Sunday, June 07, 2015

Summer Blue Birkenstock and borrowed pyjamas

Staying with friends in London to accompany them on a weekend in Norfolk. I had a ranging day in London. A late night followed by an early start to visit the new Covent Garden flower market. As we drove to the market I was struck by how the city has become a mass of juxtapositions rather than the more themed composition, a modern Waterloo station quickly losing its function and no longer a train hive but a venue for fashion shows and such, even the New market is apparently not long for this world and will soon be overwritten. Little posters on the garden gates of a terrace of houses saying 'Say No to the Garden Bridge'. So many people in a city and a government that wants to please them all by changing very little and doing as little as possible. It is bound to result in jumble.

The nature of the day followed a similarly twisting course, I thought I had a grip on the things starting in overalls helping to repot market plants for sale in shoreditch, but the chaos of city living got the better of me. I ended up departing for Norfolk with none of the essentials that I had planned to add to the day bag before leaving. The general discombobulation is interesting.

We don't really have a vocal workforce of beggars in Japan, so there is some novelty in the occasional approach one receives in the city. One chap started with a request for £900 to finance a stay in a posh hotel, humorous, but it did not spur me to loosen the purse strings. Disappointed he fell into the distance but shouted over his shoulder in a not entirely uncomplementary tone 'Nice Birkenstocks'. This was not the first comment I had received relating to my footwear and I must confess I began to suspect a conspiracy. The sandals were actually a kind Father's Day gift and as such give me a sense of my place in the order of things.

Lovely to be out of the city now and away from the perceptible hum of humanity. I had a short walk and was struck by the profusion of white campion and surprised myself in correctly identifying a whitethroat singing off among the herbage.