My current neighbourhood

serves the most expensive breakfast in the world in a building site

cakes in the local market - freshly baked this year

wondering if I can fit the whippet in my luggage

not sure if I'm going to be able to say goodbye - hoping that he's fold-able and I can take him with me next week.

The weather's been moody as an adolescent - the whippet made me go out and has hauled me through woods bulging with fungi but I'm far too much of a coward to pick any of it.

In the market today fierce people bullied me into buying at least ten times more vegetation than I can possibly eat - I show  them how much I want and they throw their arms up and shout something like

There's no bloody point selling that poxy amount - it's a kilo or nothing

Other market trophies include an uncooked blood sausage that I think needs boiling and some smoked cod that I think is eaten raw and some tins of smoked cod liver which is my favourite thing in the world but I'd forgotten it existed.

Tardis Belly

Sourdough bread, butter and honey

Apricot tart

Argentinian empanada

Pastry filled with Dulce de Leche

Chinese ribs with fresh noodles

Salt cod rissole

Portuguese custard tart

A Morroccan chicken pasty the size of a big man’s fist

Rice pudding

That’s what went in to my stomach today and unsurprisingly it is making low growly noises, I embarked on a weekend of eating my way around the London markets starting yesterday at Broadway Market in Hackney. This morning I made an early dash to Chiswick Farmers Market to buy lamb and cake with Half a Pop Group before joining the seething masses along Brick Lane.

Fortification is needed for Brick Lane, among the sci-fi film extras and stoned rocknroll types with their big coats, bigger hair and wacky hatsneyewear there are a phenomenal amount of people dragging suitcases along.

And there is an overwhelming amount of food - I wanted it all – well lots of it, not the lump of mashed potato that was being stirred around in tepid oil but I did want warm pepper and chorizo rolls and latkes and samosas ... but most of all after a very short period of squeezing my way through the crowds I needed to sit down.

Seeing a vacant chair placed at a table covered with a rose-printed oilcloth, I asked the lady standing behind the counter if I could have whatever she was serving. She turned and shouted at the curtain behind her, a man emerged and picked up a lump of white dough from a floured counter top, he swung it around, fast, forming long ropes which he drew out to make thinner. When he had made a whole skein of fat string he threw it into a boiling cauldron, fished it out a minute later, placed it in a bowl, added broth and ribs and put the ensemble on the rose-printed cloth where I was sitting - it was the most delicious thing in the world.