Eastenders, localism & networking

Fiona Barry

Fiona Barry presents a personal memoir of the East End.

The Eastend networking from Richmond to Upminster in one hour, gathering my thoughts on the District Line. I have touched base with people I have come to love and appreciate. My second footing of this robust prominent business enterprise with a hidden charm of character. Why did I leave it so long to return?

During my childhood my pearly bellbottomed fancy fashion memories during the 1970s does identify where I truly feel at home.  Every year during my early life my grandparents would treat me to the flavour of Cheshire Street, a wonderful gathering of Kings and Queens. Tower Hamlets, a distant memory until discovering social ties through local politics. The colourful Brick Lane gave me a sense of identity with culture and ethnography, feeling I belong to many social sources. Just recently I felt the need to take interest in the change of achitecture over the decades, actually Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian dwellings that fit very nicely with the Shard building. The Shangri-la Hotel opens on May 6th 2014, taking reservations not cheap but worth a second honeymoon.

The culture was always there for me written in the history books, this is a new localism and networking community I cannot deny. A personal feel with elective belonging, in terms of a qualitative youthful and historical twenty-first century postmodernist influence. Certainly not mish mash, east meets jellied eels for brunch. Social changes in an urban street, the nineteeth century has not been lost, but tastefully restored to the former glory. I cannot ignore the economic opportunties with rapid growth of inhabitants influenced by many cultures and tourism during the last decade. Pettycoat Lane and Spitalfields Market remember it well, history and revolutionary fashion stalls. It started in 1974 second-hand clothes and learning of the Great Plague and a centre for manufactering clothes, I follow history with a trip to Bangladesh, Rana Plaza Factory disaster, almost a year. I return home to market in Brick Lane, discovering Jasir Sokhal from 1972 selling gloves until his death in 2001.

I feel blessed to have touched my childhood again.