pumpkinstrokemarrow

Yesterday was the day of the Mutter-Previn master class at St Lukes to which BH and her SIL were slated to attend, so having delivered them there I had an excellent opportunity to take a stroll around that part of Hackney, and, as it turned out, Islington.

Started out by heading up the City Road towards the Angel, passing the Eagle (see November 25th) on the grounds that it was a touch early to be taking refreshment but then coming across the City Road Basin, a way station on the Regent's Canal. All looked fairly quite although there was the Islington Boat Club and there was the Islington answer to the duck house made famous by the furore over MPs' expenses, this duck house taking the form of a float with three tasteful twig nests on short pillars. Right background is a National Grid sub-station, presumably supplying power to an important part of London and provided with rather more serious protection than the rather larger sub-station we have at Chessington.

Branched north at this point to find myself out of Hackney into a rather posh part of Islington, old style terraces and a fair sprinkling of posh cars. I also came across a rather unusual Catholic church, St John's of Duncan Street. Great barn of a place, a little cold, with stations of the cross which appeared to be reproductions of renaissance pictures of the same. The organ was a mere 50 years old, but was large and impressive and was being used for practise. To give the Catholics their due though, their churches are nearly always open, which is more than can be said for the Anglicans.

Into Upper Street where I spotted a silver two seater, open topped Mercedes heading south, shiny silver rather than matt silver, possibly something from their SL range. A bit too obviously flash for a drug dealer so possibly a footballer from nearby Arsenal. Worked my way through to Chapel Market, still alive and well although the vegetable side of things was a bit thin. But there was a shop offering the necessaries for dealing with rats and mice and there was an eel and pie shop. There was also a well stocked hardware emporium, though not well stocked enough to have anything which would do as a suitcase handle.

Looped round into Pentonville Road, back down the City Road and this time into the Eagle, which while carrying a verse of 'pop goes the weasel' on the outside wall, was entirely gastro pub inside. One of the bar snacks was something called warmed edamame beans with sea salt (£2.50). I was not sufficiently curious to buy some to find out what they were and settled down to a decent pint of pride to the accompaniment of rather too loud music. This was followed by a quick spin up Shepherdess Walk which contained a mixture of what looked like old commercial property and sixties housing estates. There was also a Holy Trinity Church which was shut but did have a lot of perforated dwarf cyclamen behind the railings, perforations which we do not get on ours. What would be doing such a thing at this time of year? Round the other side was a war memorial board the like of which I had not seen before either. It was in three roughly equal parts, part 1 first war, part 2 second war and part 3 blitz. It was this last part I had never come across before, perhaps reflecting my sheltered life.

And so back to St Lukes to pick up the master classers, down through Whitecross Street where we were sorry to see that one of the last chunks of original terrace was up for demolition, and wound up the proceedings with tea and cake, rather dear, in the café in the Barbican Centre. But which gave me the necessary to stand all the way to Epsom, there being some problem with the trains at Waterloo. BH was stood up for twice and I was offered once.

Lastly, somewhere along the way I was approached by a beggar, that is to say a decently dressed older man who seemed a bit confused and told me some story about having mislaid his wallet in the nearby Moorfields Hospital and could he have 80p for the bus home. I gave him a fiver for which he very nicely called down the blessings of God upon me. For once I think I was touched by a worthy beggar - having too often over the years been touched by unworthies - or at least people down on their luck spinning you some yarn to get money out of you. One would not mind so much if they told you something closer to the truth.