Jagmohan Bhakar, Rotarian
‘Sharing of food is very important in our culture’
When Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I visited Bow Food Bank last year, we were delighted to make the acquaintance of Jagmohan Bhakar who organises the supply of fresh fruit and vegetables donated each week by the Gurdwara in Campbell Rd. Jagmohan gets up before dawn each Monday to go the New Spitalfields Market in Leyton so that the food bank can offer the freshest produce.
Just a couple of weeks later, we encountered Jagmohan again. This time he was planting trees in Mile End Park on behalf of Tower Hamlets Rotary Club of which he is a keen member. So I asked Jagmohan if we might interview him and he kindly invited us both around for masala tea and prashad at his house in Bow.
When Jagmohan was late because he had been distributing complimentary bottles of water to runners in the City of London marathon, we realised that a certain pattern of behaviour was emerging. In becoming a Rotarian, Jagmohan has found the ideal vehicle to permit him the expression of his sense of generosity and service to others which is central to his Sikhism.
“I was born in Ambala in India and came here in 1967, when my father Dehal Singh Bhakar called my mother and me, my brother and two sisters to join him here. Since then I have lived in London. It was exciting to move to another world and be reunited with your family. My dad came in 1948 and it was quite some time since we had seen him. I was twelve years old and pleased to be with my family, I struggled to learn English. It was a new life of new experiences.
When my father came, he and some others worked as pedlars around Euston. They purchased textile goods near Liverpool St Station where there were Asian suppliers and sold them in different areas to make a living. At first he lived around Aldgate and Brick Lane, but by the time we arrived he was were living in 10 Piggott St in Limehouse. It was a big family home and a centre for many of our relatives, when they came to London it was their first stop. We all used to get together, and everybody loved seeing each other and going to each others’ houses.
School was difficult at that time in the sixties. I had a little bit of a language problem and also a difficulty in making any friends who were other peoples. It was a new experience. It was challenging, especially in the seventies after Enoch Powell made his speech. He was a bloody one. It was a sad time. People were very concerned. We were thinking of going back home. Some people left and came back later. Times were tough. At that time, many people from our community lived in Tower Hamlets in East London but because of the issues they started moving further out to Forest Gate and Manor Park. That was the reason they moved from Tower Hamlets to Newham.
I went to Langdon Park School in Poplar, there were only a few other pupils who were Sikhs. It was not bad. I am quiet by nature so I do not have many friends anyway. I had good days and bad days. We had no alternative because we had decided to make this our homeland, so we could not have second thoughts. Sometimes I had problems, walking down the road, there might be some abuse. I was beaten up a few times.
Over the years, things have changed. When I was seventeen years old, I left school and went to college. I studied Engineering but after that I could not find a job. Perhaps the course I had taken was too theoretical? I wanted a job in industry but they asked if I had any practical experience, which I did not. Times were hard. There were not many apprenticeships. I did some odd jobs.
My father was doing a little bit of business to keep himself, so I joined him after that, working in property lettings. Even the lettings were not that good at that time but we survived. I used to do the running around while he took the more relaxed role. It was not big business, just looking after the family really. But slowly things improved and it made life a little more comfortable. Today, me and my brother manage lettings for a few properties that my father left. We are doing much the same thing he did.
We are a very big family because my father had seven brothers and one sister. He was the youngest of his brothers. Obviously, they could not all stay in that house in Limehouse where my father lived with two of my uncles. Members of the family only stayed there until they could organise something for themselves. A year after we arrived in London, my father moved us here to Lyal Rd off Roman Rd where I still live today. I remember my brother buying toys from Gary Arber’s shop.
For the past seven years, I have been a member of the Rotary Club. I saw an advert in the Sunday Times and I have been with them from that time onwards. Sharing of food is very important in our culture. You always offer food when you greet anyone and we offer food to everyone at our gurdwaras. This custom of ‘lungar’ started with our first guru in the mid-fifteenth century. The idea was to eradicate the caste system, so everyone could sit and eat together on the same platform without hierarchy. Most people were desperate to be fed. It was sharing food and praying together under one roof so everybody felt in common with each other. ‘Love they neighbour and think of others as you are’ – anyone that follows these principles is a Sikh.”
