Well, Notting Hill is pretty damn nice actually. In addition to the amazing Coronet cinema, there’s the usual plethora of nice cafés, discounted book stores and overpriced charity shops but what really made it for me was Recipease, one of Jamie Oliver’s restaurant-cum-café-cum-grocery store. I cannot even begin to describe what it’s like to go food shopping and see a chef out the corner of your eye whipping up a sponge cake a mere few yards away. I totally died and went to foodie heaven. That, and coming across my first ever branch of Butlers , which is a German home interiors shop were definitely some of my weekend highlights. I have just realised how middle aged I sound now, so let’s move on.

It’s only when your Sunday morning is spent trawling through the abundance of greasy spoons in New Cross that you begin to realise that you might have overdone it on the previous night’s Cuban Daiquiris. Hangovers are becoming more prevalent now than ever, but a stroll through Kensington Gardens and  along the Bayswater Road was exactly what I needed. Well, that and the 2 paninis and loaf of brioche I scoffed in W2 that afternoon.

Every Sunday, Bayswater Road plays host to a number of artists across London, all looking to sell work along their individual pitches on the pavement. It’s comparable to Montmartre in Paris, albeit with less mimes and artists asking to create a caricature of your face.

After a considerable amount of browsing, I’d pretty much fallen for this work by Liz Lees, one of the artists there. Her illustrations are so adorable, and with Mother’s Day approaching scarily soon, I reckon you should opt for a unique gift like this, rather than caving in to Thornton’s the afternoon before Mothering Sunday. I’m not making a trip to Habitat for frames for another week, so I’m going to keep this painting firmly in its brilliant packing until then. If I can, I’m going to salvage this Bayswater Road Tape that Liz used for the wrapping.

Also, I made a Friday night jaunt to the new Rosemarie Trockel show at The Serpentine Gallery, and after my previous ravings about how good the Jonas Mekas retrospective was, it’s a bit weird saying that this show is just as brilliant. But really, it is. I did only spend 10 minutes in the first gallery mind, but the rest of it was awesome. From stop frame animations to beautifully illustrated books, this is definitely one of those shows that I imagine I’ll keep revisiting until the exhibition closes on April 7^th. If you are over that way fairly soon though, I recommend you take a really close look at the 12 handmade notebooks in the glass vitrine. Seeing exhibitions in their opening week is always an interesting experience anyway; when I arrived it seemed that they still hadn’t quite decided on how much light they needed projecting through to the gallery space so every now and then I was sporadically plunged into momentary darkness.

Before I forget, I’d like to share something that happened in Koenig shortly after, which peeved me off a little. Koenig is the Serpentine's tiny little bookshop that sits in its foyer. Like everyone else, I was innocently having a mooch through the artist monographs on sale when suddenly, this couple of young twenty-something hipsters walked in, and the guy hipster pounced on the unsuspecting bookshop assistant. Now, it's a very small bookshop so you can hear everything regardless, but said hipster is one of those that speaks unnecessarily loudly (and sounded quite toff-like...). Their conversation went a little like this:

Hipster: You work here?
Bookshop Assistant: Eum, yes... can I help you
Hipster: I'm on my way to the airport and it's a long flight. I need a book. Recommend one.
Bookshop Assistant: What type were you thinking?
Hipster: An art book
Bookshop Assistant: Yes, I assumed that, but what kind o-
Hipster: Something readable, I don't have time to browse.

Bookshop assistant quickly scours the shelves surrounding him.

Bookshop Assistant: Well, Gombrich's Story of Art is a classic, and really readable
Hipster: Are you being serious?
Bookshop assistant: My god (!). I read that book when I was fourteen. You cannot be serious.

....

at that point, I was itching to interject and say "What, you read that a whole 6 months ago?". but I managed to restrain myself. If there's anything that annoys me in retail, it's a rude customer (and this is coming from someone with zero retail experience). But what made it so much worse was the snobbery and arrogance executed by this egotistical somethingorother. I mean, how was the Koenig guy meant to know that anyway, he was only being helpful. After stating that the Koenig guy was inept at helping him, the two hipsters remained in the shop, with the other hipster bragging loudly to the other about how utterly amazing she's doing in her Art History major. Eugh. Yawn.

Anyway, another weekend over in what seems like 2 shakes of a marmoset’s tail and I'm already anticipating this forthcoming one, which is going to be spent eating obscene amounts of Victoria Sponge with my Grandma. Brilliant.