Flower stop.

There is something lovely about buying flowers from an old-fashioned flower stall. Whether it's an impromptu loosely-tied bunch for a friend or partner, or a few stems for your home, you can't beat the original Eliza Doolittle-esque London flower sellers. The stall outside Clapham Junction is in an unlikely place for evoking Victorian Covent Garden memories, outside the ugly station entrance, surrounded by betting shops, cheap bars and the odd student comatose after a night out. However, nothing cheers me up more than buying some Lily stems for my dining table, wrapped in a sheet of brown paper and fresh from their water, not in a cheap plastic covering from the local garage. The Lilys I get are deep pink and huge, not pathetic dwindling stems who have been grown in a fake environment. They last ages, and I get to walk home revelling in one of life's little pleasures - buying flowers for yourself, for absolutely no reason at all.