Jagmohan delivers fresh vegetables weekly to Bow Food Bank on behalf of the Gurdwara in Campbell Rd
Jagmohan planting trees in Mile End Park on behalf of the Tower Hamlets Rotary Club
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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At Nichols Bros (Woodturners) Ltd
Geoff Nichols standing at his father Stanley’s lathe
‘We are the last proper woodturners in London,’ boasts Geoff Nichols of Nichols Bros (Woodturners) Ltd in Walthamstow. It sounds like quite a bold claim, but since I have learned the story of Geoff’s family endeavour stretching back over a century, examined their work and enjoyed a tour of the premises, I am more than happy to endorse Nichols Bros as ‘proper’ woodturners indeed.
An undistinguished single storey building in a side street gives no hint of the wonders within. For eighty years, the Nichols family have been woodturning at this location and proved themselves masters of the art and the craft. Passing through double green doors from the street, you turn directly left and discover yourself in another kingdom, filled with glowing golden timber and lined with wood chips.
In a long low-ceilinged brick room sit venerable lathes surrounded by stacks of new pine and off-cuts, while the walls are adorned with intricate examples of woodturning hanging like stalactites. Geoff Nichols and his trusty partner Harry Morrow have worked here for the past half century, and they step forward to greet you – looking the epitome of master craftsmen in their long blue twill coats.
Yet further delights await your gaze. Widening his eyes in excitement, Geoff leads you into the yard beyond where blue tarpaulins conceal a unique spectacle, accumulated in a series of old sheds. One after the other, he lifts the tarpaulins to reveal rooms filled with a seemingly infinite array of spindles, all meticulously organised by style and disappearing into the gloom like gothic grottos.
‘We have a collection in the region of three thousand different spindles,’ underestimates Geoff proudly, ‘We try to display as many as we can for ease of reference but we have lots more that are stored in boxes too.’
Unquestionably the largest collection in London and perhaps the largest collection in the world, this is – in effect – our national archive of stair spindles. It is a secret museum that tells the story of the growth of the capital in spindles – a cultural asset of the greatest significance and it will not come again. Perhaps most fascinating was the ‘London spindle’ – the most common design in the capital yet also the one with the most variants.
After half century of woodturning, Geoff Nichols needs to find someone to take on his astonishing legacy. Is there a craftworker reading this who would like to take this noble craft onwards for another fifty years and earn a lifetime’s income in the process? Is there an institution that can give a home to the largest collection of spindles in existence?
All these thoughts were buzzing in my mind as Geoff led me to the tiny cubby hole which serves as the office, where we competed over who should sit upon the only chair in the place, before I plonked myself down upon a trestle and he told me the full story of Nichols Bros.
“My dad Stanley Nichols and his brother Arthur started on this site in Walthamstow in 1949. They were two youngest out of five brothers, the two eldest – there was about a twenty year age difference – already had a woodturning business, Nichols & Nichols, in the Kingsland Rd in Shoreditch which they started before the First World War.
After Stanley and Arthur left school, they went to work for their elder brothers until the Second World War began, then they went off to the forces. After the war, they carried on with their elder brothers for a year or so before they decided to set up their own woodturning business here, Nichols Bros.
I came into it the day I left school at fifteen, that was fifty years ago now in 1969, and Harry joined about four or five years after me. My Uncle Arthur retired about five years after I started, he used to handle the paperwork, so Harry took over from him. I was more involved in the practical side of the business, especially hand woodturning.
We probably had about five or six employees at our peak which was about twenty years ago. Since then the trade has changed quite dramatically because the trend has moved away from wood towards glass and metal. In pubs in the East End, all the glass racks were made of turned wood spindles but that is no longer the case. Once upon a time, we made a lot of mangle rollers but obviously that is work we will never get asked to do again. We used to do a lot of table legs and when I first joined the business all we were really doing was standard lamps.
