse power.
Now I have made my discovery, I will take a closer look at each specimen I find and read the inscription to discover who constructed it and for which market – as a mark of respect to those craftsmen who were so skillful in making elegant functional things with their bare hands, still in use today when they are long gone.
Jimmy Cuba, music dealer
For months I had been hoping for a conversation with Jimmy Cuba, the renowned music dealer in the Spitalfields Market but the snow and ice had driven him away. There is no doubt that sunshine and Latin music go together, so yesterday when I heard a Cuban melody drifting on the Spring breeze, as I was coming through Puma Court on my way to buy a loaf of bread, I knew he was back.
Jimmy Cuba has been selling music in the Spitalfields Market since 1992, but he first came here many years before, “I always worked in markets since I was eleven.” he explained, cocking his porkpie hat and assuming the squinty grin that is indicative of his good-humoured perspective on life, “We used to drive up to the Spitalfields Market in the early morning and I would guard the van while the governor bought his stock. We sold fruit, vegetables and flowers in Romford, and although I hated it I was good – by the age of fifteen, I was running three or four stalls. But the people I grew up with were pretty wild. Everybody was on the fiddle. Everybody had a sideline. It was an hypocrisy of many layers between how you should be and how you were. That was just the way it was.”
Seeking wider horizons, Jimmy left to become a roadie and worked with bands for nearly ten years, developing his taste for music along the way. “Latin tunes were the tunes I liked and the first record I bought was Carlos Santana. I was living in the Latin quarter of San Francisco at the time and getting into the music and the musicians. Anyone I liked, I did research and I listened to what they liked. When I came back to London, I had to sell my record collection in Leather Lane Market to pay the rent and it was all Latin music, but I found I was pretty good at selling it. So I went out and bought a load of Latin music and people started calling me “Cuban Jim” – I said you’re going to have to make it “Jimmy Cuba” and it stuck.”
As Jimmy speaks, he is always bopping and rocking, gyrating and grooving to the Latin rhythms that comprise the soundtrack to his life, “On Sunday I used to go to sell in Cheshire St but I got sick of working in the rain, so when the Spitalfields Market reopened in 1992 I took a stall. It was still derelict then, there were just a few craft stalls and an organic vegetable stand. I had a little diary and on my first day’s trading I wrote ‘takings £30, rent £5, lunch £4.'”
It was a small beginning, but Jimmy had a stroke of luck when a rare melody by Perez Prado was used in a commercial and he was the only dealer with copies of the tune, selling thousands and putting him on the map. Before long, Jimmy had the good fortune to meet the Fania All Stars (who are as big as The Beatles in the world of Latin music), interviewing them when they played at the Barbican. One day, Hose Alberto, the Dominican singer and Celia Cruz’ producer, honoured Jimmy saying, “You know more about my music than my people.” Over the years Jimmy has met many of the stars of Latin music who are his heroes, when they have come through our capital and now they make a point of taking a trip to his stall in the Spitalfields Market in turn. Larry Harlow, the celebrated jazz piano player from New York dropped by recently, “He started talking to me but I didn’t recognise him until he took his hat off!” admitted Jimmy sheepishly, adding fondly, “He sent me a lovely letter when he got back to New York.”
Today, Jimmy sells Latin, African, Arabic and Reggae in the Spitalfields Market on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Sundays. He has travelled all over to visit the origins of the music, especially Cuba and New York, source of the Latin Jazz of the nineteen fifties that his personal favourite. Although Jimmy likes to play the market clown, making comic signs and enjoying boisterous horseplay with Matthew from Dino’s Cafe when he comes to deliver the bacon sandwich each day, a very different personality emerges once Jimmy begins to talk about music. A lyrical intensity overcomes him and his eyes light up in response to the soulful quality of the music he loves. Jimmy manages to give the benefit of his expertise without ever making you feel the weight of his experience. “It’s the knowledge I have got in here,” Jimmy confided quietly, pointing to his hat in self-satire,“I view myself as an educator in world music. It’s a passion for me. More than a business, even though it pays the rent, to me it is the whole world.”
The crowning glory of Jimmy Cuba’s achievement is that Soul Jazz Records, who release many of the world music recordings that he sells, now credit him on every CD. Jimmy opened a case and carefully took out the booklet to show me, “You don’t have to prove it to me,” I said, relenting when he opened the booklet up and showed me his name at the end of the list of thankyous.“It’s something I’m very proud of, it’s an achievement for me, coming from a rough background – where I grew up and how I grew up, on an estate. I never went to school really, my teachers said I would come to no good. All my education has been through music and this is an acknowledgement of the respect I have won.” he said, folding the booklet and returning it modestly, as if he was folding up all his care and affection into that humble CD case. It was a reminder of how culture can bring significance and value to life, because Jimmy’s existence has truly been elevated by music, it his given him his livelihood, his passion and his self-respect.
