…as a flight of fancy??

Fanciful or fanatical, the talk was of…

“Periodical exhibitions of …Trade and mechanical productions of the working classes; and prizes are to be offered of such intrinsic value as shall form an inducement to those classes to spend their leisure hours in employment of an improving and interesting character.”

– obviously much could be presumed about the availability and prevailing nature of leisure hours, of the working classes of E1 of 1875! [the ‘E’ having been designated in 1858 with the ‘1’ not in fact arriving until 1917, they were so leisurely about it all 🙂 ]

…a wonderful way to fight the out-of-control elemental force that threatens to raze the area today — the ‘licking tongues’ of corporate greed.

In every sense, every detail, every word, it’s story-telling at its best. GA, thank you. As ever.

May their ‘Blossom’ never flower, as it would surely bring nothing but poisoned fruits and mark the coming of a long cold winter. Nip it in the bud we can’t but dig away at it’s roots we can 🙂

Let our Elders of Elder Street speak, knowing that they have our ear and our support. And if 40 years on, they need more of our energy to bring their own back up to full strength, then let them know that they have that too.

This community was being built long before Nicholls & Clarke were providing the materials 🙂 And then The Gentle Author ‘set up shop’, or rather laid out his story-telling stall, providing all of us with a different kind of material, that which we needed most, to reinforce the framework of our lives from the foundations up.

So is it too soon/too demanding of our resources at a time of “already too much to do” for ‘us’ to be asking the City Farm, BI and/or L.B.T.H to help ensure the Aquarium and Menagerie of the real, actual, living, breathing Blossom Street of today is commemorated 140 years on? I’m of course thinking “Spitalfields Life ‘Live’ ” 🙂

As — for the 2015 diary too — I wonder if SAVE et al realise that there’s the 150th anniversary of Smithfield Market to be claimed, ‘for someone to do something with’ — with a primary objective perhaps of this being a useful deadline by which to frame the ongoing ‘relationship’ with the owner-would-be-developer that we confront if not fight on the ‘western front’!

Here ‘British Land’ it may be, but the spirit and history of the place is ours — not least because The Gentle Author has ensured it is so and documented it as such.

JB

David Milne.