Revisits – where do I go?

Monday, 7 February, 2022

I must confess to wanting to see somewhere different. Lately, I’ve been returning to old haunts, though. I have many trips in mind, but the pandemic hasn’t let go of us. I’m not sure where it will land us, but for now I’m just not keen to go too far. I have a birthday coming up in just a month and, while Krish talks about travelling a few hours to get a perfect Chinese meal, my sights are set closer to home. There must be something wrong with me! Or maybe not.

Before the pandemic we would go away at least a few times. That year, 2019, it was trips to see my aunts in Southend, an overnight to Leicester, six weeks in Toronto, a few days each in Glasgow and in Pembrokeshire. There may have been others. There must have been. Now Krish talks about revisiting Porto, Budapest, Torino, perhaps a new place – Istanbul,  Valencia, Copenhagen… we’ve bounced the idea of Warsaw, of Marrakesh, Sicily… With the pandemic on our minds, we thought about the UK and there are still places that are on my list but untried – Nottingham, Colchester, Norwich..

Both aunts have died now. It takes me a while to let that sink in. I dreaded those journeys each time and always knew they would inevitably end. Now they have. Our Two Together rail discount card lies idle. At least it really helped with our couple of trips to Southend earlier, and to Sheffield and Leicester. When the weather turns warmer, there will hopefully be more.

And close to home we’ve stayed for the most part. Krish’s hospital visits meant I could explore alone or with him in areas that I didn’t know very well. Now he’s not going very often so revisits to closer familiar places are the ticket They’re an opportunity to find something different and have one of those why-did-I-never-notice-that-before moments. Somehow there’s always at least one. It surprises every time.

It worries me, when I consider returning to Toronto, that I can’t have nearly as many of those moments in a city built on a grid system and where there’s a certain uniformity of architecture. My friend, Esmeralda, once described it (after returning from her travels) as homogenous.  I’d definitely have to adapt and be more willing to walk further and dig deeper.

So here’s a look at the familiar places I’ve visited in the last couple of weeks.

I took Krish to see Wood Street. It’s only a few stops away so an easy journey. I wanted to check out the Mexican Homies on Donkeys so we headed over to the Wood Street Market that had been closed when I was last there, before Christmas. The market is an indoor arcade filled with jumbled little kiosks and rooms. A notice at the entrance told us that this used to be The Crown Cinema, from 1912 to 1956 and is now a haven for antique and record collectors. I took photos of some of the colourful little shops inside.

The visit to Homies on Donkeys was to taste a taco or two and buy a bag of corn tortillas – so hard to find in London. I decided that I would taste the tacos first before investing in a bag of 40 tortillas. The choices weren’t ones I’d have ordinarily bought but I chose a milder chicken and a spicier pork one. Both tasted strongly of chipotle, and the extra guacamole I ordered was runny like a salad dressing. Not a bad taco but not a great one. I left without buying the tortillas.

Down the street we came across two Palestinian places. Only later did I think that maybe I could have taken some falafels home. We kept walking – I’d seen a sign that the William Morris House was close by so we aimed to walk there. It just wasn’t clear where or how far it was so we turned on our heels back to the station instead.

We had a run into Whitechapel. Krish wanted lentils, I wanted dumplings, and it was time for more samosas. I’d seen an ad for dumplings – three bags for 9.99 – at a store in Whitechapel that looked like it was new. As soon as we reached our stop, Krish decided he could do without the lentils – cross that off the list, then. Instead we went looking for the dumpling place. It’s called Tian Tian Market and it’s in the new complex near Aldgate East Station, where Guan (the supper club guy) lives. That store was so tidy! And spacious.

Whitechapel has a curious mix of architecture. Sometimes it’s very modern, sometimes it’s very old. Sometimes it’s a jumble of styles that make no sense.

It would be interesting to be able to see into the future and know what the area will look like, perhaps in fifty years from now. I have no doubt some of the old will remain, but I really think it will be unrecognisable.On the first of February we decided to visit another old haunt. We must have walked along Stoke Newington Church Street umpteen times, but we were curious to see what the fancy butcher might have to sell. I took lots of photos and none of the butcher’s at all!

First, there are lots of colourful, trendy, or curiously named shops and cafes.

We forgot to count all the bakeries and delis but each one had the same rows of cannoli in the window. I can’t believe we came home without a single treat.

The street has a lot of ghost signs, all which need some research to see what used to be there.

There are two churches on Stoke Newington Church Street. One is the Old Church and the other is the newer, St Mary’s Church. The Old Church is especially interesting. The Old Church is the only remaining Elizabethan church in London and one of the oldest in the country to have been built as an Anglican church. It owes its origins to Stoke Newington’s sixteenth century Lord of the Manor, William Patten. In 1563 he decided to rebuild the old parish church, which had become almost derelict. You can see the date, and the motto ‘ab alto’ (‘from above’), above the main door.

There’s a pretty graveyard with monuments to people who were prominent in the fight against the slave trade. Many people in Hackney gained their fortune from slavery, directly or indirectly so it makes sense that so many here also fought to abolish it. Stoke Newington, of course, is also the home of Abney Park Cemetery and I got one photo of that before moving on. When spring comes, I’d like to walk through. I haven’t done that for years. Maybe a guided tour. The first cemetery is the Old Church, the second is Abney Park.

I found a few other monuments on this walk. The first two photos are of the Sisters’ House. There was once a medieval house on this site, and the present house has been there since 1714. This was once in a whole row of houses, fashionable in their time. The very lovely gate is much newer, 1939. The third and fourth photos show  a bust perched on the front of a house, number 172. It reads POE. Edgar Allen Poe lived here as a schoolchild for about five years. The fifth plaque is to Daniel Defoe. The plaque is too high for me to get a good photo. His house was demolished in 1865. The plaque is at number 95, built on part of the Defoe House site. When Defoe wrote his first novel, Robinson Crusoe, in his Stoke Newington House the Sisters’ House would have been only five years old.

Another monument of a sort is a Banksy, but one that most would overlook, never knowing what they were looking at. There’s a questionable history to this painting of a cartoon Royal Family waving from their balcony. The story goes that a woman in the building noticed the council begin to paint over it and ran out to stop them before it was obliterated. This unusual Banksy was used for the cover artwork for Blur’s Crazy Beat single.

Spring is about a month early, they say. You glimpse it every now and again. It’s amazing that I can still walk in areas I already know and find new things. I’m grateful for that.