Finding Hanks - Spittlefields Market

Life takes turns from time to time and you never know what’s around the corner, so I suspect that this’ll be the last of the London blogs for a while. When you live in an adult world it is quite possible to wander of in your separate directions in a perfectly amicable fashion, so I wish Kes all the best and there will certainly be more mentions of Wiltshire again in these pages

In the mean time, last week once again found me sitting in MacDonald’s drinking a cup of tea and secretly nibbling on somebody elses croissant and thinking I had a distinct shortage of guitar picks in my pocket, so a quick surf on my phone gave me the address of Hank’s guitar shop – in all my wanderings, I had never seen a music shop in London – they must be there, but where, I don’t know. Opening time was still 3 hours away so I thought I would start my wanderings at Spittlefields market and see where they lead from there.

A Thursday morning at Spittlefields is apparently Antiques and Collectables day and there is no doubt that there were some antiques and collectables there but it was mainly junk. Tables piled with bits of jewellery and broken watches, with no attempt at organisation, loose pages of old books and some very scruffy stuffed animals – in fact almost anything was for sale as long as it was a bit bashed about. Actually were it next door to me and I wouldn’t have had to carry purchases the length of the country, I would have come away with a tonnage of stuff – an unusual victory for common sense.

After a wander around Spittlefields, I was feeling a little peckish when I spotted the S&M café – just the very dab. Apparently S&M stands for sausage and mash – to be quite honest I never thought it could have stood for anything else. An excellent sausage sandwich there (on which to test out the selection of 4 types of mustard on the table) and a mug of tea naturally.