Day 27: Quantity Street

A job on Chancery Lane, and then a slow wander to Clerkenwell, cutting through the cobbled streets of Smithfield.  In the window of Costa Coffee, a BRACE of skinny young Father Christmae, legs splayed gangsta-style, sucking rudely on cardboard sippy cups.  Not even a suggestion of cotton wool beard or mince-pie belly.  Deeply entertaining, but wrong.  In many ways.  (Well, at least two.  There can only ever be ONE Father Christmas.)   

Past Smithfield, and hard-eyed meat porters.  The Italia Conti Stage School on Goswell Road - purveyor of dreams and stardust.  Show tunes float through the open windows, and teenagers twirl giddily on the pavement outside.  How can they see with sequins in their eyes?  I cross the road by The Hat and Feathers - it's a restaurant now, but the gin palace exterior still shouts knees-up. 

To David's ridiculously glamorous roof-top flat.  Port holes and steel girders!  Acres of wooden floor to slide over in socks!  A basin tap that's underlit blue for cold, and moves through the spectrum to red as you raise the temperature!  A flat screen television that rises from a sideboard at the switch of a button!  A George Clooney-endorsed coffee machine!  Properly grown-up.  I am a peasant twisting my cap up at the Big House. 

David has connections, so we swank off to a private Vivienne Westwood jewellery sale.  It's full of industry people, but surprisingly village hall rummagey - trestle tables heaped with pieces in little plastic bags.  £15.  £20.  £25.  A good 10% of what you'd pay in a shop.  But everything looks trashy.  Like cheap gewgaws from a Petticoat Lane market stall.  Piled high.  Nothing without the theatre of the expensive Bond Street shop, the display cases, the tissue paper and luxury packaging.

There's one thing that catches my eye.  The huge drum of Quality Street next to the till.  Vibrant, shiny, exciting.  Sweet.  And free.  Them's the sequins in MY eyes.  Big, purpley, caramelly, nutty, free sequins.  Razzle dazzle.