Got up at 6.45. Overcast Day.
Blood Pressure 116/72. Pulse 61 Watched a few minutes of an old Black and White thriller on TV. They show one every morning. We then watched Minder. The last series they made without Terry. Nephew Ray is Arthur's minder . Not Terry. Prince has died. I acknowledge his talent but did he have too much style. Did his talent equal his style? When did style cease and talent begin? Am I being too hard on the bloke? After all show business is show business. He certainly manipulated his image to perfection. The Apple Company when Steve Jobs was present had equal style and equal content. We had intended going to Eltham House but luckily we looked at the website at the last moment and found it was closed on Fridays and Saturdays. We them decided to take Steve's advice and walked along the Grand Canal from Limehouse to Islington. 45 years ago Limehouse was the epitome of the East End. We didnt get to Limehouse until after 1. And we discovered a genuine East End Greasy Joes Cafe. A classic holdover from the past. Small cafe run by an old woman and her children. She was so old they were probably her grandchildren. Concrete floor. Laminex tables. Metal Chairs very close together. The Daily Mirror and The Star the only papers for customers to read. Cafe was well patronised by genuine East Enders. Loud, brash, overbearing. Some swearing occurring in conversation. Women went outside to have a smoke. People looking at us as if to ask - why are you here? I had Curried meat and rice. Jenny had baked potato and salad. Mine was OK. Jenny's not so much. I enjoyed it. It was more than reminiscent of the past. It was equal to the past. We then walked from Limehouse to Islington Angel along the Regents Canal. Saw a few longboats going through locks. Had a short conversation with one of the participants. Man and wife own a longboat with several other couples. They take it in turn to use the boat. They were only going from Limehouse to Kings Cross today and this was taking them 3 hours. Its not a quick form of transport. Limehouse is the nearest to the city they can get. I helped a woman to swing the gate closed in another lock. Along the way we went into an East End Pub that they have left standing after demolishing all other buildings within at least 200 metres of it. It is sitting out in the open all by itself. Surrounded by bare land slowly turning into something of a park. Its called - The Palm Tree. It used to be surrounded by streets full of houses. It was at the end of the then streets next to the canal. Now its only next to the canal. Now people have to walk about 400 metres to get to it. There was only one other person in there when we went in. He was a dissafected East Ender who never wanted anything to be demolished. They have ruined the whole area. Enormous dissatisfaction with the state of affairs. All of the industry in the area has been taken away. Every warehouse has been knocked down. People from overseas come here and live off the tax paid by English people like him. Some kind of University has been set up over the other side of the canal. Who pays for them? Stupid people like us do - that's who! What do they do there? Students sitting around doing nothing. Etc. I told him that he didn't realise it but England was now a prosperous middle class country. This seemed to set him back a bit. I think he was a little shocked at such a preposterous statement. He will be voting to leave. Send them all back home etc. The landlord was a bit more balanced. Easy to talk to. Very good with the East End banter. He was surprised that Manchester City own Melbourne City Soccer Club. He thought only West Ham had scouts in Australia. He made Jenny a cup of tea. I had a full pint of English Ale. It was OK. Two yuppies came in when we were there. They both had a pint of Guinness. Still looks as unappetising now as it did in 1970. Classless accents on the two yuppies. May have been from the University. As we were leaving another East Ender came in. The landlord said business picks up at night. He has a small bandstand. Photo's of entertainers on the wall. No one that I knew. Some photo's looked a bit desperate. Typical East End entertainers from 1970. Some photo's may have been from that vintage. No drag acts though. East End had lots of drag acts in 1970. We walked for about 3 hours with the ambience of the place slowly getting more gentrified. Finally got to Islington Angel which is very gentrified. The canal goes into a tunnel at this point. You can see markers on the ground above showing showing the path the tunnel takes as you walk along over it. The Islington Angel tube station must go below the canal tunnel. Its a long way down to the platform. Got the Northern Line. Only time we have experienced very full trains. But trains came every 90 seconds. How good is that. We waited and got on the third train. Walked straight from the Northern Line to the Metropolitan line without waiting. Watched an interesting show on TV about The Everley Brothers. Very good extracts on film and details of life in Nashville. From what I can gather it was a country town something like Wangaratta but it had Recording studios and Publishing Companies and songwriters who lived there in houses they were paying off. Its true the brothers never got on. Don was a democrat and leftist. Phil was a Republican and a Reagan supporter. They didnt speak for 10 years towards the end of their life. They only gave the one concert at the Albert Hall during this time. Commentators pointed out the number of groups with brothers in them who didnt get on either. There are quite a few. Think about it.
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