I’m pretty sure I went to the first one ever . Somewhere I have the photos to prove it. I do remember, whenever that first one was, that there was a bunch of lovely pumpkins that were lit up at night and they had been carved during a two-day period by children. Fast forward ten years to this festival.
The garden had a stockpile of over a thousand pumpkins and invited people to come to carve them during one crazy weekend. I asked my mentee if she’d like to come carve one with me last Saturday. At the bus stop to go up to the Curve Garden the buses were going to be uncharacteristicaly late. There was an 8-minute wait for buses that usually come a few minutes apart. So I was going to be late. I sent a Whatsapp Message to say so and back came the response.
I didn’t know what that meant but I did know there were over a thousand pumpkins to carve so I formed a mental picture of that. By the time I finally arrived at the entrance to the garden I already knew my mental picture fell a bit short.
Fall is falling! Dalston SquarePeaceful so far!Still peaceful at the entrance but look beyond
When I got inside I could see that the carving tables were already full of busy carvers. The place to get the pumpkins was at the far end of the garden and there may have been 50 people in the queue. I cant believe I found HG somewhere in there but we quickly decided that one pumpkin, at £3 a pop, was the way to go.
Queuing for a pumpkinCarved on the left, new ones on the right! Piled highLet the carving commence! There were several carving tables, all with a monitor
We found a table and took turns holding the baby, who was decked out in a pumpkin theme, drawing lots of attention. I had the job of hollowing out the pumpkin while HG would carve. Baby duty prevailed. We talked about the rise of Halloween events in the UK and how much we missed candy corn, and the pumpkin was done. We added it to the growing stash on the stage and went to get a table and a hot drink.
I don’t have to go very far to see how much things are changing in London. Right here in Hackney the amount of regeneration and repurposing is enormous. Last week, Liz (my sister-in-law) gave me a back-handed (or something) compliment. She said that she really enjoyed my blog, the Hackney one, and I made it look really nice, much better than it really was. I thanked her and thought, huh?
The fact is that Hackney isn’t all nice. It’s a long-deprived neighbourhood where crime and vandalism and neglect were the norm when I first arrived here. I’m sure it’s still there but…Hackney is a huge borough. This little bit of it has a lot of old, rundown parts, mixed in with the regenerated new parts, mixed in with the very urban parts, mixed in with the fields and parks. There’s ugly and there’s beautiful. It all adds in to the whole.
There’s the suprising little living wall made in front of the abandoned pizza shop. I mentioned it in my Everyday Life in Hackney blog post. It’s coming along so well. It’s a great example of repurposing, taking something that’s just sitting there and making good use of it.
The pizza shop wall before it was plantedThe living wall has flourished
There’s a little street by where I live. When I moved here it was a rundown street with a derelict factory on one side. Then the builders showed up. They didn’t pull the factory down but made it into a fancy apartment building. I’ve been looking at that road in the last week or so and today I went to look a bit closer. It’s not looking quite as sparkly as it did when it first got its new face, but it’s interesting to see nevertheless.
Looking down the road. The blue is the wall of a college. That wasn’t here when I moved in.One side has normal Hackney homesOn the other side, an old factory has become fancy flats
At the end of the road there’s a sort of road that runs perpendicular all along the railway bridge. It’s really just a back alley with railway arches but in the last several years there has been construction. More fancy flats on one side, facing the arches. When they started to build here, I was shocked. These back alleys along the railway arches are scary. They’re dark and they’re away from the main traffic. I told Krish that I didn’t think anyone would want to live there. Walking home at night would just be too frightening and why would people buy expensive flats on such a derelict road. But they have.
Fancy new gates in the old factory buildingGround floors of even the fanciest flats are marred by these safety screened windowsOn one side the old railway arches, on the other fancy flats I thought no one would ever want to live inClose up of the flats – crowded in the alley by parked cars
I know I’ve talked about railway arches. London uses every space it has. Across the city where there are railway arches there are shops of all kinds built into the space the arch has provided. In many areas these are trendy restaurants and shops but in my neighbourhood, they are little manufactures, businesses and, in this case, body shop after body shop. (That’s auto repair shops for the Brits reading this.)
Opposite the pristine fancy flats are the decrepit arches body shops.
