In praise of EC1

In some ways EC1 can seem a right scruffy and skanky postcode to be wandering around of a Sunday morning: the City streets are empty, there's a bit too much rubbish around, and there's a certain greyness to it all, but appearances can be deceptive, because EC1 is so packed full of Sunday marktes that you can walk right across it moving from one to the other. I met Number7 at Spitalfields for a bit of a wander and we then tracked down to Petticoat Lane which is lively, lively, lively with plenty of cheap clothes stalls, shops selling African fabrics and all sorts of other bargains. From there I headed to Whitecross St near Barbican where a new, fortnightly food market started over the summer. Many of the stalls are familiar names from Borough, Exmouth Market etc, but there were also plenty that were new to me, including a Portuguese stand selling what looked pretty delicious fried goods, and two cup cake stalls. As I past the first of these - Fairy Cups..... - I evidently couldn't disguise my delight in the cakes and I was called over by the stallholder to buy one, which I wasn't that gutted about because the whole set of iced cakes lined up together was a real work of art. After much deliberation I bought a cake with vanilla cream with the icing shaped as a rose and it was bloody delicious. At £2 it needed to be, for a part of me did think "This'd be 25p in a fete", but, as I said, the craftsmanship of the icing and the whole arrangement of the cakes was really special, and I'd routinely spend that kind of sum on a mediocre cake in a coffee shop. Actually, that's not true because I don't go to coffee shops and I'd resent spending a couple of quid on a crap cake, but you know what I mean. From there I ambled up to Chapel Street to buy a big bowl of clementines for a quid, three giant avocados for another squid and some vine toms and ricotta from Olga's. This all goes to confirm that Sunday is a great market day in London and that ambly food shopping has become one of the big hobbies of londontowners.