The Dark Side of the Spoon

W11 is a very strange place, and I’m not sure about it at all. I’ve been in London 20 years on and off in 12 and a half months, and until Chelsea in 2005 I’d never really done West London.

But even that was nothing to the Imaginary World that is Notting Hill. I have never seen so many of such low calibre so far up their own bottoms. The other half of the population are descended from Martin Amis’ 1989 creation Keith Talent, antihero of ‘London Fields’. Keith himself runs a stall right next to the one I work on Portobello Market on Saturday.

“Let’s have a go at these, they’re cheap, clear ‘em up.”

That’s what Keith Talent says.

Anthony Worrall Thompson was in the shop the other week. I didn’t serve him, as I was packing dates in the basement at the time, but I watched him on the CCTV.

My colleague thought he might have been Rick Stein. Nah. I can tell one celebrity chef from the other.

It’s nice to know alot about something most people don’t know much about. I enjoy explaining the whole science of this thing. When I am talking to someone who is genuinely responsive, who is obviously interested for whatever reason, I blossom.

These people leave the shop knowing things they didn’t know before. And in the same way that I love to experience new things, bringing new knowledge to people is much the same buzz. They leave the shop with those three or four bags of alchemy, and all the way home they are plotting as to what they can do with them.

It woz me, Guv. It was me wot told ‘em.

Some people, of course (especially round here) just won’t be told. These upper middle class folk zoom around in their SUV’s, in their cock-replacement Lamborghinis, eating their £10.50 a go Full English - no, really, Keith Talent would starve if he had to pay the prices round here - and they sell whatever they’re selling to the tourists.

I’m not saying I don’t. That market stall on a Saturday, I tell you what, my European language skills are coming on in leaps and bounds.

It’s essentially good, but the whole area is reeking of mulitplicity and deceit. Nothing is quite what it seems. It is a reasonable enough area to pass the time, I suppose, but at the same time never suppose any depth here.

Put these well-known facts together. Hugh Grant. Film. Blue Door. Book Shop.

The shop, and the stall, are within a flick of Hugh Grant’s fringe away from all of the above.

It is plain that we are no longer talking about an authentic London market. When Keith Talent was winning darts contests in Portobello pubs (Correct me if I’m wrong MA, but I guess Keith lived in Trellick Tower), maybe. 18 years later, you’d need to know how to say darts in Brazilian. Yes, I know.

But I can learn from all of these people. They can all contribute to what will happen, when darkside is no longer merely midnight ramblings and is a physical thing, with windows and shelves and a door or two and perhaps even some tables and a fridge or two. Who knows?

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 19th, 2007 at 12:19 am and is filed under Spice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.