Summer weather, all the more precious because there's a ten degree temperature drop predicted for tomorrow. We decide on Greenwich - we and half the rest of London. There's a steady stream of people out the exit at Cutty Sark Station. Sundays are good in Greenwich anyway, with the covered market and outdoor markets almost too crowded to walk through.
We head up to The Junk Shop, one of our favourite spots, on Greenwich South Street. It's difficult to move through as well, but here it's because the wares leave little room for the customers. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, most things here are too heavy to take back. I love the little antique medicine bottles, dark blue and green and brown. They remind me of the village doctor's when I was little. He prescribed and filled the prescriptions himself from the mysterious bottles lining his walls. J laughs on the way out when he sees the sign under the Junk Shop's letter slot - no junk mail.
A few doors down is the Halcyon book shop. The signs in the window say every book for a pound. Closing? Maybe, although there are plenty of shops with closing sale/last day signs that have seen quite a few last days. Inside is book heaven - or chaos - depending on your point of view. Some traces of original cataloging remain, masking taped to the shelves, but really anything could be anywhere. And there's a terrific variety of anythings - from a book on canoeing for the disabled to one on the history of Scottish religious services. Quite astonishingly, I actually find a book I'd been looking for - The Reason Why, copyright 1953. Not so surprising that it's in the shop, but quite amazing that I spot it.
Stop for a pie at Goddard's Pie Shop - over a hundred years in the same family serving meat pies and mash or eels. Haven't tried the eels, but we've eaten the pies and the fruit crumbles for over twenty years. Some of the signs on the wall are reproductions from a much earlier time, in line with food traditional in Victorian days.
