Life without Sajarina…

Hey there – you’ve probably spotted that I haven’t been updating Sajarina all that regularly of late, or well, at all *coughs*. Hopefully when I get a chance I can resume posting, as I have had lots of Easty adventures since I last wrote. But, um, it might be a while coming…

And, as and when that happens, it will now be taking place at www.applejackson.co.uk so please visit me there instead, and you can read all the old posts, not just the few I’ve left here. And there’ll be other stuff! Lots of exciting stuff. Yes.

Sorry everyone!

Meze fun from Istanbul to Leytonstone

Well apologies again for the lengthy silence (but also many thanks to the 30 odd daily visitors checking out Sajarina even without any new posts – you rock my tiny webstat counting world!) As you might have guessed I have been further East than usual, to Istanbul. It rocked, in a big old buildings, iznik tiles, sunshine and baklava kind of a way, which is one of my favourite ways, truth be told.

One of the many things I love about London (and any ethnically diverse city I guess) is that you can go away on holiday, eat and drink tasty things and then find somewhere to buy them when you get home. So today I had lunch with a friend in the Meze Cafe on Church Lane in Leytonstone. I’ve been there a few times before and I like it a lot, from the prettily painted but distractingly phallic gourds hanging from the ceiling to the incredible tat-encrusted mirrors – it really is worth getting up close to these, the one I was next to today had a glow-in-the-dark star gluegunned onto it!

Though I’ve liked all the other stuff I’ve had there, I haven’t tried their meze platter yet. Today I was warned off it because it was too much for one person, and given the size of the house special salad they brought me instead I think they may have saved my life. I could have eaten myself into sweet auberginey oblivion, but instead I just pushed myself to the brink with broccoli, cauliflower, peas and almonds. Mmm. I had a satisfyingly dark and sludgy Turkish coffee as well, which with my friend’s latte and two gargantuan salads came to £10.90. They also do sandwiches, jacket potatoes and that sort of thing, as well as some hot dishes like moussaka for about £6. And it’s another of those wondrous unlicensed places, so you can bring your own alcohol, with no corkage.

This sort of thing makes me really happy. Although the rent in Leytonstone seems to be generally cheaper than in Stratford, I’ve moved from a shared house to solo living, and my disposable income has taken a knock. So far though, I’ve still been able to eat out pretty regularly because there are a few good, cheap options available, the Meze Cafe being one of them. Long may it live, and bring meze to the people!

PS Will be posting about Ichiban at some later date, and have already had a recommendation for the Singburi Thai. I’d love to hear any other suggestions!

The tree for me

S for Sajarina! We were in Epping Forest again, enjoying the sunny loveliness. Graffiti on trees seems bizarre to me (spraycans that is, when it’s carved it’s retro, even romantic, like in Robin Hood) Why would you want to tag a tree?

Bromley-By-Bomb, someone in my shoes and fluffy insect love

On Friday night the unexploded WW2 device in Bow was detonated – I don’t have much to add to Going Underground’s post, which includes a dramatic still from a BBC video.

As I was leaving the house a few mornings ago a woman walked past wearing my shoes. Not just the same style from the same shop – actually my shoes, which I bought from the Dalston Oxfam shop, customised (badly) and then gave away to another charity shop. I was stunned, and she looked at me a bit oddly, probably because I was following her and gaping. Nobody needs that at 8.30 in the morning.

It made me happy though, because I thought I’d made a real mess of them, but she clearly didn’t think so! They were Converse, with a comic book print and white toes. I decided they would look better with black toes, so I coloured them in with permanent marker, leaving a star shape on one toe and writing “Pow!” inside. “How witty I am!” I thought to myself, and then realised I’d just hashed up a perfectly good pair of sneakers. Sigh.

It’s not the first time something like that has happened either – my friend customised a t-shirt and later donated it to the Tottenham branch of Sense, then I found it in the Hackney branch. I not sure whether this ’small world’ business is comforting or depressing. Maybe a little bit of both.

In other news: I saw a bumblebee! From the top deck of a bus. It made me realise how seldom I see the fluffy little dears these days, and I made a mental note to stop mocking The Independent for devoting its cover to “The plight of the bumblebee“. Surely there’s some good bee-PR to be had from Harry Potter? That’s where ‘dumbledore‘ comes from after all.

Lift festival lands in Stratford

After my whinge about the lack of decent public art in Stratford, here comes a whole new festival of art, with a giant moving tent, no less! Lift comes from the same people that brought us the Sultan’s Elephant, apparently, and that was fabulous.

Festival events are running from the 12 June to the 6 July, and include films, workshops, recycled art, a craft party, local-grown food, drama, music… tons of ‘interactive cultural experiences’ as Lift calls them. It looks great, seriously – check out the website because there’s plentymuch going on.

What I find particularly appealing is the eco-friendly, multicultural, community focus which they appear to be pulling off in a rare unpatronising manner. It looks earnest, sure, but in that infectious sort of way. Or perhaps that’s just me – I think I am getting more earnest as I get older

Rainy roof flowers

These amazing gutter flowers make me happy Anyone know what they are? I thought they were foxgloves at first, but on closer inspection they look like something approaching a snapdragon. It seems very poetic, to see beauty striving through neglect, even in somewhere proper skanky like Thatched House.

