Busking brilliance on Columbia Road

Perhaps the best thing about the perfectly imperfect artform we call music is its ability to occasionally catch you in exactly the right mood at the right time and place. Like a rogue dolphin chomping on a beach ball in front of a Butlins audience, an improbable surprise is more pleasing than the best laid plans. 

As such the incidental set of The Good Time Family offered up some tasty blues on a crisp, sunny afternoon on Columbia Road flower market. For anyone who hasn't been, it's one of those places that justifies the gigantic rent and crushed commute of living in our capital. 

The market is full of great indie shops and classic flower traders (quote: "these daffodils [yet to bloom] are as tight as a nun") creating a great atmosphere. The band themselves, busking by the churos stand, play a classic strand of blues standards - earnest yet lively, skillful yet slightly off kilter. 

There's banjos, slide guitar, spoons and even a strange incident I've never seen outside films about the deep south, essentially a tin bath upended with a thick string providing the bass. 

Set against the low sun and freezing temperatures, the music is warming and cheerful, like your nan entering the room with the secret Jammy Dodgers. I often sniff at the irritating, Beatles-playing buskers near the central line platform at Oxford Circus but sometimes it's just nice to act like a tourist and spare some change.