We’re unlocked and out and about once more . However, we still won’t go indoors.
“The Writer” has this nightmare that he has been called up for his vaccination and goes down with Covid on his way to have the jabs, so we continue to be obsessively careful.
Our first trip was to our favourite Dean St. Town House restaurant for lunch.
They have been meticulous about the regulations throughout, using only every alternate one of the tables shown here.When we come with Tod and Trish, they let us have two tables so we can sit far enough away from our great friends to satisfy even my husband and shout intimacies to one another across the space. We ate fish and chips in the rain and cold today, unsurprisingly the only people outside, and received stares of amused wonderment from passers-by. But, oh the bliss of not having to load the dishwasher!! And, yes, I am aware what a First World complaint that is.
During our brief tour of Soho after luch in an effort to walk off about half of one chip, I noticed once again, that, despite the joyous unlocking, Berwick St., site of a food market since the eighteenth century, had only one trader throughout its entire length.
OK. it was a dreary day but there used to be at least 20 stalls here, come rain or shine.
The single remaining stall is The Soho Dairy
Robin Smith, the owner, looked cheerful enough but that was a brave face. He complains that the council increased the pitch fees for stallholders by twenty percent in the middle of July and backdated them three months, at a time when most Soho workers are working from home so there is hardly any footfall. He is convinced that the only reason the council could have behaved in this way is that they want to get rid of the market. I hope they don’t. We don’t shop there much because the truth is that the produce, particularly the fruit and veg., is of pretty variable quality but surely improving such an historic market is the solution, not getting rid of it?
Locked down in London 