A Bus Ride to Hackney

At noon yesterday I met C. D. at Liverpool Street station and we walked down through Brick Lane. On the way we bought a bag of mixed pakora for lunch, which we ate on the way to see the Sarah Lucas exhibition again at the Whitechapel Gallery. This second viewing for me confirmed its strength.

Then we trudged out into the rain and waited for a bus to take us back to C. D.'s. It arrived very soon and we started driving off through the drenched streets. I was pleased to notice that the driver considerately slowed down to a crawl and tooted his horn whenever we approached any large puddles, so that pedestrians would not be deluged by the bus's passing. A little way along our journey a council garbage truck backed into a driveway a ahead us and stopped, completely blocking our way. The driver honked his horn and the truck driver, who had now jumped down from his cab, merely shrugged his shoulders: he then proceeded to hook up his truck to the skip he had come to collect, taking his time and obviously enjoying the situation. A man standing next to me in the bus began to yell abuse in Arabic. Eventually, the truck and its driver moved on, and so did we.

We arrived at our stop and began walking through the streets of Hackney to C. D.'s house. All the way, the beautiful rain fell down on us. Young I. B. later arrived from school.

A great evening unfolded, with (seemingly) unlimited red wine; good conversation; Thai chicken curry; Vic Reeves; more good conversation; Grand Theft Auto; Stephen Fry; 8 Out of 10 Cats; Gogglebox; antihistamine; even more good conversation.

Next morning: coffee and more conversation, before a long walk along the canal, where barges were moored along the banks and a huge swan stood on its thick black legs and growled at us as it preened. We arrived at a point from where we could see one of the stadia built for the Olympics and, next to it, Anish Kapoor's towering monstrosity. Then we wandered back along the canal and through the streets to say goodbye at the entrance to Bethnal Green tube station which, I suddenly recalled, was where 173 people, many of them women and children, had been killed during an air raid in WW2, when a woman fell on the stairs, causing a crushing pile-up of the people coming in behind.

I feel fortunate indeed to have been so warmly and generously embraced by my friends from Facebook.

Discarded mattress along the canal at Hackney.

A potentially aggressive swan on the bank of the canal at Hackney.


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