It is a market day there and the road outside of the railway station was filled with stalls and the cries of stall holders. Nothing strange or different in that.
However, it didn't take me long to notice the price of goods was a throw back to the seventies: a pair of shoes for £5, a watch, battery and strap for £6 ... it went on like that from stall to stall. At the far end, a lone black man was playing church choral music on his stall selling cd's. Another stall was selling items of clothing from cardboard boxes: £2 each or three for a fiver. You could smell the cheap cotton as buyers eagerly sorted through the boxes looking for something that fitted them or their children.
The coffee shops had their regulars sitting on the pavements - mainly old but both white and black and in the public house nearest the station, old men sat and stared into their pint glasses, ignoring the man sitting opposite and facing them directly from another table.
You could smell the poverty. With every colour of skin and faith on the street, they seemed bound by a common poverty as much, I suspect, as a mutual fear of each other. Young and old they bustled about the daily grind of the East End.
Captain Cook was married in the local church and the Abbey was once the second wealthiest in the land before Henry VIII had it dissolved. Glory past, glory gone: I couldn't wait to return to the palpable yet relative richness of Shepherds Bush market in west London.
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