The furniture industry disappeared in the East End a quarter of a century ago and we are now tied in to the building trade. People spend a lot of money on their properties these days, adding rooms in the loft which needs staircases – newel posts, handrails and spindles. Spindles for staircases is the work we are asked to do now, although we still make the occasional four-poster bed and table legs for the furniture trade which does exist.
A lot of woodturning is imported from China but we cannot try to compete by producing volume, instead we do bespoke woodturning if a customer wants spindles or newel posts matched up. Skill is very important. When I first started working here, we used to get an influx of people asking if there was a job or could they learn the trade, but it seems the younger generation tend to shy away from manual trades today.
My dad was an exceptionally good woodturner, better at some things than me although I think I am better than him at others. You can be the most skilled woodturner in the world but you have to do it within a certain time, because time is money. It is all about earning a living, it is not a hobby. If you turn one spindle by hand, you have then got to be able to replicate it again quickly. Being able to get sharp definition in your work is very important. I can look at any piece of woodturning and tell straight away whether it was made by a highly skilled turner or not.
In woodturning, the trick is you must not pick up and tools and put them down again too many times. You have to do as much as you can with either the chisel or the gouge. When you change tools you are wasting time, so you must be able to do the maximum before you change tools. That is the secret to fast woodturning and to be able to turn nice bead, a fillet or a jug. The ridge around the shaft is called a ‘bead,’ like beading. The ridge between the bead and the shaft of the spindle is called the ‘fillet’ and it gives definition of the bead. The ‘jug’ is the wave profile, like on a jug. Any woodturning you see is beads, fillets, bands, hollows and jugs. That is all woodturning is.
It gives me pleasure to take a square blank and turn it into an artistic shape. You alone know the difficulty in turning it. You can see that you have made something that looks beautiful and will be there for a long time. When you visit old buildings, you appreciate the tremendous work that was involved in the woodturning, especially since they were working on primitive lathes compared to ours.
My children will not be coming into the business. My son works in the City and my daughter has an Estate Agents, so no-one in the family can take it over which is a real shame. I would be open to train someone if they came and asked me. It would be lovely if we could find someone who wanted to start a woodturning business, because over the last seventy years we have collected so many machines and tools which are irreplaceable.“
Geoff as a young man with his father Stanley Nichols
Stanley Nichols working at his lathe
Geoff at work on a barley-sugar twist spindle
Harry Morrow and Geoff Nichols at work at their lathes
Harry Morrow
The yard where the collection of more than three thousand spindles are kept
Some of the collection
Geoff Nichols
Multiple variants of the ‘London spindle’ – a distinctive style which evolved during the nineteenth century with the expansion of the capital
Nichols Bros (Woodturning) Ltd, 2A Milton Rd, Walthamstow, E17 4SR
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In Old Paddington
At Paddington Green, Sarah Siddons calls upon a lifetime’s experience in the theatre to feign an appearance of interest despite her stultifyingly boring view of interminable traffic on the Westway. For years I saw her from the window of the bus and always intended to pay her a visit – a wish that I eventually fulfilled last week.
The green was once common land, formerly a place in its own right but now it has become somewhere the world passes by. Since the motorway sliced through in 1967, Paddington Green has been marooned, yet today offers a pleasing refuge from the urban chaos that surrounds it. John Plaw’s elegant church of 1791 sits upon a verdant mound enclosed by venerable magnolias, safeguarding the site where John Donne gave his first sermon, and William and Jane Hogarth were married.
Paddington was always a village defined by its position at the edge of the capital, but the escalation of change began with the arrival of the Grand Union Canal in 1801, accelerated by Brunel’s Great Western Railway in 1854. It is only a short walk from Paddington Green through the subway under the Westway and over the canal bridge to arrive at Paddington Station, but a journey through time spanning different worlds.
