And Another Thing

6 December 2008

Plus ça change in the bustling hurly-burly of Westbourne Grove

A new fashion is already making its appearance: specialist jewellery shops. They sell pretty stuff, too. Earrings as worn by Carmen Miranda in The Road to Rio, necklaces from the days of Pola Negri and Louise Brooks. Brooches to entice Jobyna Ralston or Georgia Hale, from Gold Rush times. Some of these alluring objects please even my coldly critical eye, and I may be tempted to stop window-gazing and step inside if the slump brings prices tumbling after Christmas. The assistants in these hopeful shops are quite ravishing, not a hint of muffin-tops or bingo-wings. They give me such soulful smiles if I peep my head tentatively through the doorway. Will the fashion last? Oh no. What will be next? Gloves, à la Yvette Guilbert, perhaps.

Meanwhile the restaurants come and go. One corner site, which used to be a NatWest bank years ago, has had five eateries in turn that I can remember. Now it is occupied by something called, I think, Ping Pong. Maybe it will last. Across the lane on another transit-camp site is an oriental gobble-joint whose name would have made even Charles Lamb squirm — Urban Turban. It looks awfully neat. But as Major Yeats RM says, ‘I wouldn’t borrow half-a-crown to bet on it.’ What I hope will endure is the little Sicilian joint I have been using, tucked into an obscure entry, where the roast monkfish reminds me of the Hotel de la Poste in Avallon. But the name remains a secret or I might find Michael Winner there. Ugh!