We shook hands in celebration of a cultural journey that no-one could have been predicted, taking Jimmy Cuba from the Spitalfields Market off around the world, through San Francisco, and delivering him back to the Spitalfields Market under the auspicious circumstances that he enjoys today.
Bentley & Bramble, Spitalfields' twin goats
With the Spitalfields City Farm still reeling from the break-in and nocturnal abduction of a ferret last week, I think Helen Galland, the animals’ manager, was relieved to take a break and enjoy a relaxed chat about the psychological dynamic between Bentley & Bramble, the twin goats that are such popular personalities at the farm. Bentley, of the shaggy locks and extravagant goatee pictured below, and his sister Bramble, the model of inscrutable charm pictured above, were born here in 2005 into the Shoreditch pedigree herd. Living off surplus vegetables from Sainsburys in Whitechapel and stale beigels from Mr Sammy’s Beigel Shop in Brick Lane, the lucky siblings enjoy a fine life down on the farm, constantly surrounded by young admirers.
“Even when they were kids, you could tell that Bentley was going to be the friendly one because he would always jump up for a cuddle, whereas Bramble was more reserved, and that’s carried through into their adult years because Bentley will always come up to strangers, but Bramble likes to get to know people a little first.” revealed Helen, introducing the disparity of character in broad terms.
Widening her eyes in amusement, she added,“Bentley has been castrated which makes him gentler and less testosterone-charged, although he sometimes gets a bit carried away during the Autumn breeding season and thinks he’s a Billy Goat, so then we separate him from the girls to give them a break. He wees on his beard and rubs it against them, visitors are not immune from his attentions either.”
“Bramble has a little face that makes her look suspicious of everyone but she does enjoy being stroked once you have made friends with her,” Helen continued with an empathetic grin,” She’s very fat since giving birth to her two kids, Clover & Camomile, who have gone to live at the Hackney City Family, and now she shares a pen with Ursula her mother and Demeter her younger sister from a different father, a very modern family really.”
The premise for my curiousity was the annual Goat Race to be held at the farm on Saturday 3rd April, scheduled to coincide with that famous Boat Race down on the Thames, and this year it will be between Bentley & Bramble. Bets are already being placed and I was eager to gather a little background to the competitors’ long-held sibling rivalry, a compelling psychodrama that will be played out in front of spectators on the running track this Easter.
“We keep Bentley in a separate pen,” Helen told me, explaining the living arrangements necessary to maintain domestic harmony at the farm,“because when he’s with the girls he needs to prove that he’s the top man but Bramble will always challenge him, she’s the alpha female. They tease each other, Bramble will chase him from the food bowl, and she’ll always be on the top of the climbing frame because he’s not as good at climbing as she is. Bentley will try to climb up after her and collapse in a heap. Bramble always wins the upper hand.”
Helen confided two revealing anecdotes about Bentley. When she tried to steer him backwards recently, Bentley simply pushed forward using the powerful muscular plates in his neck, causing Helen to get tossed over his head – not an isolated event apparently. Also recently, Bentley gorged on a pile of green apples that made him sick with an acidic stomach, a dangerous condition for a ruminant animal, but this would not stop him eating them all over again such is his lack of mental retention, Helen confirmed. Meanwhile, Bramble got a taste for competition last year at the Rare & Traditional Breeds Show at the Weald & Downland Museum where she won second prize in the Best Goat (compact breeds) category, and now she has the appetite for it Bramble will be disappointed with anything less than first prize in this contest.
I was beginning to get a handle on the precise nature of the complex rivalry, intensified because the competitors are twins. Although the extroverted Bentley has greater physical confidence (in spite of his diminished testosterone levels), he has not always shown he has the wit to rival his more introverted sister, the overweight yet nimble and shrewdly competitive Bramble. He needs to assert his status as flamboyant solo male now, but Bramble has ambition to prove she is every bit as good as her show-off brother and cannot disappoint her loyal cheerleaders, Ursula and Demeter.
Polarising spectators, between those who want Bentley to show he has still got what it takes and those who expect Bramble to deliver a decisive win for the sisterhood on Easter Saturday, this is going to be a thrilling race. Personally, I cannot decide which creature has the more powerful motivation to seek victory. But, just between you and me, in photographing the goats yesterday, I spent a pleasant half an hour chasing the fleet-footed Bramble round her large grassy pen and, on the basis of what I observed, if you push me to make a choice, I know which I would pick as my favourite to win.
Which one are you backing?
