Here, There, and Everywhere

May 3
I love a good market and London has many good markets. On this particular Saturday I decided to try the Portobello Road market. I say “try” because it took a lot of effort. I almost had to give up because of the unbelievable crowd in the Antiques Market portion. Portobello Road had basically become a sea of people moving en masse forward. Before I had even reached the market I almost left from panic. I could barely move it was so crowded. I considered giving up, but I struggled and pressed on. Once I got through the Antiques portion and got to the food stands, I felt much better. Then I began to have fun and enjoy myself. At the time, the food stands utterly amazed me with their variety. A week later I would go to the Borough Market, a truly jaw-dropping food market. But Portobello was my first market and it definitely opened my eyes. The food looked, visually speaking, beautiful: fruits and vegetables and whole fresh fish on ice and loaves of bread. In addition to this fresh food, a whole variety of stands sold hot foods like sausages and falafel and quiche and paella and Ghanaian stew. I ate my way through the stands, particularly enjoying the fresh strawberries. After the food part, the market got rather trashy, filled mostly with cheap clothes and jewelry. However, a number of nice permanent shops lined the streets. I went into one particularly delightful toy shop and one shop with a huge variety of rock and roll T-shirts.
The people at Portobello were a mix of tourists and locals, but I could tell that far more locals confined themselves to the food portion. I saw many children dutifully staying with their parents while the adults picked over the fish and produce. In the variety and sheer number of stalls and stands, no market in America can compare to Portobello Road market. As with any market, though, you must pick your way through it and distinguish the good from the bad, the worthwhile from the trashy. I did manage to do that and felt like a genuine Londoner for it.

May 4
Rarely in London did my plans go awry, but even when they did, I managed to improvise a new plan that gave me just as much pleasure as the old plan. This day proved such a day of revised plans. I started out intending to go to the East End markets. I couldn’t find one of them, and the other just did not give me a good feeling. So I wound up at Buckingham Palace just in time to catch the Changing of the Guards. The place of course was absolute madness—people everywhere and policemen on huge horses controlling the crowds. But I fought my way up to the gates. I couldn’t see very well, but well enough to get a general idea of the proceedings. And the ceremony and trappings of the whole thing instantly drew me in. The red coats and shiny helmets just suckered me in. There’s just something about the red of the jackets and the brass of the helmets and trumpets that enchants me. I can’t get enough of the pomp and circumstance. I followed the exiting guard back to their barracks, walking alongside them as they marched back. This gave me a much better view.
I ended up at Trafalgar Square, where a happening was happening. It was a celebration of the Sikh New Year. Thousands of Sikhs filled the square. I’ve never seen so many turbaned heads. Music came from a huge tent erected at the base of Nelson’s Column—at first sacred chanting, then tabla music, then Bengali hip-hop. Another tent offered free food—I stood in line for 15 minutes to get a quite tasty and filling plate of chickpeas in a sauce, a samosa, and pita bread. While I ate my tasty food, I listened to the music and watched the people. I admit that I found the look of most of the people quite interesting: completely normal, Western clothes, but with turbans. Some of the older men wore quite well-cut suits and topped it all off with an elegantly folded turban. I was not the only white person, but definitely in the minority. However, I did not feel at all uncomfortable or unsafe being one of the few white people in attendance. I found the whole thing very edifying and entertaining. In America we have similar festivals celebrating minority life, but we don’t often have them at places symbolic of American majority culture. Trafalgar Square and Nelson’s Column are symbols of the British Empire and British dominant culture. How interesting that the city of London would allow the Sikh New Year to celebrate right there. It seemed to me a very tolerant embrace of Britain’s considerable minority population and evidence of how Britain has embraced and integrated the culture of its former colonies. I am really very glad that I got to experience such a thing. The music was also quite nice.
I popped into the National Gallery for a few minutes but of course got bored immediately. I just cannot do paintings for some reason. So I walked up Regent’s Street, which is the prime shopping street of London. I went into H&M and Topshop, but I soon realized yet again that 1) I don’t like to shop and 2) I don’t know how to shop. I just got completely overwhelmed and confused and decided not to bother.
I then set off to have dinner with some real English people—the brother of the wife of my cousin. It was the man and his wife, their toddler son, the man’s father, and then a family of distant relatives visiting from New Zealand. And I had an absolutely delightful time, helped of course by a couple of glasses of wine. My hosts had cooked a proper English Sunday dinner of a roast, gravy, and potatoes. Normally I hate this kind of food, but on this occasion I ate it willingly. The conversation was excellent, and if I do say so myself, I was charming, vivacious, interesting, and polite. I talked about Lord of the Rings and Sir Edmund Hillary with the Kiwis, about Mods with the man, and about Wordsworth with the old grandfather. I got there at 7:00 and didn’t leave until 11:00. I had a genuinely lovely time.
The old man, who is the father of the wife of my cousin, was a wonderful breed of eccentric old English gentleman. I found him immensely entertaining. He could have walked right out of some kind of television show—an eccentric, educated, cultured English gentleman. He did know about the internet, but otherwise seemed to belong to a different age. He could have walked right out of the 19th century. My host drove me back to the Tube station—the one time in my entire month in England that I got into a car. And of course I almost got in on the wrong side.