Negative Inducing Ray

Buying slippers makes you feel old. Even buying not-very-old-man-style Muji slippers is a brush with Methuselah. However, now that I find myself waking up to all-wood floors on cold mornings, I had to add slippers to today’s shopping list.

As retail was on the agenda, I accompanied Surreal Girl to Portobello Market. It was the first time I had been there since at least 1996. This explains why I was so shocked to find it practically unchanged compared to my eroded memory of it. Jazz still blared from rare vinyl stalls to find itself in constant competition with the wheezing vodon rhythms of a busking drummer who had not seemed position in a decade. Side streets were filled with junk poured onto blankets that you expected to see swept up by street cleaners rather than bought and the number of people around aping on the look of Noel Gallagher remained alarmingly high.

Having bought bargain priced vegetables and assorted goodies from the rather fabulous Spanish shop (including white asparagus, smoked paprika and biscuits), we tried to navigate our way out of the area to catch a 3:30 showing of The History Boys in another part of town. This was no easy task. The weight of the crowds with their constant bump and grind began to take a toll on my ribs. Suddenly the recently purchased window squeegee I was carrying became a Dalek gun. Much to the mortification of my companion, I began to mutter ‘Exterminate’ and point my negative inducing ray in the direction of anyone impolite enough to knock into me without apologising. Proof that even if buying slippers makes me old, I can still be positively childlike.