"I am coming west off the
avenue, under a
canopy of
London plane
trees old enough to
appear in sepia postcards:
coming home, at the end of an
afternoon walk. Councils of sleek crows. Magpies imitating
road drills. It's a habit I can't break, the habit of Hackney:
writing and walking, thirty years of
misreading the signs, making
fictions: with a bounce in the
step, cartilage audibly complaining, like the electric coffee-grinder our
children remember. And we have forgotten. Five
miles of canal bank, Victoria
Park,
heights of Homerton;
running over the day's
work, half
noticing revisions in the fabric of things. But
returning always, as
light fails, to the same kitchen, a meal in preparation. The undervalued dispensation of domestic
life."
Iain Sinclair,
Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report, London: Hamish Hamilton, 2009, 7.
