Leather Lane

Its raining so not too good to be outside today. Leather Lane is a good compromise, sandwiched between the Grays Inn Road and Hatton Garden the market offers the usual low rent mix of mobile phone accessories, global food (Daddy Donkey's Kick Ass Burito's being a favourite) clothes strictly for fancy dress, knock off DVD's and seeds and nuts for the corpse dodgers.

In amongst this however is some great architecture (in individual buildings) good cafe culture, and a great independent bookstore ( The Soho Bookshop) with a design specialism upstairs and a porn shop in the basement for those who like to mix the two. Haircuts are a fiver, your shoes can be re-soled, and the fellafels from Sara's grocery are authentic.

The nature of markets in London and our relationship with them is strange. If Leather Lane were not there, few would mourn its passing, but as a part of the character of this eclectic part of town, it is as essential as black cabs and red buses. It sells little of value and probably provides grey earnings for a range of illegals and benefit cheats but nevertheless is unique in its diversity and provides part of the flavour for "midtown", hidden from the agents boards and grade a offices the agents sell , separate from the girly bars on the Farringdon Road, discrete from the Victorian splendour of Smithfield and the Holborn Viaduct and cheek by jowell with the precious metal dealers and diamond merchants of Hatton Garden. Indeed the difference between the traders in Leather Lane and Hatton Garden is hard to see beyond the sharp suits and doorway heavies. This analogy could be stretched to include those who ply there trade in Grey's Inn as well but with less obvious doorway heavies.

As a footnote a good place to spin off is Brookes Market, now no longer a market but a square notable for its european influences (if you can see beyond the preponderance of Camden bins) and the beautiful gothic of St Albans the Martyr in the corner. Here on a rainy day, it is possible to still sit beneath the impermeable canopy provided by the London Planes and dream of better days.