Paddington Station was where I first arrived in London on a school trip to be confronted with a full-scale riot in which police and football fans were charging at each other successively from either side of the station concourse. As a newcomer, I could only presume this was a normal state of affairs in the capital. It was an assumption confirmed when the rioters and their adversaries retreated obligingly, and the crowd parted like the Red Sea to permit our school party to walk through the middle with impunity, before resuming their conflict.
Over the years, the shabby streets around the station became familiar to me as it was my custom to walk from here into the centre of London to save the cost of a tube fare. Commonly, I underestimated the time it took to walk back from Marble Arch and had to run the last mile to Paddington, fearful of getting lost in the maze of small streets and missing my train home.
When I lived nearby in Bayswater, briefly in the early eighties, it was my delight to rise and walk through the streets in the middle of the night to view the drama of the mail trains being loaded with postal sacks and parcels of next day’s newspapers at Paddington. It was a different station then – a sooty black gothic cathedral in contrast to the luminous glasshouse it is now.
Nowadays I no longer have any family in the west and no reason to take the train from Paddington anymore. Although I have not been here in more than ten years, I was reassured how little the surrounding streets have changed – still lined with scruffy convenience stores, souvenir shops, cheap restaurants, massage parlours and sad hotels.
The grandeur of the tall white stucco terraces in Norfolk Sq comes as a surprise after the dingy atmosphere that prevails around the station but just another street later you come to the magnificent Sussex Gardens. On this visit, I realised that my notion of Paddington consists only of Praed St and its immediate environs – so authentically dirty old London, that the mould which became penicillin floated in a window here and gave the world antibiotics.
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Tavern Tokens Of Bishopsgate
The Ship Tavern, Bishopsgate
There are some artefacts that, in their detail and evidence of wear, can evoke an entire world. Although no larger than a thumbnail, these modest seventeenth century tavern tokens in the collection at the Bishopsgate Institute bring alive that calamitous era after the English Revolution when London was struck by the Great Plague in 1665 and then the Great Fire in 1666.
Bishopsgate was one of the few parts of the City spared by the Fire. It was lined with ancient taverns, used as points of departure and arrival for those travelling up and down the old Roman road north from the City of London. The part inside the City wall was known as Bishopsgate Within and the part outside the wall was Bishopsgate Without, and beyond, where the muddy road widened, was known as Bishopsgate St. The taverns served as hotels, drinking and dining houses, breweries and stables, couriers and coach offices, places of business and of entertainment, and were such significant centres of commerce that they issued their own currency for use as change.
There is a vibrant graphic quality in these miniature token designs, delighting in combining hand-lettering and familiar imagery with an appealing utilitarian irregularity. Long before universal literacy or the numbering of London streets, buildings were adorned with symbols and easily-recogniseable images like those graven upon the front of these tokens. The reverse carries the date and initials of the owner that issued the token, who may latterly be identified from the vintners’ records.
As well as those from Bishopsgate, there is one here from Spittlegate, now known as Widegate St, and another from Bedlam, now known as Liverpool St, which was formerly the location of the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem – of all the tokens here, The White Hart is the lone tavern that has weathered the centuries to survive into the present era.
After the Fire, rubble was spread upon the marshy land of Spitalfields, preparing it for the construction of the streets we know today, and, occasionally, charcoal is still uncovered when foundations are excavated in Spitalfields, recalling this distant event. In 1632, Charles I gave a licence for flesh, fowl and roots to be sold in Spitalfields and the market was re-established in 1682 by Charles II, defining the territory with a culture of small-scale trading that persists to this day.
Once, tavern tokens were unremarkable items of small monetary value, passed hand to hand without a second thought, but now these rare specimens are precious evidence of another life in another time, long ago in this place.
