Early every Sunday morning, I leave my house with a gentle sense of happy anticipation and make the short journey to Columbia Road Flower Market, in the heart of the East End.

I fortify myself with coffee from a cart in the courtyard on Ezra Street and a chat with my friend Sean, who runs a bric-a-brac stall and often saves old books and pamphlets on cooking or gardening for me. And then I head into the market itself, past huge pots of date palms, figs, bamboo and olive trees, onwards to the stalls selling trays of pansies, pinks and stocks for a fiver. ‘They’ll serve you well!’ shout the sellers or, more cheekily, ‘So cheap you can give them to the mother in law!’.

I always stop for a chat with Mick and Sylvia Grover whose stall is crammed with hundreds of herbs in summer, gorgeous Christmas garlands in winter. Sylvia and I talk about the best mints for tea while Mick slips my little dog Barney a treat or two. Next, I visit the neighbouring stall, run by their son Carl, to buy cut flowers. Depending on the season, there’ll be huge bunches of tulips in a dozen or more colours, gorgeous old-fashioned roses, headily-scented lilies and tuberoses, blue and white delphiniums, fiery Chinese lanterns and crocosmia, all as tempting and colourful as sweeties.

Onwards, and between the original prints at Nelly Duff, kitchenware at Keeping House, gorgeous cut paper work at Ryantown and pretty jewellery made from semi-precious stones at Maia, I can happily fill another few hours in my favourite part of London.

Image courtesy of Debora Robertson