An email via Flickr:

Hi

I work at Hackney Museum. We’re working on an exhibition about independant shops in the borough and hope to include a projected slide show of pictures of shops that have caught people’s eye. Could we include this one please?

Definitely. And this one too.

The exhibition will be at Hackney Museum from 20th March to 7th June 2008.

One man’s collection of 3,500+ photographs taken in the highways and byways of London, including my area and beyond. A wonderful find, and recommended viewing for anyone who lives in or loves our capital city.

Apologies if you got a load of my Flickr photos in your RSS feed reader. I was playing with the settings over at feedburner.com. Anyway, my curiosity is now sated and the nuisance has stopped.

If, for some reason, you actually do want to look at my photos, then this is where you can find them. And if you haven’t yet subscribed to this site’s RSS feed, making sure you need never miss an update again (there’s peace of mind for you, eh?), then click here.

Oh, and that’s a heron I saw on the River Lea in Haringey, early yesterday afternoon.

Two men sleeping outside York Hall, Bethnal Green, this afternoon. I liked the way the nearest man manages to keep his bag suspended above the pavement.

I was getting ready to take the baby for his afternoon walk when, from my sitting room, I heard some music being played outside. I couldn’t decipher much, apart from what sounded like some brass notes, making me wonder what the Salvation Army were doing round here. After all, I can’t imagine Stamford Hill is top of the Sally Army’s list of targets: “Cuppa tea and a bun, Rabbi?”

When I left my flat, things became clearer. I looked up the road and saw that it was jammed with Jews taking part in a religious procession. At the head were boys with lighted tapers. At the rear was a line of girls. The men were in the middle, clustered round a canopy which sheltered - I think - a Torah scroll. The women and infants were watching from the sides of the street.

It was nice for me, though. Because I was shoving along the pushchair, and thus couldn’t get by, I had a chance to stop and look - without feeling embarrassed. We inched up the street and, as we passed the synagogue at the end of the road, I could see the men inside lolloping a happy but awkward circular dance. At one point a doctors’ car drove through, unmarked but with a siren and light, and the procession parted seamlessly for it.

From the synagogue, out came some of the men holding beautiful scrolls and lifting them high. They joined the crowd, which turned into the car park. Then the whole thing began to take off, with dancing and smiling, click-snacking of cameras, jubilation and a beating rhythm of joy.

I just wish I knew what was going on.

For photos, please visit my Flickr photostream.

I’ve been wandering around Stoke Newington with an infant and a camera. Here are some of the results.

To see more, visit my Flickr photostream.

Taken today in Stoke Newington.

I’ve uploaded a selection of my Hackney photos to Flickr. They are mostly of Stamford Hill, Upper Clapton and Stoke Newington, although there are some of Dalston, Shoreditch, Haggerston and Lower Clapton.

The photos were all taken at some point in the last three or four years and, if you check Flickr, it has extracted the dates on which most of them were taken. I will add more when I have the time.

Some of the pics are a bit ropey, but they’re all of places that I like or that interest me. I hope you enjoy them.