BOROUGH MARKET

Fruit, eggs, cider, bread, honey, vegetables, fish, meat, sweets, diary, tea, coffee, flowers, cheese, wine.....

Borough Market is London's oldest food market, established on the south of the Thames, when the Romans built the first London Bridge - indeed the bridge is believed to have been a home to food and produce traders earlier than 1014. At the time, London Bridge was the only link London had with the South of England, and hence, the rest of Europe, up until the 18th century. Borough Market has occupied its present site, a stone's throw from Blackfriars' Bridge, in the borough of Southwark, for 250 years.

Despite almost falling into extinction more than a decade ago, Borough Market is now a popular place for locals and foreigners alike, with crowds perusing the huge pavilion and its endless stalls, all offering a variety of fresh produce, both from the UK, and its neighbors, particularly France, Spain and Italy.

It is a fabulous site to behold, for food lovers, the hungry, or the ravenous, though it may seem to lack the rustic charm of similar markets in Europe. Spain comes to mind - La Boqueria, off Barcelona's  La Rambla, and Mercado Central in Valencia. 

Still, it is a feast for the eyes... and the stomach!  

LONDON

Strange those first few hours in a new place, how they dissolve into days, months...

Paddington Station was our first stop, Heathrow already a mile away. A black cabbie driving us to our small hotel, with twin beds.

Edgware Road, the Arab district. Kebabs, Baclawa, Shisha. Quite unexpected.

Finding an apartment in three days. A place to call home, a room of our own.

London seems like an enormous house, a mansion whose rooms are shared by passers by, people sleeping a night, then moving somewhere else... Europe, or somewhere further away. It is a house full of leaking pipes and rising damp, warm beer, bad coffee, a few showers and many bathtubs, red buses, and the tube vibrating under the floor. It silently screams for a spring clean - but spring comes, and passes, and no cleaning is done. And so it keeps running, creaky and decrepit, hoping for another year...

In the meantime, there is a place to enjoy the sunshine, not too far away. Only a handful of rainy days since we stepped off the plane. Is this London...?

And after a short time has passed, we find ourselves thinly familiar with our house, our street, the bus we catch to work... and we begin to look further afield...

Regents Park. Across the road, between rows of Victorian houses, along Baker Street. Through the gate, past the flower beds of tulips and roses, all in full bloom; the boating lake, the walk bridge, the swans gliding by underneath; squirrels scurrying up tree trunks; the grass scattered with green and white deck chairs. Our backyard.

So while the sun stays shining, and the grey clouds only occasionally hover disdainfully overhead, 

we have a place to rest.

Our house, 

a room

with a bed, 

and a table, desk, ironing board, 

the TV hidden in the fridge

while the trains vibrate 

under the floor,

and the damp, leaking pipes

leave shadows on the pale walls...

the rain falls steadily, heavily

outside against our only window,

as a boy stumbles into fat pants

toward the light of the kitchen,

and the glow of the candles

while the wireless crackles

radio plays, music, news,

randomly,

things we've never heard, or can't remember

and tells us news of the world

outside our only window,

somewhere,

where it doesn't rain,

and a man sings opera 

in a hot air balloon.