Brick Lane- what a relief!

Brick Lane - what a relief!

It was the morning after the night before. More to the point it was the day after the night before but you can see where I'm coming from. It happened last night and as usual London and Britain is back again, up and running for business and completely unscathed. Maybe there are a couple of mental and physical scars and bruises but nothing can possibly break the London or British spirit and resolve because we're made of stronger, sterner stuff. Our resilience is something we're rightly proud of and once we dig our heels in nothing can hurt or harm us.

On the day after yet another London terrorist outrage - this time at London Bridge and Vauxhall - London, bless her cotton socks, dusted off the bloodshed and carnage, expressed its perfectly understandable horror, shock and revulsion and then stuck the proverbial two fingers at the evil perpetrators of this disgusting act of violence and barbarity. It would have been so easy to shake our heads in despair and try to pretend that it couldn't happen to us and that it would never happen again. But after Westminster and Manchester, the grisly sequence of death and heartache has reared its ugly head again.

Still here in Manor House we had to get on with the business of life and we promptly did so almost immediately. We awoke this morning and forged ahead, determined to concentrate on the everyday, the ordinary. normal, the things that are customary and routine. Sunday had to be regarded as the second day of a relaxing weekend and nothing would ever disrupt our way of life, everything would just continue in the way it had always done.

And so it was that my wife, father in law and I surged into the day, adamant that nothing would change, deter, discourage or dishearten us. Besides none of us would ever be beaten down by those murderous, heinous terrorists, those heartless purveyors of savagery. Who were these despicable figures of hate to dictate the way our lives should be led?  So we dressed, washed, breakfasted and just got on with it. We all needed structure again, the stabilising certainties, the ability to face any potential difficulties and never allow the enemy to strike us down when quite clearly it should never be allowed to flourish in any society.

 It was planned last night and although we had no idea of the tragic events that would befall us, we still went forward in search of sanity and serenity. We'd done it once and we'd do it again- over and over again. Life needs its continuities, its civilised values and its standard procedures such as living, breathing, walking and talking. It may sound silly but after all that has taken place in recent weeks maybe we might have taken this everyday behaviour for granted.

It was Brick Lane in the heart of London's East End. Brick Lane was the indisputable destination, the place we had to be in because - well because we simply fancied it and the Sunday market in Brick Lane is something to be savoured. The Brick Lane Sunday market is one of the most joyous of experiences. It is one huge spectacle of commerce, frantic wheeling and dealing, tough negotiation, hard bargaining, tourists browsing, pottering around, glancing admiringly at old bric a brac, old records, old ornaments, old records, old everything. It is hard to imagine just how prosperous the day may have turned out for some of the stall holders but once again it was human behaviour at its most regular.

There was the woman with a guitar casually slung around her neck who for all the world looked like some Joni Mitchell lookalike singing powerfully and emotionally at the top of her voice. The lyrics were truly heartfelt and hinted strongly at loss, rejection and sentimentality. There was a decided note of hurt and betrayal in her voice and slowly but surely the bitterness in her voice soared to a moving climax.

Then there were the exotic food stalls that seem to multiply by the week. There was Vietnamese food galore, huge woks sizzling and frying with rice and all manner of spices and seasonings. There were the incredibly tempting paella and pasta outlets that stood very comfortably next to the sweetest of juices, mango and pineapple, guava, apple, orange and the most delightful range of fruits that somehow demanded that you buy just one because they looked just spectacularly attractive and colourful. Besides we all love the sweet things of life.

I'm not sure but I did notice more clothes rails in Brick Lane  than I had on any previous visit. There was an abundance of women's clothes, rails and rails of women's clothes, flowing dresses in a kaleidoscope of colours, a rainbow of colours, quite possibly retro dresses that Mary Quant had once so proudly designed during the 1960s. But there they were prettily arranged and blowing gently in the softest of early summer winds.

Towards the end of our walk I once again cast my eye at a small knot of cameras, box Brownie cameras, Kodak cameras, cameras with a vintage lens and flash. And for some strange, incongruous reason there were the guitars I'd seen in Charing Cross Road last week, Not exactly the same guitars but similar in size and design. The range of guitars was much more limited but did look the part.

For personal reasons I couldn't resist a fleeting glance at the book stalls, books that were so random and arbitrary that there was little in the way of order in their display. There were stacks of annuals, paperbacks, classics scattered liberally and then little literary gems. But then I had to look twice at one book in particular because it was one of the great classics that I didn't think I'd ever stumble on in any jumble sale or marketplace.

It was that huge and colossal literary masterpiece by the great French author Marcel Proust. Now I did mention Proust in a recent blog  but here was Remembrance of Things Past - A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, quietly sitting in the corner of a Brick Lane book stall on Sunday market day. But this was the most pleasant of discoveries and it was lovely to see an old literary friend in the middle of the East End. This 3,000 page mountain of a book didn't look at all out of place in Brick Lane and the discriminating readers of Whitechapel, Aldgate, Shoreditch and Hoxton know exactly a good book when they see it.

Finally and as if fated to be spotted, I saw out of the corner of my eye the one book that so completely broke all box office movie records when first released. It was the Margaret Mitchell epic Gone With the Wind, a vast and sprawling literary panorama of America at its most dramatic and tempestuous. It was a book and film about feuding families, tragedies and triumphs and the rich tapestry of American life in the deep South.

We gradually drifted over to the orchards of fruit stalls and found the kind of summer fruit had nature had always intended. There were piles of deeply yellow and orange peaches tumbling helplessly over each other and beckoning us towards them, glowing oranges and nectarines that were just irresistible, apples that had to be bought and the now impossibly beautiful red English strawberries that sat in their punnets obediently as if happy to be simply displayed for consumption. They had that deepest and richest red glow that somehow begged to be bought. The colour of early summer and trumpeting it for all its worth.

My wife, father in law and I made our way back home silently reflecting on the last 24 hours and trying hard to put everything into a kind of logical context. Last night we could hardly believe that once again our capital city of London had been disfigured, scarred, brutalised, murdered, cut open and totally demoralised. And yet maybe it hadn't because we knew we had a back up plan, a set of contingency measures, reinforcements in case things went irreparably wrong which it didn't.

 We had Brick Lane, we had a Sunday market, a visual feast of humanity doing the things they've always done. For a few brief moments of our life you felt ashamed to be associated with the human race, appalled at the viciousness, the vile wickedness and the worst aspects of human behaviour. You felt completely robbed of your dignity, degraded and demeaned and massively shell shocked. How could they do it again and yet they did.

Those nightmarish images of dead or prostrate bodies lying on the pavements of London Bridge will take many weeks and months to erase from our minds. But once again London rose above it all with its traditional poise and composure, its commendable calm when the storms of terrorism threatened to engulf us all. Brick Lane was our quiet retreat, where the people of the world came together and ignored those who were so hell bent on disaster. It had been a Sunday of level headedness, of cool restraint. of observing the most traditional of Sundays. To quote a popular mantra of the moment. Keep Calm and Drink Coffee or Tea. I'll have milk with two sugars please.