Columbia Road Flower Market

Columbia Road Flower Market and the delight of English pubs

The most Hipster and Melbourne thing we've done since we arrived

Forbidden flowers

One of the first markets I hear about when I got to London was the Columbia Road flower market. Once a week a street in East London is turned into something straight out of My Fair Lady - minus Audrey Hepburn. Men shout at you from both sides 'a fiver a bunch' as they thrust bouquets of blooms at you. About a third of the market is made up of potted plants - herbs, trees, shrubs - you name it. The rest are cut flowers for next to nothing. I have made a rule - i'm not allowed to buy flowers that I can get easily in Australia. This basically means no lillium, warratahs or plain roses. What is allowed however is peonies in every colour you can imagine and beautiful hyacinths. My grandmother used to have bushes of it at her house in Canberra - but only in blue and purple and I don't ever remember it being cut and in vases in the house.

Flowers at the market

At Columbia Road however they come in every colour - beautiful and bushy - at the same time as the individual blooms in each head being delicate and soft.

The flowers that took my fancy this visit however war the peonies - beautiful colours all bunched together. Tony - the gentleman he is - bought me a mixed bunch wrapped in brown paper. What more could a girl ask for really.

My peonies

Sadly I learned in the following week that the reason they were going so cheap is that they were really at the end of their life. They didn't last more than 5 days.

At the end of the flower market is a collection of little shops serving breakfast on the street. Literally. Not on tables - but in the form of a coffee and a pastry to eat whilst sitting on the curb. One place was also selling bloody marys (the hair of the dog for some on a Sunday).

We grabbed a coffee from a bustling shop that was once a stable - and wandered back through East London to do a bit of vintage shopping.

The kerbside breakfast

Vintage in the East

East London is really where the best vintage is in London. Everywhere else is expensive however in the east you can still find proper bargains on real vintage - not retro - vintage. Tony picked up a brown tweed jacket for £20 and I found a lovely short brown cape lined in orange silk form the 1950s for £45. It will be perfect for wearing mid season with slacks and something warm underneath.

Backgammon at the Highbury Tavern

On our way out of this particular vintage shop we were accosted by some protesters (who I have to admit we had dodged on the way in). At first we couldn't work out what they were protesting against - they had something about dead animals - and so strode into the shop. On the way out we were met by shouts of 'fashion over morals - nice one' but the protestors and it dawned on us what they were on about. It seems they object to people wearing animal fur. I understand this objection and I too object to people slaughtering animals for their turn. However I wasn't sure what good their protest was going to to for the vintage fur on sale at this shop. Evidently the protesters felt strongly enough about the issue that even wearing vintage fur was a crime. I'm not sure I agree - I love my grandmother's vintage furs - but would never buy or support new fur - and so can't see how a shop promoting the recycling and reusing of vintage furs - amongst a huge selection of other vintage and recycled clothing. I replied to the retort with a throw away line of 'no - we don't support fashion over morals - we support recycled clothing' - however I think it was lost on them.

English Pubs - boardgames and football

The only game I can ever win against him it seems

We finished up our hipster Sunday at our local. Highbury Tavern is a lovely independent low ceiling'd pub with great food (using the local butcher and green grocer's produce). There seems to be a blight on English pubs being taken over by chains offering a standard menu offering - bland and stodgy. Highbury Tavern is thankfully not one of these and we have happily eaten our way through the menu a couple of times by now. It also has boardgames for whiling away long afternoons. We chose backgammon and settled in with a pint each. Like any pub game it was missing half the pieces which we substituted with 5p pieces - being the smallest.  

It seems this is one of the few games I can beat Tony at - and we spent a happy few hours playing whilst keeping an eye on the football (Euro 2012) match. I look forward to many more cosy afternoons in pubs with a fire in the winter.