Open Soho

Spent a wonderful evening in Soho with my friend/cousin, Iz, who is in London for some months editing a drama for the BBC. Evening began in a lovely old pub, where we had a couple of drinks watching the streetlife mosey by. We then went to a French restaurant (whose name I have forgotten) around the corner, a pavement table more in the slipstream of the crowd, where Iz could smoke. We ordered a meal, more drinks and talked as we did in the old days, touching on some old themes, taking cues from the gist of the passing, evening-lit faces. Soho has an edge to it of course, but I can also see what Iz likes about it. I probably spent more time in Soho on these four days in London than I did when I lived here last, in a squat in Camberwell in 1989. On our way back to the tube we took some photographs (such as the one above), peering into that other Soho, like two dainty little Alices with our cameras, stopping at the brink of a very old lookingglass.