day one
I arrived well at Spitalfields market on monday and was greeted whith a big uh and ah and how far did you have to come with all this lot on your back. Even though it was only a twenty minute ride this morning, I was looking forward to setting up my stall and than not having to worry about my luggage for the rest of the week.
So, I reported my arrival to someone, no idea who that was, no one seamed to bother to even introduce themselves or give us a nice welcome and a plan of the week. It was a bit irritating. Not the proffesional setup I expected after all the rigmoral of applying and beeing accepted, and "we support up and coming designers"-talk and big Swatch sitting on top off all of it.
Most of the monday I was busy setting up my stall, so I quickley forgot there was no one there to turn to if I needed something. You'd be surprised how much time it can take to set up a stall. By the time I had finished monday was allready nearly over again. Just aswell really that it was absolutely dead because of the freezing cold, where nobody wants to spend there lunchbrake shopping in the open.
Hence there wasn't any shoppers, I had some time to have a little look araound all the other stalls ,watch the fashion shows and acclimatice myself a lillte bit. Chating to my next door stall holder who had been there previously, reveiled that it's usually not really worse beeing here, and that she only came for this one day. That's enough she said. Which left me a bit disillusioned and not looking forward to the rest of the week at all.
From my other neighbour I then found out, that we had to take our stuff down for the night, to then put it up in the morning again. Because there was no security on sight. Well, that certainly gave me a shock. I had planed to leave all my stuff at the matket and than go to Enfield, which is about 20 miles north of Liverpool Street, to stay with family for the rest of the week.
Obviously, by the time I had packed up all my goods again, the market was deserted. all the officials where gone and there seemed no where save where I could leave my things. I had no choice but to put it all on my bike again and take a chance, cycling all the way through London with it. I asked the only remaining people who were there to keep an eye on my bags while I go and get my bike, loaded it up and off I went.
Fortunatelly I only had a short ride through the inner city, up to Victoria Park and from there my rout connected onto the canal which took me all the way up north to Enfield. A very nice cycling track, all along maintained very well, with a lot of ducks and geese for entertainment. I even saw my first tame-wild heron, standing there on the path. He couldn't care less, I just cycled straight past him, telling myself not to stop, to just keep going. The bags where groing heavier and heavier and I was getting more and more exhausted and slowly the darknes came creeping over me.
Finally, after tree hours of cycling like mad, at the brink of collapsing, I arrived at Janice's and Stephe's house. They were my Salvation Army. Seriously, I sat down on theire sofa and nearly fainted and just said yes please when they offered me drinks and food. Every little bit of my body hurt. So I sat, waiting while stephe cooked for me, ate like I hadn't eaten for a whole week, had a bath, decided to take the train into town in the morning and fell asleep.
So, I reported my arrival to someone, no idea who that was, no one seamed to bother to even introduce themselves or give us a nice welcome and a plan of the week. It was a bit irritating. Not the proffesional setup I expected after all the rigmoral of applying and beeing accepted, and "we support up and coming designers"-talk and big Swatch sitting on top off all of it.
Most of the monday I was busy setting up my stall, so I quickley forgot there was no one there to turn to if I needed something. You'd be surprised how much time it can take to set up a stall. By the time I had finished monday was allready nearly over again. Just aswell really that it was absolutely dead because of the freezing cold, where nobody wants to spend there lunchbrake shopping in the open.
Hence there wasn't any shoppers, I had some time to have a little look araound all the other stalls ,watch the fashion shows and acclimatice myself a lillte bit. Chating to my next door stall holder who had been there previously, reveiled that it's usually not really worse beeing here, and that she only came for this one day. That's enough she said. Which left me a bit disillusioned and not looking forward to the rest of the week at all.
From my other neighbour I then found out, that we had to take our stuff down for the night, to then put it up in the morning again. Because there was no security on sight. Well, that certainly gave me a shock. I had planed to leave all my stuff at the matket and than go to Enfield, which is about 20 miles north of Liverpool Street, to stay with family for the rest of the week.
Obviously, by the time I had packed up all my goods again, the market was deserted. all the officials where gone and there seemed no where save where I could leave my things. I had no choice but to put it all on my bike again and take a chance, cycling all the way through London with it. I asked the only remaining people who were there to keep an eye on my bags while I go and get my bike, loaded it up and off I went.
Fortunatelly I only had a short ride through the inner city, up to Victoria Park and from there my rout connected onto the canal which took me all the way up north to Enfield. A very nice cycling track, all along maintained very well, with a lot of ducks and geese for entertainment. I even saw my first tame-wild heron, standing there on the path. He couldn't care less, I just cycled straight past him, telling myself not to stop, to just keep going. The bags where groing heavier and heavier and I was getting more and more exhausted and slowly the darknes came creeping over me.
Finally, after tree hours of cycling like mad, at the brink of collapsing, I arrived at Janice's and Stephe's house. They were my Salvation Army. Seriously, I sat down on theire sofa and nearly fainted and just said yes please when they offered me drinks and food. Every little bit of my body hurt. So I sat, waiting while stephe cooked for me, ate like I hadn't eaten for a whole week, had a bath, decided to take the train into town in the morning and fell asleep.
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