Portobello

I woke up yesterday thinking I'd have a day of rest. I puttered around the house, poured some cereal and sat out in the garden with Olga reading "Under the Banyan Tree," a short, rather simplistic book from our school library about a runaway teenager who moves to (and ultimately helps save) a Key West motel. I checked it out because the Florida storyline appealed to me. It wasn't bad but I read the whole thing in less than two hours. Not a lot of depth.

And then I began feeling like I really needed to get out of the house. After my exhausting week, I wanted a day on my own, out and about. So I decided to head over to the Portobello Road Market to find some old, unloved photos to rescue. I haven't done a rescued photo post in a long, long time!

I took the overground and in short order found a guy on Golborne Road with boxes and boxes of old photos. I bought 26 of them -- including a few old postcards -- and now I have material for some upcoming posts.

I took my time walking down Portobello Road, which was my old stomping ground when we lived in Notting Hill. Many of the shops are different now -- for example, the mysterious Still Too Few is vacant and for rent -- but the market as a whole is the same. I wandered into an antiques arcade where I found a beautiful old print of a moth, which I considered buying until I asked the price -- £95! "It's hand-painted," said the vendor, as if that made it any less insane. (It was not hand-painted. Hand-tinted, maybe.)

I wandered right past our old flat at Longlands Court. Hard to believe we've been gone from there for ten years. I remember romping there with Dave and young, puppyish Olga in the courtyard. In the photo above, Longlands Court would be to the right where the trees are. (Yes, it was crazy living there on Saturdays, which is market day. There was a music dealer who would blast "That's Amore" by Dean Martin at top volume every single Saturday morning, over and over. I didn't see -- or hear -- him yesterday. I guess no one buys music that way anymore. He was an anachronism even ten years ago.)

I went to Daylesford, a restaurant and organic market in Westbourne Grove, for lunch -- another old stomping ground. I had a chopped salad with blue cheese dressing and then walked back to West Hampstead, through Queen's Park and Kilburn. All told I think I walked about seven miles.

This fun little creation decorated a front garden in Queen's Park.

And this little cat was the most affectionate thing I've ever seen -- it raced out of a front garden in Kilburn to give me a head bump and get some scratches, and then briefly followed me along the sidewalk before racing home again. It had otherworldly golden eyes.

Back home again, I organized my photos and caught up on blog-reading. Now I need to go back and answer comments.

Oh, and Dave and I think we've figured out the mystery of Mrs. Kravitz and her unexpected dinner delivery the other night. She and her family now appear to be out of town. We're thinking she gave us her leftovers before leaving on a journey. Which is fine, I suppose!