London is your oyster

Well, it's open tomorrow and Sunday. I use it as an opportunity to poke into the little places close to home. Hopefully no queues then. Hackney has some great green design homes and offices that are open. There's nothing like going poking around places where people actually work or live for a bit of fun.

One special place that I ran across last year was the Hoxton Hall on Hoxton Street. I'd walked past it for months, popping in, I was quite surprised to find 3 tiers of seating looking down at a quaint little stage. It's available to hire for parties, and I would have loved to have my wedding there. It only holds 100 people tops these days, for fire regulations. But in the past, when fire regs were much more relaxed, it held up to 1000 people. Yup! an order of magnitude more people. Squeezed through that little inconspicuous door on Hoxton Street and I dreamed of the past, a good 30 minutes of my time well spent.

I also popped into my local library to pick up a free paper copy of the booklet for Open London. You might want to too.

Trite

Hmm, having started a blog, I was suddenly hit with the big question: is this all a bit too trite? What's the point of writing a blog if I'm going to be trite. Will anyone care, should I be all about the deep, meaningful issues. And unfortunately, more importantly, if I am writing a trite blog, what does that say about me?

I read a variety of blogs, some always deep and thought-provoking and concerning issues of great import to society. I also read a lot of crafty goodness, some fashion blogs because I like clothes, and then there are the bloggers that are just like me. Often they're just documenting their day-to-day existence, often with a whole lot less advice than I'm doling out here. That's probably a good thing, but the advice is in me, can't do much about it.

I'll just have to fight the trite by trying to ensure I don't tell you all to do the same things everyone else is telling you to do. Not too sure if I can up the interest level, you'll like it or you won't. Though I do find it amusing that I live in Hackney, does that make this automatically hackneyed? Hope not. Time will tell.

Credit goes out to Fin Fahey from Flickr for the photo.

Hoxton Street: A slice of life EastEnder's style

I really love walking down Hoxton Street to visit Anderson's bakery for a fresh loaf of sandwich bread. As I pass the many cafes on my way, I'm always hearing snippets of conversations. Mostly I listen for the accents, and it's very Cockney. The shop that has anything you might need, except for food is halfway down, just across from F. Cooke's pie & mash. Try the jellied eels sometime, they're served hot with mash and are like a very nice, light white fish. The jelly melts when they're heated, so don't be afraid. The shop owners along the way are all quite chatty too.

I guess I just really like the feeling of this street being my local street, warts and all. They're all just getting on with their lives, there's not much posing (except for the group of boys outside one of the fried chicken shops). I've only seen a couple of fights on the street and I've been visiting several times a week for a year and half.

The market on Saturdays is good for fake versions of fancy handbags and questionable Top Shop clothing. For me, I prefer the street during the day during the workweek. But I realize that it won't be possible for many of you to visit then. If you ever do get the chance, have lunch at F. Cooke's then head to a cafe with outdoor seating for a cuppa to watch life go past.