Meandering From Here to There

Since we haven't been to Broadway Market for a while, we decided to head down this afternoon for our favourite market coffee (potent and tiny, the Vietnamese coffee at one of the stalls is utterly sublime), and although we usually take public transportation over to London Fields, today we decided to zigzag there on foot instead. Our route took us past a pair of signs I often see from the bus (and which I've long had on my list of neighbourhood sights to photograph); if I'm even the slightest bit hungry as I go by on the bus, I always find myself craving an omelette.

When we passed this pleasingly cluttered window, Bob thought it would be funny if the garage doors opened to reveal that the pile of books extended down to the ground floor!

Although our walk begun in the rain, the sun came out just as we rounded a corner and saw this attractive house:

When we took a few more steps, we realised that three sides of De Beauvoir Square are lined with these great houses.

You wouldn't know it by looking at the A to Z, which doesn't even show the tiniest strip of green for this next location, but Albion Square was a lovely, tranquil, narrow green, surrounded by charming houses:

This fountain sits at the centre of the square; unfortunately the writing has not weathered well, and it was very difficult to read the entire inscription, which states that the garden and drinking fountain were provided by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association in 1899.

Surely a square of this size deserves at least a sliver of green in the A to Z! (Or maybe the residents are happy to keep the spot as their little secret.)

We arrived at Broadway Market to find many of the stalls empty on this Easter weekend. What about the coffee stand, we wondered . . . and sure enough, it was closed! While we were disappointed, we decided to keep walking down to Brick Lane to console ourselves with salt-beef bagels and chocolate brownies. As we passed the Regent's Canal, the day seemed idyllic, with blue skies and a narrowboat going through the lock:

This image graced the side of an empty business--although it looked like it was in the process of being renovated into a coffee shop (surprise, surprise).

This next house is a cartoon joy, complete with clouds, a cutout of a more traditional house shape, and two rectangles that at first appear to be windows, but turn out to be glittery strands that reflect as they move in the wind.

If you would like to know more about the house, you can see this article. This next photo is of another Banksy piece, although I was disappointed that the best part of the image has been pressure-washed away:

After the last few photos, you may think that I've accidentally slipped in a photo from December when you see this next one,

but it was taken about half an hour after the previous one! After stopping in at glorious Beigel Bake for our late lunch, we were walking toward home when the sky got very dark, the wind picked up, and it started to hail. At first, it was kind of funny, but the small stones of ice were blowing around quite energetically in the wind, and after we had enough of the pellets stinging our faces, we stopped and stood under an awning on this street for a few minutes. While we were waiting for the wind to die down, two men in the window across the street smiled and waved at us. "Winter weather always makes everyone so friendly," Bob said, pointing out our new friends. Thankfully, the hail only lasted about fifteen minutes, and by the time we decided to take a bus the rest of the way home, the skies were blue again and the hail had already melted into puddles. This last photo from our walk doesn't really give much sense of scale, but the ghostly figure, half-hidden down an alleyway, was actually life-size: