Brick Lane

With a Brief Foray into Whitechapel and Spitalfields

The day the man came to balance the boat, Oscar and I sloped off for an afternoon of exploring.

The first time I took Oscar to London, he was small enough to still need a pushchair. We rented a house near Putney Bridge for a week, just me and the kids. Thus began our yearly excursions. I have vivid memories of dragging the pushchair up and down great flights of stairs at the tube station. It was no mean feat.

Every year we would find a different area to rent a house and go for a week. One, lucky year, we found a brilliant house in Archway and enjoyed it so much we went twice over the same summer. In order to make the holiday work for everyone, including me, we had rules of engagement. The children were allowed to choose one thing each per holiday that they wanted to do and when we did them, there was to be no moaning from anyone. The rest of the time I would choose what we did, but whatever it was would be larded about by cafes, snacks and trips to various parks if everyone behaved appropriately, including me.

We had some great times and did some wonderful things. It’s the small but beautiful accidents I remember best. Oscar bumping into David Tennant the year we stayed in Chiswick and getting him to sign his How To Train Your Dragon book (Tennant reads the audio books). Playing crazy golf on top of a tower block in Stratford and Jason randomly appearing to surprise us. Countless happy memories of watching the kids tear around Coram Fields, washing up tired and happy at the brilliant, family run Ciao Bella on Lamb’s Conduit Street to eat plates and plates of delicious pasta. Tallulah busking in Trafalgar Square and making enough money to buy us all drink and cakes before we went to the theatre. We have had so many good times in this city.

Now though, the boy has way outgrown his pushchair. Nearly seventeen, he gangles over me, eating me out of house (and now boat) and home and largely preferring his own company to anything I could offer. When I suggested I show him round Brick Lane, I was amazed when he said yes. He has been exploring, but he has been doing it alone. I felt honoured when he agreed to team up with his old mother again. Of course, he has already been to Brick Lane. At the age of six he did a remarkable haggling job with a woman over a pair of earrings that Tilly wanted but couldn’t afford, he just can’t remember any of it.

If you want the full, Brick Lane experience you should go on the weekend, when there are countless stalls and performers and everything is jumping. It reminds me of how Camden used to be, before they polished it up. You can also book tours of the area from Unseen Tours. They are interesting because the tours they run are all staffed by guides who were once homeless in the area they show you round. The money you pay goes to supporting people into jobs and getting off the streets and you get a very different take on the area. I've done the Brick Lane one and particularly enjoyed it because our guide was extremely knowledgeable about street and graffiti artists, which is an interest of mine.

You can get to Brick Lane from Aldgate East, Whitechapel or Liverpool Street stations. We went from Whitechapel. The station is quieter than Liverpool Street, but we emerged into a very busy street market, which was quite intense and something of a surprise. All of life was there, as well as the smell of gently rotting fish from one particularly pungent stall.

I love Brick Lane, not just for the street art but because even though it’s a tourist destination, it’s still a real community. It is at the heart of London’s Bangladeshi community (the area is also known as Banglatown). All the street signs are written in English and Bangladeshi and the streets are full of people living their actual lives. There is a primary school and a busy mosque on Brick Lane itself and lots of real, every day businesses rub along next to the endless bubble tea cafe’s and more touristy destinations. It feels alive in a way that the more commercial areas don’t.

The other, extremely London thing about this area is that you cannot avoid the layers of living history all around you. What is now the Brick Lane mosque was built in 1742 by the Huguenots fleeing persecution in France. It was known as La Neuve Eglise. Since then it has been used as a chapel for missionaries to convert the Jews, a Methodist church, a synagogue and now a mosque. No doubt it will change again in time, welcoming other lost souls who need its solace. Its use reflects all the communities who have arrived here over the centuries seeking refuge and a new place to call home. On this single street in this vast sprawl of a city you hear countless languages, see a beautiful multiplicity of skin tones and watch history being repurposed around you. I find places like this, that shift to fit the needs of the times and its people, so accepting and so hopeful. It lifts my heart.

We saw so much, because even on a regular Tuesday afternoon the place is buzzing with life.

We heard an extremely depressed sounding young girl preaching the word of the Lord in a voice so monotonous it completely undercut her message. Imagine: ‘Jesus died for our sins and after three days he rose again to save us. Hallelujah.’ In a flat, Cockney drawl that couldn’t sound less interested if she tried. Not a great advert for salvation to be honest.

We met a homeless man who showed me a badly wrapped burn on his foot. He had been kicked out of his hostel, but it wasn’t his fault and they said he set his bed on fire, but he didn’t really (his foot begged to differ). He wanted £18 to get into the hostel from which he had just been ejected. I offered to get him some food instead and he took me to a noodle bar and tried to order four meals at £55. We bartered and I haggled him down to one meal and my blessing. We parted as friends. He was quite a norty mowse, but I am rather partial to a bit of cheek and he was so entertaining it was worth one meal, if not four.

We saw an exciting queue outside Rough Trade East, but we were too hungry to stand in a random line to see what the fuss was all about, so we went and grabbed some Thai food instead. We ate teetering cones of Mr. Whippy (my love for Mr. Whippy is so strong I would have it as the dessert on my death row meal) as we wandered from place to place, reading lamp post stickers and looking at graffiti. By the time we got to the legendary Brick Lane Beigel shop we were too full to get anything, but the joy of living here means that there’s alway another day for that, and it’s open 24/7 so there is ample time.

I finally got to visit one of the cutest independent bookshops on earth, Libreria. I’ve been stalking them on Instagram for months and it was such a treat to go in. I impressed myself and everyone I know by leaving without a book. Now I know where it is, that won’t last.

We walked back to Liverpool Street via Spitalfields Market. In the old days, when I lived here, we would go to Spitalfields Market on Sundays. Then it was extremely shabby and run down. It only opened at weekends and all the stalls were makeshift and marvellous for it. Hippies sold organic fruit and veg before it was fashionable and Planet Organic arrived to sell you hand crafted blueberries at £20 a pop. Mad bakers would sell great sheaves of sourdough before lockdown was even a thing. Local artists had pitches amidst it all and there were random junk stalls selling everything from a set of functioning traffic lights to a pair of false teeth. It was one of my favourite places on earth.

That’s all changed now. The market has been gentrified to within an inch of its life. Where you used to be able to buy hand made bamboo bird whistles from a man who sat patiently whittling them behind his stall, now you can buy Lululemon leggings for £100 a time. There are still stalls, but they’re clean and tidy and probably cost more than a small shop to rent. It’s a nice space, and I've sat there many a time in one bar or another, nursing a hangover with a bloody Mary and a pounding head, but it isn’t what it used to be.

I miss those old times, but the example of the church/synagogue/mosque sat in my mind as we cut through the stalls on our way home, only allowing ourselves to get briefly side tracked by the sight of a small boy trying to catch a koi carp in a temptingly shallow pool. Nothing stays the same and we don’t know what the future will look like, but if roaming London teaches you anything it reminds you that resilience and flexibility will always save the day and there will always be something wonderful for you to discover.