I succumbed again today to the luxury fruit bread.  I had a Monmouth flat white as a little treat and headed to Starbucks.  I hate their coffee but really like their fruit bread!  If you go in to a Starbucks, it is the bread with dried fruit in it that looks stale, curled at the edges and unappetising.  But toasted it is fantastic.

And with butter on it it is awesome !

As I walked in to the market at lunch time today, there was music outside the office and a crowd of people.  The pearly kings and queens were raising money.

Love this Bulldog!

For those of you who are not familiar with the pearly Kings and Queens, they are a very old London tradition.  The originated from the ‘costermongers’ who were street traders.  Each area of London had a group of costermongers and the leader acted on behalf of the local street traders.  They were like the first union leaders.  The costers developed their own style of speaking, which pre-dated cockney rhyming slang so they could speak to each other without their customers or the police understanding them.

In the early 19th Century, it was popular for those in wealthy West End Society to wear pearls.  The costers began to sew pearl buttons on their clothes and this developed in to the costumes they wear today.

They spend a lot of time raising money for charity and that is what they were doing today.  They were promoting a new museum:  The Cockney Museum.  If you are interested in knowing more about the pearly kings and queens, this is a good site.

Is it me or does this little guy look like Norman Wisdom?

They were all having fun and it was quite infectious.

I took some time today to wander round the market instead of rushing through it.  I felt incredibly lucky to work in such an amazing city and near to this wonderful market so I took the time to enjoy and appreciate it.

I bought Harvey some different types of liquorice.

I never knew liquorice came from sticks!

Turnips had a new stall of mixed salad leaves so I picked a large selection.  I intend to have a lot of salads this weekend, something my diet has been lacking lately.

I did not make very healthy diet choices for lunch today.  I chose an olive bread stick,

a ‘Tweet Tweet Chocolate Cookie’

and macaroni cheese, which was wonderful.

I had a great day at work today.  I finished a document I have put a lot of effort in to this week and I am really pleased with it.  I enjoy my job most of the time anyway and when you work really hard on something and are pleased with it, you get a tremendous sense of satisfaction from it.  So I left work late again but happy.

Now we have a 3 day weekend to look forward to as it is a bank holiday weekend.   I have neglected my lovely son recently so I am really looking forward to spending 3 days with him.  Happy days.  I hope you all have a great weekend.