Amazon sold it for half the price. Instead, I took the bus to Bloomsbury.

On creating memories anchored in place

My son asked for silver ink. He’s into painting and drawing at the moment, and when I told him how I once enjoyed dipping a paintbrush into my pots of Winsor & Newton ink, which came in beautifully-decorated little boxes, he wanted some.    

Amazon sold it, of course. For half the price of the art shops. With just a few taps of my index finger, it could be delivered to my home the next day. And my son wanted it NOW, as five-year olds often do. 

But I decided we’d wait until we had a free morning, and take the bus to Bloomsbury, where my favourite art store is. In my teens and early twenties, I loved going there, to deliberate between a bristle or a sable brush, or whether to get Cobalt or Cerulean blue paint. And I wanted to give my son the opportunity to build memories of acquiring things, which are embedded in place.

Because he’s unlikely to remember the thud of yet another brown card envelope on the door mat. Or the buzzer ringing, and someone saying, ‘Delivery.’

I grew up at a time when you travelled to a shop to buy things. And I have so many memories of inhabiting these physical spaces. Like the one in Florence I visited with my mother as a child, its cool, lavender-scented interior offering respite from the glare of the August sun. Brightly-coloured, patterned tablecloths were piled up on a mahogany table in the centre of the room, and while mum chose one, I was allowed to select a small piece of Florentine marbled stationary.

Later, there were visits to the bead shop in Covent Garden, my hands sifting through boxes of tiny glass spheres, light pouring in through the plate glass windows. Or flicking through second hand albums at the musty-smelling Record and Tape Exchange in Notting Hill Gate, thrilled when I chanced upon an original Andy Warhol cover of the Rolling Stones album, Sticky Fingers.

I still hold the richness of these past worlds close. Worlds which cannot be replicated by tapping my index finger across a phone screen.

So off we went to Bloomsbury, on the top deck of the number 24 bus, passing a Camden pub, its façade so crumbling we were convinced it had closed down, although the bloke in the seat in front of us assured us it hadn’t. We got off on Tottenham Court Road, and walked down Great Russell Street, thronged with tourists and families heading to the British Museum, and entered the calm of L.Cornelissen & Son.

After we found the silver ink, my son slid open some of the wide, shallow drawers, dotted around the room, and marvelled at how an entire one contained only green oil pastels, in a multitude of shades, and another only pen nibs. ‘I like how the shop smells,’ he said. And so did I: a fragrance concocted from something like linseed oil, charcoal and heavy paper.

‘Thank goodness it’s still here,’ a fellow customer said to me, explaining how she’d been coming for decades. And at a time when physical spaces are, ever-increasingly, being replaced by virtual ones, a room such as this - where an entire wall is lined with glass jars of pigment powders with names like Rottenstone Pink, Shungit or  Spinel Black -  feels more precious than ever.

We paid at a timber desk, waiting for the girl serving us to write the cost of each item on a small piece of paper, then tot it up at the till. Then we strolled past the Georgian houses on Bedford Square, before catching the bus home.

Going shopping is often dismissed as either something frivolous, or an inconvenience. But shopping originated in the markets of the ancient world, and is anchored in public space and in human connection.

I am grateful for the ease of online shopping, and no longer having to trudge back from Sainsbury’s, arms burning from the weight of my bags. But when I step into the local greengrocer’s, to buy a peach, gently pressing its velvety surface to check if it’s ripe, and watch the face of the woman who works there light up on spotting my son, and see her offer him a hug and an apple, I’m reminded why we still need these physical spaces. They are ones we can inhabit with our body and with our senses. And spaces in which we can connect with one another.     

Love,

Annabel x

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