The body shops under the arches
There was a bit of an argument going on between some customers and an owner so I held back a bit and hid my camera. Hackney still has its seedy side and I’m aware of it. One day, while taking a photo from across the road to these arches, a man started to yell at me, ‘Did you take my photo?’ I yelled back, ‘No.’ He persisted and, I have to say, I did start to feel unsafe. I stood my ground and told him he was welcome to come see the photo for himself. He backed off. I’ve not forgotten that day!
And I’ve not forgotten the lovely wall art that used to be along these arches. Painted over and lost forever.
I haven’t been to a movie in quite some time. I haven’t been to the theatre in even longer. Last week I did go to a play – a comedy called Dead Funny. It was put on by a local theatre group called The Tower Theatre Company.
I had actually seen this comedy advertised in the west end not so long ago but didn’t get to see it. Friends at the pub meet for Nextdoor told me they were going so I bought two tickets and along I went.
Set of Dead Funny
Dead Funny has five characters. Two couples and a neighbour. All but one is a member of the Dead Funny Society, a group that meets to honour dead comedians. When the news of Benny Hill’s death reaches them they plan to meet to remember him. Of course everything unravels. I’d say that it wasn’t as ‘dead funny’ as expected but in the second half there was enough slapstick, scandal, and mimicry of the great British comics to make it funny enough.
The Tower Theatre Company are called the busiest troupe in inner London, performing about 20 plays a year. They have taken over a building that has housed a church, a synagogue and a women’s gym, so it’s an intimate space. I’ll definitely go to see more.
Actually the funniest, and most embarrassing, part of the evening was near the end when my phone, which I was sure I’d silenced when we first went in, started to ring. I stumbled out of the theatre space to turn it off, and apologised all over the place when the play ended.
On Sunday, I did something new. I had decided to buy a table space to show (or sell) my dolls at a school fair. I didn’t expect to sell any but I was interested to see what it was like, what people might ask, and to ask them questions about the dolls.
I spent some time from Thursday to Saturday making props for the sale. I made two park benches, a Victorian lamp post, and I made a row of terraced houses with attics and chimneys, which I planned to stand up behind the park bench scene. I decorated everything with painted vines and flowers – not wanting to squander too many hours – and it was cute enough.
I made some notices to go with all of this and put together a tool box with things like tape, clips, pencils, paper and the like. A friend had said she’d take half the table and sell her baby shoes but pulled out in the week before. So I was on my own. Luckily, Krish said he could come along to carry things and help me out.
The morning was very rainy but I’d had an email with ‘rain plans.’ This was the first I knew that it was going to be held outdoors. I hoped that it would rain but it didn’t. Instead it was just very windy. Very windy! It was really clear that I’d need a lot of tape to keep the house pinned down to the table. I managed it but it took about three minutes to figure out that it wasn’t going to work at all. Things were flying around.
The playground with a play bus at the backThe school
So I resorted to laying the houses flat onto the table and anchoring the park benches and lamp post as best I could. There wasn’t a hope in hell that my dolls would stand up to much either so I lay them flat on top of the sari fabric we’d taken along as a cloth. Its a miracle the cloth stayed put, with the help of a bunch of clips to weigh it down. A couple of dolls try to launch their way off the table but were rescued.
My table. Not the tidy plan I’d started withThe houses firmly taped down and the dolls propped against the benches to try to anchor themThe dolls laid flat, hair flying all over the place. The sari cloth heaped so that it didn’t get swept away
No sales. A few curious people came by and I chatted with them. I asked them about the value of the dolls and, if they had children with them, I asked about names for the one they showed the most interest in. They were surprisingly uninventive but of course Elsa was popular, as was Rapunzel. Two little girls wanted one but were scared away by the price. I’d decided to try £20 to see how it would go over. I’m still not sure.
A few punters!
The crowd was digital daddies and yummy mummies, the children somewhat precocious. As Krish observed, this was very unlike the Hackney Central crowd.
I wonder if the little house was for infants or the headmaster’s family
We stayed about two hours of the four (very happy that I lasted that long) and wandered off to the main road to wait for a bus. The homes here were smaller than our area but quite gentrified.
Three bags this size!
At Homerton Hospital our bus was held up for quite a long time – Krish says it was ten minutes but it felt much longer – but we made it home with our stash.
I’ll do it again if I see another cheap table top sale. I’m not sure where I’ll go with this. I’m not keen enough to sell the dolls but I am keen to give them homes and regain the space they take up in mine. At the next one I’ll ask any children that show interest how much they want to pay and let them go. That would feel good so I’ll go with that plan.
