Sunday
I probably never mentioned it, but when I was in Goa, India, staying at the yoga retreat for ten days, I met several lovely Europeans. Two of them were Jo and David, a delightful young couple from London who were just beginning their travels in India. They were planning to stay in India for a few months, but unforeseen circumstances forced them to return to London for a brief interval, and this happened to coincide with the time I was to be in London.
They thoughtfully offered to show Liz and I around the East End of London, neighborhoods they knew well having lived there some years before. We met them at the station and they guided us through quiet Sunday morning streets. The landscape was quite different from the sleek urban central London. These neighborhoods were in a slow decline. Some of the places they pointed out to us had been record stores or dance clubs, but were now closed and boarded up.
And the shops that were there were odd. We passed one small shop filled with the tools and work benches of a carpenter, and the entire back wall was an array of fancy wooden spoons in all shapes and sizes. That was all they sold. Spoons. The place looked rundown, like it had been there forever. But Jo and David said it was new. I guess you have to have your workshop somewhere, but how on earth did he have enough customers in such a neighborhood? I don’t know how he would have enough customers in any neighborhood to only be selling spoons. It still seems unreal.
Just beyond the odd spoon shop, we stopped for breakfast at the restaurant just inside the Hackney City Farm. They served a rustic eggs and bacon breakfast with toast. David said it was organic and the eggs came from the animals on the farm. Just outside the restaurant was a small working farm, with chickens and goats and a few cows in a field surrounded by a barn and a chicken coop. Along the side, was a vegetable and flower garden.
Apparently, this is not the only city farm in London. It’s part of a system of city farms created to help acquaint city kids with farm animals and the reality of life outside the city. I’d never heard of such a thing but when you think about it, it’s such a great idea. How many city kids might go their whole childhood and never see a cow or a chicken? But with these city farms, parents take their kids to the park and they see and learn about the farm animals as well as the vegetable and flower garden. I was impressed.
After the farm, we strolled through the streets and found the East End Flower Market. It starts early in the morning, so when we arrived in early afternoon, it was meant to be winding down, but it was so crowded you could barely walk forward. It was a small lane lined with adorable shops full of antiques, and cooking bits. One shop was down a hallway and opened into a room covered wall to wall in maps of the earth and the stars and the universe colored in a most amazing way I can’t describe. But the shop was so small it was claustrophobic.
So this small lane with unusual shops was lined with flower stalls one after another that spilled into the street in such a way that there was about enough room between the building and the stalls for one person and another person could squeeze past going the other way, and in the middle of the street the stalls faced off with each other 3 or 4 people wide. So many people crowded in to see the flowers, it was sort of battle to push on through the crowd to the next stall. And some people were actually buying flowers, in some cases huge bouquets. Apparently, that’s a thing you do when you live in London on a Sunday – especially this sunny Sunday.
The special thing about this flower market is that it’s been running for generations and all the flower hawkers are men from the East End, scrappy working class men with their East End accents, calling out the price of the flowers they’re pushing, like auctioneers. In the commotion, I didn’t notice this until Jo pointed it out, but once she did, I caught on right away. Just one of the nice things about having a local guide when you travel – they point out these things.
We didn’t buy any flowers since we wouldn’t be able to enjoy them really, but we took lots of pictures. They were so beautiful, it was hard to stop. Unfortunately, I only got one good picture of a salesman.
After we muscled our way to the end of the flower market, we emerged from the crowd and spilled back into the street. By the end, you kind of forgot you were on the street, until suddenly you were, and there was nothing – just pavement. A handful of people were milling around, but if felt so abandoned after the claustrophobic crowd of the market. We walked on, down the lonely street.
Jo and David guided us to what can only be London’s best kept secret – the canal! Yes – London has a canal. And there’s a paved path down the side of it that you can walk along and enjoy the scenery that it provides. It passes along a typical East End neighborhood, somewhat gritty and rough and eventually ends up in a very posh ritzy, gentrified area with pubs and restaurants and all new, ultra-modern upscale apartments – the sort of places the average person can only imagine living. It was quite eye-opening.
And at the end, the canal receded into a beautiful forested wood along its banks – a park, I suppose, where city folk can get away from the city without actually leaving it. That part had an atmospheric houseboat anchored in it that reminded me a lot of the canals in Amsterdam. And while it didn’t look like an extra-ordinary houseboat, it was apparently, quite a prize to be able to be anchored in that spot. Permits and all make it prime real estate.
The day was drawing to a close and we asked David and Jo to take us to what they would consider a classic pub. We walked through a quiet residential neighborhood that had an eerie feeling of decline. And perhaps that was not just my imagination since the pub was closed. Permanently. David and Jo were utterly surprised – couldn’t believe one of their favorite and long-standing pubs had closed. And that kind of formed my impression that London neighborhoods are currently experiencing a whole range of aspiring and declining. Some are coming up, while others are sinking. Perhaps this is a phenomenon of old cities, but it is certainly a new thing for me. I don’t recall noticing this sort of thing anywhere in the States.
Lacking a pub, we ended up in the nearby and recently gentrified shopping district for a bite to eat. It was a lovely day being on tour with genuine Londoners, but it was a ridiculous amount of walking. Liz and I were both exhausted and departed soon after eating to return to our room for a long night of rest. Hopefully, we’ll be refreshed for tomorrow’s adventures.
