A Wednesday morning in March, and very much the day after the night before, with the sugar overload of empty calories of the previous evening working through the bloodstream to leave me sleep deprived and a little spaced. 

As well as coming up for a friend's birthday party and my birthday treat at the Ritz, I'm in London to catch up with a friend who's over from Melbourne who has a film showing at the BFI London Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. Trouble is my computer dying has taking all his contact details with it, and I have the hollow feeling that despite being in the same city we'll not actually get together and it will be another four years before I can see him. The last email I got said he'd be at the festival this evening so I am planning to go over and try to find him. 

I'm not holding out much hope though, and my suspicion is it wil be a wasted journey and a week's worth of annual leave used up. I chat with A on the phone and try to plan a day, but I am poisoned by this feeling of disassociation and restlessness, and so overloaded with potential of what we could do, that I can't seem to settle on what I will do.

The whole day is ahead of me, and yet the variety of possible plans and my strange mood leave me unsure as to what to do with myself. Indecision in the face of too much choice mean I sit at the kitchen table letting time slip past failing to do anything. L has a singing lesson to go to so unsure of where I'll end up I poddle off to Sloane Square. Sheer inertia means I end up travelling East on the District line with the vague plan of closing up the remaining hole in the spine of it between Mile End and West Ham, before looping back to hang out with A and L.   I sit still, being at one with my seat, until forced into movement at Bow Road which has candy striped pillars and old style brickwork ceiling.

Outside, I prevail upon a passing chap to do the picture; a very well mannered sort called Abdul, who takes great pains to line up a tidy shot even if he's to polite to say out loud that he thinks I'm a little odd to be doing this at all.  He's intrigued by my non-London accent, being new to the city himself, so I explain the beauties of Cornwall, and the geographical location as the pointy toe at the far South West of the country, dipping into the chill of the Atlantic.



We part with a handshake as I toddle of towards Bromley By Bow. 

In contrast to the suburban leafiness of Bow itself, Bromley By Bow perches on a hostile ribbon of concrete divided from nearby housing by screamingly busy roads. I seem to be marooned on a flyover that stretches away towards more high rise buildings and cranes on the skyline - of course, the docks would be over in that direction!  The housing looks industrial and vaguely European, like I've popped out at Rotterdam.  However, deserted Victorian factory buildings, also marooned by overpasses in a sea of litter and invading ferns remind me I am still in a working part of London's industrial heritage.   

The shapes and block colours of the flats are lively in a landscape devoid of anything organic, and will make for interesting quilting blocks.



 I buy chocolate from the news stand, but feel too cowed by the hard East End accents - blokes saying 'awite, gwal' -  to ask either the chap in the booth, or the guy talking to him about his 'bruvver in law getting out of nick'  to ask for photographic assistance. 

I lurk around outside, slightly shell shocked until I find a willing victim in the form of a fag-chewing, tough-looking lady.  She looks like she'd take no messing with her; like she's been through the School of Hard Knocks and now runs a multinational company where her staff both fear and respect her, like she's been written by Barbara Taylor Bradford.  I like her formidability and feel quite pleased with myself in my uncertain frame of mind for approaching her.  She humours me with the below before puffing of in a whirl of nicotine and grim purpose:

All that remains of the District Line now is the spur down to Wimbledon.  I continue with my leaf-on-the wind frame of mind return via the District to Whitechapel not really certain what I'm going to do once I get there.

I make it to Whitechapel before midday, and as it is sunny outside, I decide to take the rail replacement bus to see the now closed station at Shoreditch.  You can't actually get a tube to Shoreditch anymore; the line up is closed while they build a new station at Shoreditch High Street. Whitechapel station is filled with important signage telling you Shoreditch is permanently closed.  I read the timetable, and I sit on the bus stop.  I seem to be a Zen state of unthinking and just watch listlessly as the stop fills and empties with people carrying shopping from Petticoat Lane; people carrying bright plastic tubs bought from the market, people weighed down with plaid laundry bags stuffed with their worldly goods, a chap carrying 5ft MDF crucifix attached to another wheel-shaped piece of MDF struggles to drag his burden onto the route 25 bus as I watch...it all washes past as I wait.