King’s Head, Spittlegate, Charles I
King’s Head, Spittlegate, issued by Vintner Thomas Avis in 1658
The Beehive, Bishopsgate Without, issued by Thomas Goss, 1652
The Mitre Tavern, Bishopsgate, issued by Robert Richardson 1644
The Flower Pot, Bishopsgate Within, issued by Ascanius Hicks, 1641
The Helmet, Bishopsgate Without, issued by Robert Studd
At the White Hart, Bedlam
The White Hart at Bedlam, issued by EE, 1637
Red Lion Court, Bishopsgate Without, issued by John Lambe
The Black Raven, Bishopsgate Without
The Black Raven, Halfpenny issued by Sam Salway
The Sunne, Bishopsgate Within
Lion Above a Stick of Candles, Bishopsgate Without
Lion Above a Stick of Candles, issued by Ralph Butcher, 1666
At the Sign Of The Boore, Bishopsgate Without
At The Sign Of The Boore, Bishopsgate Without
The Half Moone Brewhouse, Bishopsgate Without
Edward Nourse Next The Bull In Bishopsgate Street, 1666
The Mouth Tavern, Bishopsgate Without, issued by Robert Sanderson, 1638
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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The Gentle Author’s Spitalfields Pub Crawl
Along The Black Path
‘Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote… Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages’
Taking to heart the observation by the celebrated poet & resident of Aldgate, Geoffrey Chaucer, that April is the time for pilgrimages, I set out for day’s walk in the sunshine along the ancient Black Path from Walthamstow to Shoreditch. The route of this primeval footpath is still visible upon the map of the East End today, as if someone had taken a crayon and scrawled a diagonal line across the grid of the modern street plan. There is no formal map of the Black Path yet any keen walker with a sense of direction may follow it as I did.
The Black Path links with Old St in one direction and extends beyond Walthamstow in the other, tracing a trajectory between Shoreditch Church and the crossing of the River Lea at Clapton. Sometimes called the Porter’s Way, this was the route cattle were driven to Smithfield and the path used by smallholders taking produce to Spitalfields Market. Sometimes also called the Templars’ Way, it links the thirteenth century St Augustine’s Tower on land once owned by Knights Templar in Hackney with the Priory of St John in Clerkenwell where they had their headquarters.
No-one knows how old the Black Path is or why it has this name, but it once traversed open country before the roads existed. These days the path is black because it has a covering of asphalt.
On the warmest day of spring I took the train from Liverpool St Station up to Walthamstow to commence my walk, seeking respite in the sunshine. In observance of custom, I commenced my pilgrimage at an inn, setting out from The Bell and following the winding road through Walthamstow to the market. A tavern by this name has stood at Bell Corner for centuries and the street that leads southwest from it, once known as Green Leaf Lane, reveals its ancient origin in its curves that trace the contours of the land.
Struggling to resist the delights of pie & mash and magnificent 99p shops, I felt like Bunyan’s pilgrim avoiding the temptations of Vanity Fair as I wandered through Walthamstow Market which extends for a mile down the High St to St James, gradually sloping away down towards the marshes. Here I turned left onto St James St itself before following Station Rd and then weaving southwest through late nineteenth century terraces, sprawling over the incline, to emerge at the level of the Walthamstow Marshes.
Then I walked along Markhouse Avenue which leads into Argall Industrial Estate, traversed by a narrow footpath enclosed with high steel fences on each side. Here you may find Allied Bakeries, Bates Laundry and evangelical churches including Deliverance Outreach Mission, Praise Harvest Community Church, Celestial Church of Christ, Mountain of Fire & Miracle Ministries and Christ United Ministries, revealing that religion may be counted as an industry in this location.
Crossing an old railway bridge and a broad tributary of the River Lea brought me onto the Leyton Marshes where I was surrounded by leaves unfurling, buds popping and blossom exploding – natural wonders that characterise the rush of spring at this sublime moment of the year. Horses graze on the marshes and the dense blackthorn hedge which lines the footpath provided a sufficiently bucolic background to evoke a sense that I was walking an ancient footpath through a rural landscape. Yet already the municipal parks department were out, unable to resist taking advantage of the sunlight to give the verges a fierce trim with their mechanical mower even before the the plants have properly sprouted.
