Watch repairer, Kensington Market, approx 1994

I’d been going to Kensington Market since I was a teenager, like everyone else, picking up cheap clothes and having terrible fashion sense, but it was a fun place to wander around with your mates on a Saturday. As I got older and picked up a camera when I was eighteen, my bubble extended another metre and I started to notice the world.

Kensington Market, London

Rummaging through my negatives, I found this picture, one of two, taken in approximately 1994 of a stall-holder with his fascinating stall who was just inside the market, very close to one of the entrances. I have no idea of his name or stall’s name, and of course, the market closed exactly twenty-three years ago today on 29 January 2000. Stupid owners. There was no reprieve and the place was demolished a year later. A PC World opened up instead. Honestly, the worst kind of know-nothing overpriced box-pushers, a war crime. Some stalls apparently moved to a new location on Queensway, but that place was filled with junk and tat and I remain heartbroken for the Kensington Market workers, shoppers and future kids that would never be able to go there. Markets are so fundamental to a society that they should have special protection.

Anthony C. Hall, Bookseller, Twickenham

I’ve known Tony since I was a kid, spent hours in his bookshop picking up Thelwell cartoons and old pulp fiction. He is a proper book dealer, specializing in Russian History and Culture, amongst other subjects, but as he once said to me, he has the luxury of having a bookshop as his office. This picture was made around 1993/4 looking into his office. I keep meaning to drop him a note.

He’s not open much anymore, but you can hopefully catch him sometime at 30 Staines Road, Twickenham TW2 5AH. He might be the last of the absolutely independent bookshops in London.

Ruth Rogers and Natasha Devon: Body Gossip

Ruth and Natasha in their Body Gossip t-shirts

Ruth Rogers and Natasha Devon have never stopped campaigning

#BODYGOSSIP: two legends Ruth and Natasha, campaigning on body image issues and mental health. Ruth continues the fight from The Canvas Café off Brick Lane if you’ve not been. I remain gobsmacked by the amount of plastic and cosmetic surgery all over Instagram, and the people who risk it. Natasha was made an MBE for her efforts some time ago, and is to be found here.