Seen at Kingsbury tube station yesterday. Marie Antoinette, well known for taking the “off the shoulder look” to extremes. If the V&A cafeteria has not booked in extra supplies of cake, they are missing a trick.

On my search for sandalwood shaving cream from Taylors of Old Bond Street, because it makes having a shave more of a pleasure and less of a chore, I missed the shop because I was so gobsmacked by the prices in this tailor shop on the corner of Piccadilly Arcade. Taylors, although of Old Bond Street is, peculiarly enough, in Jermyn Street. Look at the price tag on the blue jacket.

I mean, its a nice jacket. But initially retailing at £1750, now a snip at £995? People who might think that a bit of a steal have no idea what life is like for most of us – or possibly do and don’t care a great deal. The slogan on the back of Melania Trump’s jacket stating exactly that while touring immigration detention facilities on the US Mexico border was such an in your face message – and so obviously true – that commentators tried to pretend that it was irony. Let them eat wormy food. The popularity of these people is now being shown in the attendance figures for her Biopic. Almost empty cinemas casting a hollow echo to their narcissistic presumption.

I wandered off down the street looking into other shop windows and found a pair of beautiful, highly polished brown shoes retailing at £605 (for the pair, not each). You would be afraid to actually wear a pair of shoes like that. Maybe you’d put them in a cabinet. Possibly at the V&A.

I recall once dispersing from a teachers unions march to defend our pensions, with my school union group banner slung over my shoulder, walking through the usual rush and bustle on the East side of Picadilly circus, all the tatty tourist barking from the Trocadero and that slight sense of sleaze that spills over from being so close to Soho, passing through a sort of portal at the top of Lower Regent Street, which was packed with black bomber jacketed Greek Football fans from one of those continental clubs that still thinks its 1935 (or wishes it was) to emerge into Picadilly proper and a different city, all Royal Academy and Fortnum & Masons; and finding myself being stared at by more than one man wearing a cravatte.

Taylors, however, when I walked back up the street and found it, was delightful. I was expecting a bit of being looked at down at along people’s noses, especially as I was wearing a Keffiyah, but everyone was extremely friendly, polite and helpful. Tiny little shop full of good quality products, attractively arranged, full of people buying them, in a away that felt more cosy than crowded; and an actual barbers shop at the back, smelling like a barbers, so a working shop with products and praxis rooting it in its job, with a couple of plump Turkish looking blokes with their sleeves rolled up ready to do the business wearing welcoming smiles – possibly because I was wearing the Keffiyah. A very polite young man, formally dressed, opened the door for me on the way out. Classy, in a good way.