my beloved skeevy market

I know: it does­n’t look like much. I was tempt­ed to wait for a sun­ny day to make it appear at least mar­gin­al­ly appeal­ing, but I might as well wait for a rab­bit to come down my chim­ney. This is Lon­don, after all, where we, like the Eski­mos and snow, have at least 200 ways to describe “grey.”

But my point is not the aes­thet­ic, but rather the gas­tro­nom­ic plea­sures of Shep­herd’s Bush Mar­ket. Some­day I will dis­cov­er why my neigh­bor­hood has such a fun­ny name: it has either a bucol­ic or eccle­si­as­ti­cal ori­gin, I’m sure, or just a city plan­ner with a sense of humor. In any case, when I first moved here all the neigh­bors waxed lyri­cal about “the mar­ket” and I high­tailed it there right away. To find… squalor. A bit. Pave­ments lit­tered with scraps of rot­ted fruit and veg, shop­pers rou­tine­ly slap­ping their chil­dren, who nev­er seem to mind, piles of base­ball hats for sale along­side ray­on under­wear of every descrip­tion. But I per­se­vered. And what you real­ly must do is judge the inside of the mar­ket by the very first fruit stand. Sol­id, bright red pep­pers, British sweet­corn on the cob, unwrapped, beau­ti­ful cau­li­flower, you name it. And I am a suck­er for endear­ments from veg guys, so being giv­en my change along with “my dar­ling” or “my love” warms my heart.

Ven­ture into the mar­ket and you will short­ly come to a very mingy, tem­po­rary look­ing fish stall, but do not be fooled: these ladies know their sea bream from their plaice and can fil­let a whole salmon faster than you can give them your recipe for a Marsala-creme fraiche sauce for it. I once bought two dozen scal­lops in the shell from them, for which I had to place an order a week in advance, and I was near­ly ren­dered sense­less by the dis­gust­ing chore that is clean­ing a live scal­lop. But the fresh­ness over­whelmed me. Always in their freez­er are enor­mous frozen raw prawns in the shell for your Thai prawns (scroll down, my patient read­ers). And here are two fun facts: their stall must close every night, so all the fish is com­plete­ly fresh EVERY day. And, there is no fish­ing on Sun­day, so guess what? No fish stall on Monday.

Fur­ther into the mar­ket you’ll find many more fruit and veg stalls, so be patient if the first two don’t have your cilantro. And there are sev­er­al halal butch­ers for your chick­en fil­lets (can you tell I’m mak­ing my biryani this after­noon?). Just please, don’t do as I did when I first arrived in Shep­herd’s Bush and encoun­tered my first halal butch­er. Do not go in, look around, and then ask, “No pork chops today?” I am lucky I got a butch­er with a sense of humor. “No pork chops ANY day, my love, we are Mus­lim.” For god’s sake, you’d think I just got off the boat, from some very igno­rant place.

There are count­less lit­tle spicy-smelling shops where you can buy your bas­mati rice (in 20 kilo bags, if you pre­fer), your Greek yoghurt and your olive oil. But you must ask for the saf­fron at the till, because it’s kept under lock and key and sold in 100g incre­ments. I LOVE that. You feel you’re get­ting a secret stash.

It must be said that along with all your food-shop­ping needs you may also assuage your desire for a gen­uine cubic zir­co­nia tiara, a base­ball cap with the Amer­i­can eagle embla­zoned on it, a plas­tic rolling pin dec­o­rat­ed with tur­tles and frogs, the best falafel wrap you have ever had, fin­ger­nail var­nish (five for a quid), fake flow­ers in fune­re­al arrange­ments, and wed­ding dress­es. Some­thing for everyone.

I am feel­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly blog­gy today because I had the nicest, most unex­pect­ed encounter in my local cafe with two blokes who have inspired me to ever fur­ther jour­nal­is­tic heights. I sat down at one of the com­mu­nal tables and ordered a lat­te and then over­heard the two guys sit­ting oppo­site one anoth­er dis­cussing the turnout in our recent elec­tion. “You know, it was right around 64%,” one said, “which is pret­ty much unheard of.” I could­n’t stop myself. “Which is real­ly pathet­ic, when you think about it, what was the oth­er 36% doing?” And they did­n’t mind at all let­ting me in on their con­ver­sa­tion, which rapid­ly turned to telling me a bit about their pro­fes­sions: a rather polit­i­cal/­doc­umetary-ish writer one, and a com­e­dy writer for radio the oth­er. Writ­ers! Was­n’t I just singing their prais­es? We dis­cussed the elec­tion, the state of BBC fund­ing and fir­ings, the pol­i­tics of hunt­ing (whether fox­es or pheas­ants), and final­ly, food. I told them about my blog and invit­ed them, and I got a lot of invec­tive against the sit­u­a­tion that made me go pri­vate. “There’s a sto­ry for the tech­nol­o­gy sec­tion some­where,” Chris thought. Maybe when Avery goes to col­lege. The morals of blog­ging and how much of a con­ver­sa­tion or expe­ri­ence is yours to blog? Don’t know the answer to that.

I ratio­nalised sit­ting there for ages chat­ting with these two love­ly young men as… research. There is a par­tic­u­lar ener­gy about talk­ing to writ­ers, and on my walk home I analysed what it is, and came up with: curios­i­ty. They are end­less­ly curi­ous, look­ing for a sto­ry, for a char­ac­ter, for an anec­dote, a rela­tion­ship between ideas. My cafe is full of them and I felt I should go and sit there more often, rather than hunch­ing over my desk with a cup of tea by myself.

Right, must go cook, and then swim. I’ve been so good late­ly about fit­ness, with ten­nis and swim­ming, that I feel com­plete­ly jus­ti­fied in an extra help­ing of biryani, with my writ­ing friends, tomorrow.