North London Revisiting

The North London Borough of Haringey has intermittently been my home for more than two years cumulatively over the last twenty years. That this may be my last visit here makes this return to stay with a friend and recontact with others, bittersweet.

As I wheel my suitcase down familiar roads, I am struck by the gentrification this neighborhood has undergone in the years since my last visit. Gone it seems, is much of the social housing which characterised the area in the early years of my visiting here and where once there was a rundown scrappiness to the roads and gardens, these are now clean. There are small handkerchief sized plots of carefully planted wild meadow growing where outcast white goods and discarded mattresses once lay. There are fewer dark faces.

My attention is taken by several pieces of street art, new additions to the streetscape and glimpsed down small side roads. They are delightful surprises on the brick walls of buildings.

Taking a bus to Islington to eat Austrian cake with a German friend, I am reminded of the winter`s day many years ago when I visited these same streets and was delighted by the sight of a halo of soft lights suspended above an alley way, twinkling as the dusk descended, early as it does in London in winter. Christmas magic, so wonderfully done.

On this day the cake is delicious, and I am excited for my impending visit to Vienna. My friend provides me with places to visit in Berlin which also specialise in coffee and cake. I feel some expansion coming on!

Using public transport, the marvellous metro, which always requires stair climbing, and walking to destinations may however counter any excesses. This is apparent with the bus, train, walk transport required for a British museum visit to an exhibition titled Legion, life in the Roman Army. The carefully curated collection, including items over 4000 years old and the bones of soldiers tumbled into makeshift graves after they were unheroically robbed and beaten. I came away with the impression of the Legion being a highly disciplined, thuggish organisation of scrapping, ambitious men. I wonder if much has changed in the world of Armies.

It is another walk, train, walk, train journey which sees me at the Barbican theatre for an exhibition titled Unravel. The power and politics of textiles in art. This time I meet another friend who shares my passion for textiles. This exhibition is a powerful reminder of the roles that so called " feminine arts " or crafts can play in resisting, restoring and reminding. The community created projects, responses usually to atrocity, are particularly poignant.

Tomorrow, I am going to the soccer. West Ham is playing Fulham. People who know me may be surprised by my enjoyment of soccer. It began on my first trip here, all those years ago, when I tramped amid big burly men through the streets of Upton Park to see my first game and delighted in the structure of a smallish ground that enabled a wonderful view of the pitch and housed thousands of chanting, passionate fans.

I am loving this revisiting.