An Afternoon in Camden

Yesterday I cycled to Camden. I'm feeling it a little this morning, but nowhere near as badly as I expected to. I left Richmond Park at Sheen Gate, then headed up Castlenau to Hammersmith Bridge, then through Kensington, past Hyde Park, then through Regents Park to Camden; It's about a 25 mile round trip.

I found myself sat in the window of a coffee shop slowly imbibing the days coffee and devouring Heller's Catch 22, but my literary meal was regularly interrupted by the sights, sounds and smells of the street.
My nose was assaulted with a strange combination of roasting coffee, exhaust and the sickly aroma of caramelised peanuts from a street seller just a few paces up the street. It's probably the last job you'd want to do with a hangover (besides being a wine taster), particularly if you had a nose as large as this chap did, yet somehow he showed no signs of nausea from the warm toffee aroma surrounding his head.
From the back of the shop, the wailing of a small child was all but drowned out by the sound of the road, but when I moved further into the shop, I realised that the child's mother was engaged in a vociferous argument with someone over the behaviour of her child - "Don't you have children?". Ironically, the kid was so fascinated by this exchange that she was entirely silent while they shouted at each other, only to recommence her wailing when they stopped. Thus the piercing sound of child-scream was replaced by deeper adult-bark, and then back again, oscillating like this for what seemed like an age. Neither adult seemed prepared to step down from the argument, presumably because they both realised it was the only way to keep her quiet.
The street itself was a 3 lane one way high-street which led into a 5 lane junction. The front of the coffee shop was open, and so I was all but sat on the pavement. My first observation was the melting of the paint on the road, which resulted in small tyre prints being left in the red-zone line as cars squeezed too close to the kerb. This was followed by the sight of a man sat on a 1 foot wide ledge, 2 storeys up, in an apartment across the road. He wasn't planning on jumping, just happily sat there reading and enjoying the sunshine. I imagined an elaborate system of hoists within the room helping him to balance so precariously, and yet so nonchalantly, perhaps just to salve my conscience as I did nothing to stop him falling, merely took a photo on my phone.