It was a surprise to find myself amidst the busy traffic again as I crossed the Lea Bridge and found myself back in the East End, of which the River Lea is its eastern boundary. The position of this crossing – once a ford, then a ferry and finally a bridge – defines the route of the Black Path, tracing a line due southwest from here.
I followed the diagonal path bisecting the well-kept lawn of Millfields and walked up Powerscroft Rd to arrive in the heart of Hackney at St Augustine’s Tower, built in 1292 and a major landmark upon my route. Yet I did not want to absorb the chaos of this crossroads where so many routes meet at the top of Mare St, instead I walked quickly past the Town Hall and picked up the quiet footpath next to the museum known as Hackney Grove. This byway has always fascinated me, leading under the railway line to emerge onto London Fields.
The drovers once could graze their cattle, sheep and geese overnight on this common land before setting off at dawn for Smithfield Market, a practice recalled today in the names of Sheep Lane and the Cat & Mutton pub. The curve of Broadway Market leading through Goldsmith’s Row down to Columbia Rd reveals its origin as a cattle track. From the west end of Columbia Rd, it was a short walk along Virginia Rd on the northern side of the Boundary Estate to arrive at my destination, Shoreditch Church.
If I chose to follow ancient pathways further, I could have walked west along Old St towards Bath, north up the Kingsland Rd to York, east along the Roman Rd towards Colchester or south down Bishopsgate to the City of London. But flushed and footweary after my six mile hike in the heat of the sun, I was grateful to return home to Spitalfields and put my feet up in the shade of the house. For millennia, when it was the sole route, countless numbers travelled along the old Black Path from Walthamstow to Shoreditch, but on that day there was just me on my solitary pilgrimage.
At Bell Corner, Walthamstow
‘Fellowship is Life’
Two quinces for £1.50 in Walthamstow Market
Walthamstow Market is a mile long
‘struggling to resist the delights of pie & mash’
At St James St
Station Rd
‘leaves unfurling, buds popping and blossom exploding which characterise the rush of spring’
Enclosed path through Argall Industrial Estate skirting Allied Bakeries
Argall Avenue
‘These days the path is black because it has a covering of asphalt’
Railway bridge leading to the Leyton marshes
A tributary of the River Lea
Horses graze on the Leyton marshes
“dense blackthorn which line the footpath provided a sufficiently bucolic background to evoke a sense that I was walking an ancient footpath”
‘the municipal parks department were out, unable to resist taking advantage of the sunlight to give the verges a fierce trim with their mechanical mower even before the the plants have properly sprouted’
The River Lea is the eastern boundary of the East End
Across Millfields Park towards Powerscroft Rd
Thirteenth century St Augustine’s Tower in Hackney
Worn steps in Hackney Grove
In London Fields
At Cat & Mutton Bridge, Broadway Market
Columbia Rd
St Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch
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On Mothering Sunday
Valerie
What are you to do on Mothering Sunday if you have no mother? My mother died in 2005 and each year I confront this troubling question when the annual celebration comes around.
All over the city in recent weeks, I have encountered cards and gifts for Mothering Sunday, exploiting the commercial potential of this medieval Lenten festival which, like St Valentine’s Day and Halloween, has been commodified into a retail opportunity.
If I was religious I might light a candle or lay flowers on a grave, yet neither of these is an acceptable option for me. Contemplating displays in shop windows, I deliberate privately over the tender question as my sense of loss deepens in the approach to Mothering Sunday, only for it to dissipate afterwards. This uneasy resolution brings no peace, serving to remind me how much I miss her. It is a feeling which grows with each Mothering Sunday that passes, as the distance in time that separates us increases and the memories fade. I do not expect or wish to ‘get over it,’ I seek to live in peace with my sadness.