Des & Lorraine’s collection
On Saturday morning I went round to visit Des and Lorraine’s junk shop in Bacon St – sandwiched between a second-hand catering equipment dealer and a tattoo parlour, you might not even notice the discreet entrance if you did not know it. Although I had admired the crow painted upon the double doors by the street artist Roa, I was unaware of the wonders that are contained behind this unassuming frontage.
Des led me through the low-ceilinged narrow passage lined with old wardrobes into the shop itself. At first, as you enter a shadowy antechamber, you realise the ceiling is higher and hung with things that give the feeling of being in a deep forest with heavy branches overhead. Then you find yourself in an old stable with a cobbled floor, a corrugated iron roof and spaces opening up on all sides, each crowded with furniture accumulated in the gloom, giving way to indeterminate darkness.
This is where Des and Lorraine have dealt in junk for the last thirty years. Without windows, the chill is tangible, and I understood why Lorraine is commonly seen wrapped in a hat and scarf, and whenever possible sits in the car outside during the Winter months. They are busy people, constantly coming and going, collecting and delivering, and it took me several days to get this opportunity to speak to Des when he had a moment, yet even now he was hovering, as customers came and went throughout our conversation.
I was touched that Des describes himself as dealing in junk because, while antique dealers consider themselves superior within the hierarchy of professionals, for the inquisitive customer junk possesses the greater romance. With antiques there is an implication of higher monetary value but with junk it is all about the intrinsic poetic quality. So, to my mind, it is greatly to his credit that Des is unapologetically a junk dealer.
Wherever you look in Des and Lorraine’s magnificent junk shop, the detail is overwhelming and you must be sure to look upwards because there is a panoply of old stuff hung above, creating the impression of an eccentric galaxy of objects in a frozen moment. Like his friend Brian in Shadwell who I wrote about last year, Des likes to collect, but where Brian likes effigies and life-size model animals, Des collects old toys and other curios that look good hanging in the roof. The airplanes and vehicles create the sense of motion in Des’ universe, while the other items, like the signs and musical instruments, the gas mask and the giant potato peeler – just visible at the top of the photo above – give it a surreal poetry that is all its own. Gazing up into this thicket is like looking into a dream, yet Des appears to be a down-to-earth fellow. “Certain things I like to keep. Most of this stuff here is from childhood. A lot of people ask to buy these things but they are not for sale. It’s all stuff that’s become collectible. It’s stuff I bought, except the horse which belonged to my kids and they left it out in the rain.” he explained to me, surveying his marvellous collection with proprietorial satisfaction.
Seized by an idea, “Let me show you one of the strangest things I ever found,” Des said and, visibly excited, began burrowing through a stack of old boxes. Pulling out an old holdall, he produced a slim booklet and held it open to show me a photograph of a mermaid. I scrutinised his mild features for any hint of irony that might reveal he was pulling my leg, but his brown-eyed gaze was without any concealment. I was baffled. “You’re kidding me?” I said, but he shook his head. “Where did you get it?” I asked. “I found it, in the course of my work.” he explained dispassionately, “This was while ago, but it cost me quite a lot of money at the time.” I was disarmed. Des continued, “It has a spine running the length of its body and some scientists from Cambridge University verified it by carbon dating as over two hundred years old.”
As the conversation spun into the unknown territory, towards a weird place familiar only to Des, I asked, “Where is it?” Pre-occupied with sorting rusty old spanners, he indicated a dusty corner casually,“I used to have it set up there but now it’s at home,” he said, “I’ll send you picture from my phone this evening.”
Willingly consenting to the notion of a mermaid photographed by a mobile phone, I gave Des my number and said goodbye. The picture which you can see below arrived that evening, Des’ mummified mermaid in a glass tank sitting upon his dining table. Not wishing to be a killjoy, I shall leave you to draw your own conclusion upon its authenticity as a mermaid, but from this picture I do believe it is an authentic specimen of some kind from a nineteenth century display, a cabinet of curiosities or a freak show, and that itself is good enough for me.
Be assured, Des and Lorraine are happy to allow customers to rummage in their shop, as long as they ask permission first. You really need to go round for yourself to this last outpost of the mysterious kingdom of junk, because who knows what you might find there.
Columbia Road Market 27
The market was busy again this morning by eight, with eager gardeners who have been persuaded that it is time to commence Spring planting. Although the crowd was sufficient to encourage me to get up earlier next week, it was not long before these honest Forget-me-nots (Myosotis) caught my eye and I bought six for just £4, enough to to give me a few clumps this Summer and to naturalise in future years. The very name Forget-me-not defines a certain summery blue and as the months wear on the flowers develop subtle mixed tones of blue and pink. One of the first flower names I learnt, Forget-me-nots are one of those humble plants that have been cultivated in England since medieval times and of which you can truly say no garden should be without.
