Golborne Road

I went down to the market this morning to buy a pineapple.

There's an old man who runs a fruit stall at the front of one of the closed shops half way along.

He's been there forever, but until today I'd never bought anything from him.

Striking up conversation over the desired fruit he told me they weren't very good at the moment, so he didn't sell them. If I'm lucky I can get one on Portobello.

In an attempt to tease a bit of local history out of him I continued the conversation with some of my own 25 year old memories of the area. This didn't work. He kept on repeating that he didn't like the new people coming to his manor.

He's got a lot to choose from. The Moroccan stall holders that mainly occupy this street running of Portobello Road can hardly be described as new arrivals. Neither can the West Indians who arrived in the 1950's. They there's a new branch of Ally Capellino at the end of the road, with long haired, well spoken Trustafarians walking in and out. Maybe this is what he was objecting to.

Around the corner I saw the woman who runs Temptation Alley, the shop selling brocade on the corner of Portobello. I asked her about the rent. She told me that wasn't the problem, but the local rates which were laughably high. Yesterday she went £20 into the black.

I don't know how the man on the fruit stall makes a living. I asked to take his picture, he laughed and said no. There are a lot of requests from people like me documenting the area. He's too tired to charge us for the privilege. Too tired to make conversation and just too tired generally.

It would be a shame not to have some record of this section of Portobello life. I could have retreated across the road with a long lens, but it didn't seem right. Maybe some day he'll feel like chatting, but not today.

In the mean time I found my pineapple on a stall run by a north African chap just a few yards away. It was fine.