A Walk in London's Columbia Road Flower Market with My Sister

Eat Sleep Dreamers welcome. Look who is back! Hello! My sister. We are in Columbia Road flower market

Hey guys, how's it going? Check out who is with me! I'm back again. Yeah, it's my sister

again. This is getting silly now. So we've come to Columbia Road flower market which

is easily my favourite flower market in London and you've never been. Never been before.

Annie hadn't been. I was telling her that I was coming here and she said 'oh I've never

been' so I was like 'well come along'. I jumped aboard. How are you liking it so far? It's

amazing. We were just saying this is hidden London. This is not your Leicester Square,

Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square this is hidden authentic London and it's fantastic.

If you come to London you have to come to Columbia Road. I've actually done a video

about Columbia Road flower market a while ago. Check it out. But yeah, we thought we'd

just come here and hang out. We've had brunch and it's a special day for us, right? Yeah.

We needed to be together today. Yeah, so it would be our mother's birthday today, sadly

she is not with us any more but we wanted to get together and just tell some stories

to each other. Yeah, I think Mum was a huge influence on both our lives, she was a very

formative character and we just wanted to chat about her today. It's a day where we

like to remember her and just like to be together. Alright, so the last time I was here I was

filming for Eat Sleep Dream and I bought some flowers for Mum so it felt right to kind of

come here. That really made her day. Yeah, I got her some sun flowers. It really cheered

her up. She liked them. So our Mum was quite good at sleeping. I think that's the main.

If there's one thing I know about my Mum it was her ability to sleep. And well you've

inherited that. I have, yeah I have. You can sleep anywhere. I'm so jealous. Yes, I can

sleep anywhere. So she had this remarkable ability to fall asleep anywhere anytime. During

programmes, you would be half way through a programme with her and say 'oh that's hilarious

Mum....oh you are asleep!' She's like, snoring away. Yeah and there was one time where she

was trying to boil an egg and she fell asleep. Well she went to sit down and she fell asleep

and she woke up to this bang. There was a loud bang and she went into the kitchen and

the egg had exploded. She'd been asleep for like twenty minutes. And all the water had

gone out of the pan. All the water had gone, yeah, she did that twice, not once, twice.

It was quite a gift. Yeah, so now I've got that ability to just fall asleep anywhere

on a bus, on a train, when she's talking. Another thing about our Mum, food related,

is I don't think we have ever known her willingly turn down a cup of tea. If you ever said to

Mum 'Do you fancy a cup of tea?' Even if she has just finished her last cup of tea, she

would say yes. Yeah, absolutely. She loved a cup of tea. She's never knowingly turned

one down. Yeah, I mean she would have like four, five, six cups of tea a day. There was

no limit. There was no limit to how much tea she could drink. And actually that was her

favourite, the man that she bonded with most in hospital was the tea man who used to come

round with a tea trolley. Mokhtar was his name? Yeah Mokhtar. She loved him. They had

a very close relationship, he knew exactly how she liked her tea.

I think one of the most adorable things about our Mum, she was an incredibly positive person.

And that's something you have definitely picked up from her. And so you get your positivity

and optimism from Mum. Yeah definitely. But she was like always positive. Yeah but to

another level. And if we were ever together, her favourite thing in the world was spending

time with me and Tom just hanging out. She used to take it to another level, we'd be

sitting maybe having a picnic and she would say things like 'Don't you think darlings

this really is the perfect grass.' Yeah yeah yeah. And I mean, it was ok grass. Yeah it

was alright. It was just grass but for her, because she was with us in that moment, it

became the perfect grass. Yeah everything was perfect. Yeah exactly,she just embraced,

she really appreciated the moment. So when you were somewhere she would really appreciate

being there with you. And I think we've taken that with us, even today it's been a really

lovely day just being together and appreciating being here. And I think we have definitely

inherited that from her. The small things as well like she was so good at appreciating

the small things in life. And I mean you know, she could appreciate things on many different

levels but really just the little things like sitting down with a nice cup of tea after

a long day, she took so much joy from that and I think we also can appreciate that. Yeah,

like you are appreciating that coffee right now. I have appreciated this coffee. This

is good coffee! You go on about coffee. She's seriously addicted. Yeah, it's all new. It's

a whole new world out there Eat Sleep Dreamers but it's a good one. Yeah, I need a coffee

every morning to wake up, just to bring me back into the world. And an egg. And an egg

, yeah.

