Following a brief reconnaissance mission at the weekend, I will shortly be shifting Sajarina HQ a few miles further East to
Leytonstone. Admittedly, I did visit on an almost criminally nice day, and spent a while enjoying the sunshine among the graves and bluebells (frigging bluebells!) in the churchyard of St John the Baptist, which I probably wouldn’t do all that often if I lived there. But I liked what I saw, for the most part, including:
- Saturday lunchtime, and the high street was so quiet it was almost serene (for pedestrians, that is, the traffic was pretty solid). And you know why? Everyone’s in Stratford! Running over hapless bloggers with their armoured push-chairs and dropping their chicken bones everywhere.
- Lovely old Victorian buildings at every turn. So pretty! So crumbly! And the library is in a strange sort of art deco-tastic building too. The flats available for the most part aren’t white-out, laminate-floored paper boxes like the one I’m in at the moment.
- No tramps, drunks, preachers or crazy people. Where are they? Did they clear them all out of the streets because I was coming? Or has living in Cornwall, then Stratford, just warped my perception of what is a normal level of bonkers local inhabitants? Perhaps they all come out at night, like the zombies in 28 Days Later. I can only hope they’re not so fast…
- A fair amount of cool stuff - health food shop, at least one nice cafe, fish and chip shop (there are none in central Cambridge - none!) Wetherspoons (cheap pear cider!), a hobbyshop (nerds! also somewhere I can buy little bags of trees if the fancy takes me). Only furniture charity shops though, as far as I could see, which is a shame because I need to get my secondhand clothes fix from somewhere, but then Stratford doesn’t have any either.
- There’s also the News from Nowhere Club locally, as well as a pretty lively (well, as lively as these things get) local history group. And the icing on the Leytonstone cake, as far as I’m concerned: the 491 Gallery, run and inhabited by an arts collective. There’s even a little Channel 4 film about them you can watch online!
- Greenery - Upper Leytonstone, where my friend lives, is all tree-lined streets and loveliness, and it also edges onto Hollow Ponds and Epping Forest, where I used to go for walks when I was iccle and wee. That was right up at the other end though.
There are obviously downsides to anywhere, but none of them are dealbreakers for me at the moment. The underpass from the tube station could be a bit creepy at night, especially as you’re greeted by a scene from Psycho rendered in mosaic as soon as you come out - an homage to famous Leytonstoner Alfred Hitchcock.
I’ll miss being able to walk to the cinema and Pizza Express in Stratford, and my 20 min tube journey to work was lovely, but I think I’ve been a bit spoilt. All in all I am feeling very positive. Now I just need to find the right flat and I can do some more exploring…
5 Comments
April 30, 2008 at 2:48 pm
I like Leytonstone a lot. I think it has a lot more of a community feel than Stratford, it’s much more like a self-contained little town. Also, the secondhand furniture place there is excellent! So cheap!
April 30, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Yeah, that’s what I felt. I may have found a flat, so I may shortly be kitting it out from the furniture shop! Second hand places are great for finding unusual things as well, I’ll have a rootle around
May 1, 2008 at 2:03 pm
You’ll like Leytonstone. We do. It’s got a lot going for it, and it’s getting better all the time. Rest assured there are indeed drunks and crazy people, but far less that Stratford - a place I go only when the Central Line is up the spout and I have to get the Jubilee.
May 1, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Oh yes - the Singburi Thai near the fire station is the best restaurant in London, if not the entire country.
May 4, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Sigh. I thought it was too good to be true. Thanks for the Singburi tip! Definitely on the lookout for places to eat in the evening and somewhere for a cup of tea at the weekends…
Leave a Reply