Got up at ten to five and caught almost the first tube from Holland Park to Mile End where Sally Muggeridge and husband David Williams rescued me from the clutches of 3 chivalrous cockneys and bore me off to Billingsgate Market. This used to be beside the Thames just west of the Tower but now sits alongside Canary Wharf, incongruously under the new towers of HSBC and Barclays.
The market was in full swing and my eyes were out on stalks at the fabulous display of fish and seafood of all kinds. It is a retail market so anyone can go and buy there. Saturday is the busiest day.
At 7 o'clock a brass band struck up and we took part in a short Harvest Festival service conducted with great aplomb by Canon Flora Winfield, with the market buying and selling continuing quietly in the background. What an experience, especially when you rejoin the rest of the world at about 8.30 (after breakfast with kedgeree - what else?) with a sense of virtue at having been 'up and doing' so early.
Do go next year if you can.
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