I started writing my Walthamstow Notebook blog back in January 2015, in fact on the second of the month, so it may well have been a new year's resolution. As I wrote at the time, things in Walthamstow were changing fast and there were always things to write about: a period of transformation with gentrification and redevelopment just beginning to pick up pace. It's still going on of course - some places are now completely unrecognisable - but there are fewer surprises, even when we see planning applications for ever-taller towers, or yet another coffee shop opens up. The blog was a bit of an obsession for a while, but as usually happens with blog-writing the number of times I felt inspired to write something tailed off - regular posts up to 2017, then just one post in 2018 and one in 2019. I guess that's it for now. I still pay a tenner every year for web hosting, in the hope that it’s still an archive of interesting stuff that people would like to look back on.
Just one of many rainbow window displays during Covid-19 lockdown, June 2020.