Getting Out of the House Occassionally…

So, what with this whole RADA business, and what with Christmas back with the parents and this whole writing-Urban-Magic-3 business, I have neither blogged on anything Londonish for a while.  And while I could do a specific entry, I figured that, while I have this massive archive of photos taken before my camera broke, I may as well put them online and write about them sorta within the caption, with the photos leading the topic rather than visa versa, as a sort of taster for things to come… With which in mind…

Chinatown in London is pretty small, in the grand scheme of things.  It’s just to the North of Leicester Square, and still has many hints of the old city about it, not least in the large number of alleys and rat-runs that wiggle through the area.

Piccadilly Circus is, on the other hand, traffic-heavy, tourist-heavy, and just generally somewhere that locals attempt to avoid.  I mean, cool, in a spectacular look-at-the-shiny-lights kinda way, but unless you’ve gone there specifically to glom on the diversity of mankind, (and oh boy is mankind diverse at Piccadilly Circus) it is usually a place that is passed through on the way to somewhere else.

There aren’t many arcades left in London – proper arcades in the old sense of internally contained passages lined with shops, usually selling extremely silly items at very high prices – but the majority of those surviving are cluttered round Piccadilly and St. James, of which the Burlington Arcade is both the largest, most impressive, and silliest.  Knowing nothing about antiques, I can’t say whether the collection of cigar trimmers, silver pots, gem-studded jewelry and vases are antiques, or just… well… what they are… whatever that is…there was an antique arcade at the Angel, which from the outside looked every bit huge a yellow-brick walk-through bank, but alas in recent years, it has closed down and its fate remains, as far as I know, debatable.

Alright, Hoxton.  Or ‘trendy trendy’ Hoxton as it is less commonly known.  Hoxton went through a long period of being a dump on the north edge of Old Street, but has in recent areas been rediscovered and made into a hip and fashionable place full of converted loft flats, old Hawksmore-esque churches, vibrant street markets, ethnic diversity, artistic independence and reasonable proximity to public transport.  Now it is a place where worlds meet – every language, every age, every wealth band and every taste and style, all moving politely round each other through its refurbished terraced streets and beneath its grey council blocks.

I love this image, and regret that my zoom wasn’t wide enough to do it better.  It is the welcome sign that visitors pass underneath on their way to Guys Hospital, just by London Bridge.  Welcome to Guys – and to McDonalds.  What a union was herein made.

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