The first time you wander down here you’ll find yourself in a world of tangerine, lemon and lime green paint. It’s just a tiny little courtyard really, but all of the shops are painted in ridiculously happy colours and it always reminds me of those tribes they find in the Amazon rainforest, staring up at the airplanes in the National Geographic. Neal’s Yard is exactly the same as that (sort of) but instead of neanderthals from 10,000 BC it’s full of hippies from the 1960s.
But where is everybody today? It’s totally deserted this morning.
I’m trying to cast my mind back to the last time I saw a hippie… and I mean a real hippy. Do they even exist anymore? I’m thinking of those skinny dudes who smoke stinky cigarettes and strum sunflower songs on their acoustic guitar. The kind of groovy dudes who lived in San Francisco. I haven’t seen a genuine one for ages – maybe all of that free love and drugs wiped them out. Either that or they’re still in bed. I don’t suppose many hippies get out of bed before noon.
Organic food, health and beauty shops
The shops in Neal’s Yard are pretty hippy, too… they’re all health and beauty shops selling coconut this and avocado that. They sell food from Peru, Timbuktu, and stuff sourced from the mountains, volcanos, caves and waves… they’ve got seaweed to eat, nettle shampoo, bamboo… put it this way: it’s not the kind of place where you can do your weekly shop. Not unless you want to eat lentils and dried peas all week.
If you enjoy this then try Covent Garden (you can walk it in 6 mins) and Gabriel’s Wharf (walk it in 18 mins or travel from Covent Garden to Waterloo by tube)
