☯ the old and the new

I love East London and it's mix:

shops, warehouses, homes:

past lives and working lives:

the old being nudged by the new:

or is it?

there are echoes of the old being kept alive

by historians and poets and creatives:

more so in this digital age than perhaps

years gone by:

I stepped through this door for another evening 

at 

'salon'

first a showing of the excellent film East End Heritage by 

Phil Maxwell & Hazuan Hashim

split screen black and white images

of the Old Spitalfields Market

Petticoat Lane and surrounding streets:

armchair interviews and recollections:

the pub landlady who could set her clock by

two ladies who sat in the same place,

same time, every day:

a glass of sherry and half of Mathesons:

if one wasn't well the other would stay home 

making the regulars concerned:

photos of families at Christmas:

"presents! the men looked after the women, 

bought them a nice gift.  that way they

could go out for a drink later"

poems translated from the Yiddish poet

Avrom Stencl

and read by Stephen Watts:

later he treated us to his own epic

prosaic stroll down Brick Lane:

the man I could listen to all day is Alan Dein:

exploiting the archives of the BBC and

mixing them with interviews of 

people today:

love his ideas of bringing history to the 

present:

impassioned by

the Bangladeshi community when they forged 

new alliances to oppose racism 

in the 80's:

the notion of everyone having their 'own patch'

is not a new one:

 drawing people in to consider what

had been on the site of a 60's tower block:

go here and listen to this fantastic 

sound map  

trust me you'll be enchanted:

just as I was:

*apologies for strange spacing on todays blog: think blogspot has issues haha