By lucky accident, in the week that I was last in London, and determined to fill in a few holes in the map, there was a knitting and stitching show on at Olympia.  Especially pleasing as Olympia is an irritating, niggling spur all to itself on the District. So on Thursday, in a much better mood following the utter disaster that was the Wednesday the right royally marvellous artnouveauho and I set of to see what goodies there were to tempt us. 

We started from Earl's Court, in order to commune with the TARDIS again, for I am sad and obsessive and make my friends stand in the rain to pose with wooden police boxes.  Sadly these pictures didn't get uploaded to photobucket, so are currently in limbo after the recent catastrophic hard drive failure'.

The only thing that did get uploaded is the evidence of our arrival after an absolute eon of waiting at Earl's Court for the Olympia branch train.  What was amusing though was seeing the platform fill up with ladies of a certain age all jonesing for  exotic wool and to finger the latest developments in haberdashery.  It was a sea of bobbing white heads as we disembarked.  I may poke fun, but I too was on a mission to thrill at the sight of metallic machine embroidery threads, acrylic buttons in fantastic shades and piles of the shiniest of beads.

Olympia is very open plan, and the best proof of destination was big painted lettering half obscured by grey paint on thr railway bridge...why it was only painted have way, like they've changed their minds about where you are, is a mystery. 


It was a wet and murky day, and I'd borrowed L's werewolf-hunting cape as protection (as well as it just looked good with my hat).  During the tube journey from South Ken across the wilds of Kensington L regaled me with the tale of how she freed a grateful village from the scourge of lycanthropy to aquire the said cape.  Many of our fellow commuters were held in thrall at her recital, and sad to reach their destinations, and thus miss the end of her thrilling tale.  What better companion can one ask for than someone who dresses with flare and verve, is willing to lend you bits of their cool wardrobe, and then tells you exciting bedtimes stories with blood, guts and dark magic as the tube rumbles along its course.

Once inside the show, time seemed to move at a different rate and we  had a marvellous time shopping, chatting , eyeing cool things, and planning how to use the beads, yarn and fabric we just couldn't resist.  I spent far to much, had a great day, and made some very useful contacts.  We were so busy chatting to yarn spinners and fabric people we ran out of day, and embarassingly were the last punters to leave.  I very sheepishly collected our things from the cloakroom and was rounded (and rightfully) chastised by the disgruntled staff member who was waiting on us to go home - the rows of empty coat-hangers behind her a mute reproach as she sat with our stuff ready on the counter...

We dragged our spoils home, had a slap up feast at the Stockpot and watched silly teen movie about superheroes.  A very good day.

The bronze flocked taffeta I bought became this:


Further outfits are planned with some black broderie anglais, and a botanically printed cotton lawn.  I also acquired some  printed metallic leatherettes that will form the gold mosaic parts for the planned waistcoat based on the Finsbury Park mosaic balloons.

Friday morning, and after leaving my suitcase at Paddington left luggage, headed down into Paddington on the Bakerloo Line to knock out one of the little bumps on the map; Marylebone. I can't collect the other wrinkle, Regents Park, as it remains closed until June this year.

I chose a different entrance  in the Underground to the main one, simply on the grounds of taking the path less travelled and seeing something new in a familiar station.  It's much quieter in this section, the tiling more old fashioned, almost deserted, but this tiny decision leads to a delicious surprise as I am overtaken on the escalator by my friend Janey, who actually lives in Oxford.  I'd bobbed past, lost in iPod-land, and she's spotted the hair! Ah, the chance meetings and brief encounters that London is so good at. Given the huge numbers of people moving round the city, it is a constant surprise to me how often I do run into people I know through sheer accident.  See, had I not been making a totally superfluous journey for this project our paths would never have coincided today.

I try to drag her off for elevenses but she's en route to Paris.  How terribly sophisticated, but then she is incredibly well travelled, and often calls up from far flung and dangerous parts of the globe where she is Making A Difference; I have tremendous admiration for her. Her life much more exciting than my planned train journey later back to Bodmin. 

Still, how unexpected; how wonderful.  We hug and jump about with glee.  She's heavily into quilting ("So I buy a few fat quarters every now and then, it's not a problem, I can handle it") so after the Olympia show she'd been in my thoughts, and it's almost as though I'd conjured her into existence by sheer effort of will.