Alright one story that you reminded me of was the food. Out of date food so food that

was old. Tell us about that story. Well, just Mum was a bit of a hoarder. We loved her but

she did love to acquire things. Yeah that means someone that holds on to possessions

so that you have too many possessions. She couldn't really let things go, this included

food that quite often were past its sell-by-date by years and years and yet she would still

keep hold of it. And so there was one time we were having scones and we went to get some

jam from the fridge and we opened up the top and it was covered in mould. Yeah that was

bad. She said 'oh darling, I'm so surprised. I'm sure that was absolutely fine.' And there

was another time when she served us some pasta, some brown pasta. She was very healthy, wasn't

she? Very healthy. But this was maybe when we were, we were quite young. We were quite

traumatised by it, weren't we? Yeah, it was like 1998 that maybe she served us this food

and we looked at the packet because it tasted a bit strange and it was from the 1980s. Like

literally it had gone off like 10 years before. A decade ago. Yeah or more. This was our Mum,

she never wanted to throw things away. It's a good trait in many ways but when it comes

to food not so good. You had to be careful. You had to check the dates of all the food

she made you. Well we became a bit weary, didn't we? It was always a bit of a nerve-wracking

experience going into her fridge, what were we going to find? What little like growths

or like strange animals or whatever.

Alright, so a huge part of the reason why Eat Sleep Dream English exists is because

of Mum, right? Because she was a teacher, an English teacher, and she was kind of the

reason that I became an English teacher so yeah a lot of this of Eat Sleep Dream English

relates to her. She was so proud of you doing it. And it was lovely because you actually

looked after her a lot when she became quite ill at the end and you were able to do your

Eat Sleep Dreaming around it so it meant that you could be there for hospital appointments

and you know just being good company for Mum. It's a bit lonely when you are ill and so

it was lovely that you could be there for her. And so Eat Sleep Dream came out alongside

that and she was so proud of what you'd done and what you are carrying on doing. Yeah,

the best thing was when Annie would come visit us for dinner. Mum and I would start talking

about English grammar or phrasal verbs. Oh it was so interesting! And you would be like

'oh my!''Jeez! These guys! And we'd bore Annie and her family completely with our like boring.

I learned a lot though. Yeah yeah. But yeah we just like to sort of like I guess geek

out, sort of talk about English grammar and English vocabulary and how interesting it

all is. Yeah she loved that kind of stuff, so that's kind of cool. Alright so we're going

to go and pick some out some flowers. You're going to go and get some flowers to take home.

I will do. So when I was young i used to buy her a lot of lillies because her name was

Hilary and I couldn't say Hilary so I used to say Lily. So I always used to buy her lillies.

Yeah, alright shall we have a look see what we can find. Let's find some flowers. Cool.

Alright so we've just popped away from the market for a minute because it's a little

bit noisy. It's madness. It is crazy, isn't it right? Good fun though. Yeah really fun.

So yeah talking about Mum's bad habits, tell us about the telephone. Ah the telephone was

awful. So you'd have a really nice chat with Mum for about twenty minutes and then you'd

have to go because it was the end of the conversation and at that point she'd go 'oh darling just

one more thing.' And this one more thing would lead into another thing and another thing

and another thing and you'd be desperate to get off the phone and it was at that moment

she suddenly felt the need to tell you everything. Why hadn't she told you in the first twenty

minutes? She had to save it for right at the end. 'Just one more thing.' 'Just one more

thing.' 'Darling just one more thing'. So that's when we labelled her the hardest woman

in the world to get off the phone and it's official right? Yeah, so if you wanted to

get off the phone you had to sort of plan it. You'd be like I need to go in ten minutes,

I need to go and meet my friends so I'll start saying goodbye. You'd start wrapping it up.

Yeah 'let's wrap it up' So 'alright Mum I've got to go'. Ten minutes later, that's when

you get of the phone. Finally! And even then it was always a wrench, wasn't it? She just

couldn't bare it. Yeah yeah. So guys, We'd really love to know about your Mums.Do you

have any funny stories to tell about your Mum? Her character, the things that she does,

the little quirks. What makes her your Mum? What makes her your Mum and what makes her

amazing? Yeah, let us know in the comments below. We both read the comments, love seeing

what you guys say and share your experiences with the Eat Sleep

Dream community.

So we've got some flowers. I got some lavender. And I went for roses. Very nice. Very traditional.

Classic.Have you had a good time? Ah it's been so nice. Just lovely to think about Mum

today and be together, it's the perfect Sunday. Yeah, have you enjoyed coming to Columbia

Road flower market? Love Columbia Road flower market! Definitely make it your destination

when you come to visit London. It's a really cool place huh? Yeah. And really easy to get

to, like a couple of minutes from Old Street station, super easy. It's really close by

and nice places for coffee. Sorry, coffee again. Yeah coffee again! Coffee and flowers.

That's the perfect day. It's open on a Sunday so come down on Sunday morning. It's open

until about three o'clock, perfect place to come. At 2 o'clock they'll probably start

flogging off all the flowers, won't they? Yeah, you get a good deal. Yeah absolutely.

Alright, let's do this again because I've enjoyed it. Let's hang out again. It's been

good. Bye Eat Sleep Dreamers. Thanks very much for watching guys, take it easy.