I had noticed last night when coming home from a friend's party that there was a lot of helicopter activity to the east of Walthamstow, around the top end of the High Street. This had seemed slightly ominous, given the stabbing last weekend. There have been various groups of youths posturing in the town square area and around the Walthamstow Central bus depot, where one of those Lady Diana 'shrines to the fallen' had been permitted to mushroom following the killing. A number of arrests had been made in a tense atmosphere. (The gentleman who was killed has been described by his own family as having an 'association' with gangsters, though exactly what is meant by this is not clear.)

This morning I had to go up to the sorting office on Church Street because I'd had one of those cards through my door saying that a letter had money to pay on it. When I got up there, the letter was not even addressed to my house, but to somewhere in South West London. I was not disappointed though, because it gave me an excuse to buy some delicious satsumas and then go and buttonhole my local MP. I had spotted him where he had set himself up at a trestle table in the middle of the crime hotspot outside Natwest bank in the Town Square. He had a good view of the floral tributes, should he have wished to take advantage of it. I don't know if he had gone up to have a close look or not. He has often hung out at the market in the past, though he has not been well recently. Today he was there on the pretext of campaigning for Fair Trade. As I looked over to the murder scene there didn't seem to be any gangs lurking, or indeed, any kind of trouble going on at all.

I caught Mr Gerrard's eye and then waited till he was free,as he was already chatting to someone. I introduced myself. I wanted to draw his attention to my concerns that Oakam were charging 442% interest on loans being actively targetted to the most vulnerable members of our community. Neil Gerrard is retiring at the next election, which I think is a pity, despite my profound differences with him. [I hoped he'd forgotten but if he hasn't at least he was polite enough to not bring up an incident a few years ago when I got quite frustrated with him and let him know it, in a corridor in the House of Commons, when he'd allowed himself to be whipped into voting for the prolonged detention of children in immigration detention centres]. He has, nevertheless, been a consistent critic of Blairism and opponent of the war in Iraq as well as being a good constituency MP. The rest of his local party must be a big disappointment to him these days.

He made sympathetic noises about the loan sharking: he was aware of the issues around loan sharking and aware of the firms, such as Oakam, I am concerned about. We discussed the local credit union, and I put to him the point that interest rates could be capped, like they apparently have tried to do in places like Queensland. He said he would have a think about the issue and see what the groups like NACAB have to say on the topic, which of course, is all you can ask from your MP when you come at him with an issue out of the blue in the street. I will try to remember to follow up next week by email.

I thanked him, shaking his hand with my sticky satsuma juiced fingers and wandered into the Mall. I noticed that for the first time in ages, BHS was not holding any kind of a sale. I visited the bookshop as I have a book token burning a hole through my wallet at the moment but did not find anything to really inspire me, so I went back out to the market through the other exit. The saxophonist who usually busks near Baltika was outside this entrance to the Mall, near Blue Inc. There is a market stall there on Saturdays in particular which specializes in salad vegetables, and I picked up half a dozen fresh red peppers, a bunch of coriander (with their roots on - it seems the message is finally getting through), and some celery, which came to £1.90. For a moment neither the stall holder or myself could do the calculation, and grinned sheepishly at each other about our mutual hangovers.

I then drifted down the hill, noticing that Bunters Grill still looks like a building site from the outside but was as packed as ever with custom, and that Benny Dee, which closed recently, has been divided in three and all the units are now open. The Haberdashery has moved into the middle of the three units, from its spot at Orientex, which has taken back use of its right hand frontage. It has much more stock now. The corner left unit of the old Benny Dee is another phone and mobile accessories business. They have no sign up to say who they are, but I suspect they may be a reincarnation of the Orientex Mobile kiosk. I will have to check. The third, right hand unit is a bra shop, again with no name available as yet (I was carrying too much shopping to want to go up to people and sort these ones out.) Another day.

The shopping soon necessitated another trip to a bookstore to put the bags down, this time Books Ink. It turns out they take book tokens too, so I may go back some time to stock up. Their classics section is now actually better than that at the book shop in the Mall, I noticed, which has more works by Jeremy Clarkson than Tolstoy and is more expensive. Fiction is still not so hot though at Books Ink.

It was then off down through the market, picking up some bananas, and tutting at the sight of the Romanian shell-game scammers, who have slyly returned after a three or four week summer break following what passes for a crack-down by the local council and police. The bananas preyed on my mind from then on, as images of banana milkshakes drove my feet homewards. I did however notice that there was a fresh consignment of fresh Turkish figs at the Turkish shop (Gazi International Supermarket to give it its real name), being much admired by a small crowd of ladies. I got stuck in. We all agreed they were as near as perfect and ripe as we were going to get (the boxes they were in were still cool from the refrigerated lorry they'd come off, probably only a few minutes earlier. I picked out four for a pound, picked out three heads of chinese leaves (also for a pound) some beef tomatoes (45p a lb), and a loaf of bread with sesame sprinkled on top for 75p. Now I really was laden down, so it was off home, taking "the number 11 bus" all the way.

I caught myself singing happily to myself as I walked along with my bags and began to muse about what a marvelous place I lived in. When I got home, the banana milkshakes were great. I think I'll have the figs with some cream this evening. Sadly, as I write this, I can hear police sirens, but God knows where they are going. Not where I live anyway.