Easter Sunday - The Morning

Apparently one of the tour group organisers has been telling hotel guests that to avoid queues they should show up for breakfast between 8:30 and 9:00. So guess what, that's right at 8:30 about five hundred people are trying to get into the two restaurants for breakfast!

I'm keen to go on another 'London Walk' today and can't decide whether to go on the Shakespeare and Dickens walk which leaves St.Paul's at 2p.m or the Regents Canal (Mile End to Limehouse) which leaves Mile End station at 2.30. The first walk might, and it's a big might, be led by one of my favourite actresses from my teenage years Angela Down. I decide to leave the decision until later.

I leave the hotel at just after nine thirty, sun blazing down on my neck, and make my way towards Tower Gateway DLR station. Being the busiest Bank Holiday weekend of the year the DLR is naturally closed between Limehouse and Bank, the alternative is a bus service. I decline the offer of a bus and decide I'll spend the morning walking around three East End markets taking photographs and generally soaking up the atmosphere.

First up is Petticoat Lane. Like Brick Lane, which I'll be visiting later, Petticoat Lane seems to have gone downhill over the years rather than improving with age. The nationalities of the stallholders have changed over the years, there is only one white Londoner, selling socks and men's underwear, elsewhere the accents are African, West Indian, East European.

I start taking photographs of the stalls and immediately become aware of a huge East European guy in a leather jacket a few yards away from me. He's watching me, not sure whether he should be stopping me or letting me continue, this is after all a public place, but the stallholders have their privacy and I'm careful not to photograph anybody 'front-on'. As I move up and down the street looking at the towels, designer clothes (real or fake?), the CD's (4 for £1!) and the Jamaican Fitness video he takes less interest in me.

After Petticoat Lane I head for Spitalfields Market. I have a family connection here, my Great, Great Grandfather William made barrows for the Costermongers who used to ply their trade here in the 19th century. On a stall that sells freshly made smoothies and juices (you actually watch them being made from the fruit) I get talking to the stallholder. When I mention William he gets quite excited and tells me that he makes Costermongers barrows in his spare time. He tells me that most of the market stall holders are too stupid to appreciate the value of a market stall that you can actually push but he's slowly convincing them.

The stallholders are obviously more used to having people take photographs than in Petticoat Lane and nobody takes any notice of me as I snap away from all angles.

From Sptalfields Market I walk down Hanbury Street to the Truman Brewery, turn left and start walking down Brick Lane. Brick Lane market should be renamed Tat City, it's dreadful. There are people, usually with more money than sense, who think that all is rubbish is somehow 'real', well it's not.

Underneath the famous Truman archway is a Rasta selling shoes, skates, books, anything he can carry. We make eye contact:
"Hi, how you doing?" he asks,
"Fine thanks, you?" I reply.
"Cool."
I want to take his photo as he has one of those Bob Marley tea cosy's on but I decide I'll leave it for now - big mistake.

Actually most of the market isn't in Brick Lane it's in the side streets that link it with the Bethnal Green Road. I watch some haggling between a Rastafarian trying to sell a bike and his potential customer, the customer is offering £10, the vendor wants £100 - there's some haggling to be done there! A Renault Espace is on sale for £500 it looks a good buy, on the other side of the road a 'chopper' bike is only sale for £150 - a potential customer looks at the bike then sees the price tag - "£150? Fuck off."

I make my way back down Brick Lane towards Whitechapel, taking more pictures. The Rasta I'd spotted twenty minutes earlier is now spread out on the pavement a little worse for wear, I decide not to ask him if he'd like to be photographed. I spot some graffiti on a disused building and poke my camera through the security fence to get a decent picture. Some foreign tourists seem slightly bemused by the Englishman in the Panama Hat taking photographs of the urban decay.
















I call into a newsagents on the Whitechapel Road and buy a large bottle of water which I later discover has passed it's sell by date. How can water that's taken 5,000 years to trickle through the volcanic lavas of the Massif Central have a sell by-date?

As I start taking some photographs of buildings on Commercial Road the battery in my camera dies. It's 12:30 p.m, I've been walking the mean streets for three hours and head back to the hotel to recharge batteries - mine and the Olympus.