Brick Lane

Our last morning in London, and it’s back to South Kensington to visit Wildlife Photographer of the Year.  As always the photographs are fabulous, and I’m particularly impressed by the work of the younger photographers. 

I think my favourite overall is The Survivor, a backlit Arctic fox, but they’re all wonderful. I know many blippers have seen the exhibition which ends this month, but in case you haven’t, it’s worth looking at it online. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/wpy/gallery/2023-life-on-the-edge?tags=ed.current

Then it’s back to the hotel, collecting luggage and on to Euston. G decides that we should get an Uber, but having booked one, it takes an age to ‘find’ our driver, so running out of time we cancel and take  a black cab. This leaves us with a cancellation fee and a predictably extortionate cab fare - but we make it to the station with minutes to spare - only to find that our train has been delayed! We end up close to an hour late meaning we can claim 50% refund which will go some way to cancel out the costs! 

It’s been a great few days - though I must admit for me it’s been the toughest visit in terms of battling with physical difficulties and it does make me a little worried about our planned ‘big’ trip this winter. Hopefully my back surgery will help as will the planned new drug regime once surgery is over. But, as I’ve said before, I really want to do as much as is reasonably possible, and I’ve enjoyed it. 

Yesterday I mentioned that  I was leaving Brick Lane for today. We walk through this incredibly vibrant area on our way to Columbia Road. Everywhere you look, something catches your eye.  There are beautiful pieces of street art, alongside more standard tagging graffiti scrawled across walls, and whole areas just covered hipsters and stickers. Then there are the people- multicultural, alternative, often larger than life eccentrics. The air is full of the tempting the aromas of Asian dishes being prepared in restaurant after restaurant - each seemingly cooked by the ‘best Indian chef in London’. Brick Lane’s reputation means it’s a culinary honey pot with hustlers welcoming you in to restaurant after restaurant. 

The buildings too are fascinating with elaborate brick facades - it’s an area rich in history, the Brick Lane mosque epitomising its changing multicultural community. It was originally a church for the Huguenot refugee from France, then a synagogue for the Jews who had fled Russia and Central Europe, before finally becoming a mosque in the 1970s for Bangladeshi community. 

This is a set of images - I really want to share this place - but for my main, I’ve chosen the very first thing we see in Brick Lane: Mohammed Ali’s  ‘Mateer Tan’ - The Land is Calling’.  Portraying life in rural Bangladesh, he feels it is important that street-art resonates with the people who live there. The link explains more:  
https://www.artofmohammedali.com/blog/brick-lane-mural-the-land-is-calling

More street art in extras, together with shots of the area and it’s inhabitants.