Ken Market

Kensington Market used to sit at 49–53 Kensington High Street, a three-storey indoor maze of stalls and dreams. Between the ages of 16 and 18—1988 to 1990, back when London still had places like that—I used to go there alone, working hard at building up my Goth credentials.

I bought a pair of winkle-pickers so long and pointed they made my stick-thin drainpipe legs look like they ended in black arrows. I spent what felt like hours—but was probably just angsty minutes—talking to tattoo artists I was too nervous to actually book time with. I hung around the stalls admiring Teddy Boys in fat loafers and chequered jackets, listening (incongruously) to Black Uhuru. It all felt thrilling and dangerous and deeply important. Somewhere between My Beautiful Laundrette and DEF II.

It's funny to think now: even though I believed I was ducking the mainstream, slipping into the darkened alleys of the undefinable, the BBC had already nailed it—had nailed me. The BBC! About as cutting edge as a packet of Digestives and a cup of PG Tips.

Patchouli was everywhere.

Eventually, in the basement of Kensington Market—dark, slightly damp, smelling of disinfectant and burnt toast—I decided to get a tattoo. I chose the Eye of Horus. It felt ancient, mystical, powerful. A secret symbol. Mine.

The market’s gone now. Torn down, paved over, turned into something cleaner and sadder. And the tattoo’s gone too. I had it lasered off a few years back—not because I stopped believing in ancient magic, but because The Sisters of Mercy used the Eye of Horus on one of their album covers not long after I'd had it done. From then on, everyone assumed I was just a huge Sisters fan. Which would have been fine, except I wasn't.

I liked them well enough. But there was something about the image they built that felt... well, a bit pantomime. Black aviator glasses, standing in the rain in oversized leather jackets, trying very hard to look like they didn’t care. I doubted Andrew Eldritch even owned a motorbike. He was more into abandoned warehouses and piles of twisted metal. It was all a bit too... meh.

Still, for a while, I had a symbol inked into me that felt like it was mine. A secret mark from a time and a place that, like Kensington Market itself, has long since disappeared.