Waging war on mass-produced tat

*Fanfare* I now have internet access! Will get to work making up for lost blogging time.

*Nother fanfare* I went out this weekend! On an expedition to Walthamstow.

As promised, I paid a visit to the small but perfectly formed East London Craft Guerrilla Market on Saturday, and purchased this lovely grisly necklace:

It’s made by Glowing Doll, who won my prize for Stuff I’d Like To Own, though there were some other stalls which caught my eye, including a lady making awesome soft-toy guitars. There were about half a dozen stalls (and a sleepy cat) in the sunny leafy back garden of Beautiful Interiors, which is also worth a visit if you’re up that way.

And you’d probably like to be up that way because, my goodness isn’t Walthamstow Village lovely? In a similar way that the door of Eddie’s pub in Stratford deposits you in Hampstead, a short walk down Third Avenue from Hoe St transports you to Church Street in Stoke Newington. As well as all the twee and sexy crafts in Beautiful Interiors, there is a restaurant and deli called Eat 17 which looks gorgeous. It was formerly a waffle cafe (a wafflery? If that isn’t the word it should be) so has a pretty impressive choice for dessert, including a cheesecake waffle. Yup, that’s cheesecake on a waffle. Num num num, say I.

Ooh, also Diamond Geezer has been in my neck of the woods recently with this post on invisible artwork ‘Linked’. Will add that to my Leytonstone to-do list, especially after my rant about rubbish public art a while back. Though can imagine it wouldn’t be for everyone – I have been covering my organisation’s press phone this weekend, and got an impassioned call at 5.30am from an unhinged person ranting about ’skull-based receivers’ and how the Government is controlling the voices in his head. Sca-ry.

But why is he so frothy?

Wow. Keeping a blog going is much harder without regular internet access – guess I should have seen that one coming. It’s not just not having free time online to write, it’s also the fact that, frankly, I haven’t been getting out much lately.

So, I was planning to just let my current obsession spill over and stick up some pictures of my new flat (here, and here, since you ask!) But then I happened to visit the bizarre and rather awesome website of Stratford’s Mr Coffee, who, it turns out, is a bit of an East London institution, (aside from a rogue vehicle in Paddington).

For those not in the know, Mr Coffee (Strapline: He’s so frothy!) is a chain of mobile cafes each operating out of the back of a ‘cute little Piaggio’. I am big fan of the one in Stratford at least, because the people are friendly and the coffee is cheap and really tasty. Also he’s SO frothy! How could you resist?

Anyway, on the website all your burning questions will be answered:

‘Who is Mr Coffee?’

‘Why is he so frothy?!’

and my personal favourite:

‘Where can I find him? I must have him now!‘

There is a video of interviews with Mr Coffee regulars from around London (not Stratford, sadly!) Also don’t miss the animated site intro which demonstrates I don’t know what exactly. The problem of over-crowding in London? The futility of our efforts to make change in the face of universal indifference? And is that Mr Coffee swerving onto the pavement to avoid a bus? Hm.

Apologies for continuing disruptions to Sajarina service. I’m hopefully off to the East London Craft Guerrilla market in Walthamstow tomorrow, so I’ll have something to write about. And internet in the next week or so so I will be able to share it with you all. Until then – ciao!

Sheep n hipsters

Who’s this amiable fellow? It’s a half-sheep, half-goat from Spitalfields City Farm, which is hosting a Sheep and Wool Fayre on Sunday 8 June. I can be blasé about this kind of rural jiggery-pokery because I’ve seen it tons of times before, while I was growing up. One of my friends at primary school lived on a farm and used to help with the milking before school. Which is a 6am start, folks. Ouch. Still, who better than an 8 year old who will be waking up at that time anyway? Hm.

I like my faux-rural pursuits more on the gentle, consumerist, twee side – jumble sales, coffee mornings, that sort of thing. There was a super Christmas craft fayre at Toynbee Hall year before last which I only found because there was a note in biro stuck on the wall outside.

Anyway. Spitalfields City Farm is joyous, not just because it’s well, a *farm* in the *city* (the world’s gone topsy turvy!!) but because it is just a few steps away from the vintage slouch-boot trodden paths of Brick Lane, land of the trendy. Unlike the city farms in Beckton and Mudchute where you are dropped off by the DLR in places that look a bit like a budget version of the countryside, but which are actually huge parks, Spitalfields and Hackney farms are tucked away down side streets. I love being able to emerge again from such a street into the Sunday lunchtime throng with an air of superiority that doesn’t say ‘I’m so rocking my Lazy Oaf t-shirt today’ as much as ‘I’ve just been hanging out with a tiny pony. oh yeah.’

Also apologies for the lack of posts recently! Have now moved house, which I’m very happy about, but still lacking internet. Plus I’ve been off work so there have been no lunchtime cyberjaunts either. Back in tomorrow though so hopefully things will regularize. Thanks for sticking with me!