I spent the first part of the morning making modest corrections to the latest print-out of my book on East London (what Mark Fisher calls ‘The Book of the Blog’), which is inching its way towards publication in late April.   I am having to think whether or not it amounts to anything more than an incomplete topographical guide – a collection of miscellaneous and unconnected observations of places and buildings.   One of the things which connects it is the Regent’s Canal, stretching both north and south of where we live, an alternative system of transport and communication which one can walk from Limehouse to Islington, but also an alternative community of graffiti, gasometers, river boats and back gardens.   I walked up it to Broadway Market and London Fields, beginning with the stretch next to Queen Mary:-

Then up past Victoria Park:-

Past the gasometers:-

Past F. Cooke, the surviving eel and pie shop:-

Through London Fields:-

To coffee at E5:-