I wish she could see where I live now and I could share the joys of my life with her. I have a frustrated instinct to communicate delights, still identifying sights and experiences that I know she would enjoy.
My picture of her has changed. The painful experience of her final years when she was reduced to helpless paralysis by the onset of dementia has been supplanted by a string of fragmentary images from my childhood – especially of returning from school on summer afternoons and discovering her at work in her garden.
I think of how she raised her head when she smiled, tossing her hair in assertion of a frail optimism. ‘Not too bad, thank you!’ she is admitting, lifting her head to the light and assuming a confident smile with a flash of her eyes. This was her default answer to any enquiry into her wellbeing – whether it was a routine or genuine question – and she maintained it through the years, irrespective of actual circumstances. When life was smooth, it was a modest understatement and when troubles beset her, it was a discreet expression of personal resilience. For her, it was a phrase capable of infinite nuance and I do not believe she ever said it in the same way. Yet although I could always appreciate the emotional reality that lay behind her words, I think for everyone but me and my father it was an opaque statement which efficiently closed the line of enquiry, shielding her private self from any probing conversation. From her I learnt the value of maintaining equanimity and keeping a sense of proportion, whatever life brings.
I realise that I was lucky to have a mother who taught me to read before I started school at four years old. Denied the possibility of a university education herself, she encouraged me to fulfil her own thwarted ambitions and – perhaps more than I appreciate – I owe my life as a writer to her. Yet there is so much I could say about my mother that it is almost impossible to write anything. I recognise that the truth of what she means to me is in a region of emotion that is beyond language, but I do know that what she was is part of who I am today.
Increasingly, I am aware that many of those around me also share this situation of no longer having mothers. Perhaps I should buy them all flowers this Mothering Sunday? Certainly if anyone enquires, I shall reply ‘Not too bad, thank you!’ with a smile and raise my head. In that moment, I shall conjure her robust spirit from deep inside me and she will be present, in my demeanour and in my words, this Mothering Sunday.
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Blossom Time In The East End
Now is season to welcome the blossom back to the East End again for another year
In Bethnal Green
Let me admit, this is my favourite moment in the year – when the new leaves are opening fresh and green, and the streets are full of trees in flower. Several times, in recent days, I have been halted in my tracks by the shimmering intensity of the blossom. And so, I decided to enact my own version of the eighth-century Japanese custom of hanami or flower viewing, setting out on a pilgrimage through the East End with my camera to record the wonders of this fleeting season that marks the end of winter incontrovertibly.
In his last interview, Dennis Potter famously eulogised the glory of cherry blossom as an incarnation of the overwhelming vividness of human experience. “The nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous … The fact is, if you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it.” he said and, standing in front of these trees, I succumbed to the same rapture at the excess of nature.
In the post-war period, cherry trees became a fashionable option for town planners and it seemed that the brightness of pink increased over the years as more colourful varieties were propagated. “Look at it, it’s so beautiful, just like at an advert,” I overheard someone say yesterday, in admiration of a tree in blossom, and I could not resist the thought that it would be an advertisement for sanitary products, since the colour of the tree in question was the exact familiar tone of pink toilet paper.
Yet I do not want my blossom muted, I want it bright and heavy and shining and full. I love to be awestruck by the incomprehensible detail of a million flower petals, each one a marvel of freshly-opened perfection and glowing in a technicolour hue.
In Whitechapel
In Spitalfields
In Weavers’ Fields
In Haggerston
In Weavers’ Fields
In Bethnal Green
In Pott St
Outside Bethnal Green Library
In Spitalfields
In Bethnal Green Gardens
In Museum Gardens
In Museum Gardens
In Paradise Gardens
In Old Bethnal Green Rd
In Pollard Row
In Nelson Gardens
In Canrobert St
In the Hackney Rd
In Haggerston Park
In Shipton St
In Bethnal Green Gardens
In Haggerston
At Spitalfields City Farm
In Columbia Rd
In London Fields
Syd’s Coffee Stall, Calvert Avenue
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