Saturday Shopping

Went for a trip down to Berrick Street this afternoon. Main reason as always is to buy cloth at the Cloth House - got to be the best cloth emporium I know - full of fashion students, and all sorts of cloth - almost anything you could possibly want - from embroidered felt, saris, pettycoat nets, satins, silk prints, necktie silks, pvc, wool, denim with patterns, with holes...I could go on. I wanted to buy hides to make a leather version of the thai bag I picked up when I was there in February and of course they had some. Once I'm there I always pop into Soho Sohi - the provider of most of much admired big stone rings - they also sell bongs, teeshirts with cannabis and e slogans, jossticks, and any other hippie paraphernalia you could possibly want/need. Then I always get a medium box of hippie veggie food from Beetroot - its the only place that makes bearable hippie food (and I say this as a hardened vegetarian - no meat since 1987) - no wholemeal pottery and heavy heavy bread. The food is good even though the presentation leaves a little to be desired. These trips are the closest I ever come to the hippie thing (never been a much of a fan). There's market stalls -- fruit & veg men shouting incoherently (we once saw Julian Clary fingering courgettes here making obscene comments to camera when he was filming one of his terrible chatshows), fishmongers and florists. End of the street are the peepshows and Raymond's Revue Bar - sleeze, pancaked girls hanging out of doorways in fishnets, patent leather thighboots and feather boas coaxing men in and shifty looking clientele sidling out afterwards. Its frequented by alternatives seeking out small designer shops that hide in the backstreets behind Oxford Street, DJ muso lovers in search of rare tracks in record shops that you must know what you're looking for cos there are no sleeves on the records (browsing is hard and because I'm not nerdy enough to figure it out they scare me), and gaymen cutting through to Prowler (Bails's friend N's fave gay sex shop) and Old Compton Street. There ends my tour of Berrick Street.