Create something today

My Gran didn't  know about facebook or the internet and didn't even keep a diary or journal so we know very little about her early life.  I wish she had kept a diary or journal so that we knew a little bit more about her.  People of my grandchildren's age however use networking sites like facebook or twitter as some kind of diary and are thus recording for posterity their activities and thoughts.

But how many think about that when they are posting silly selfies or  clicking "like" on something close to pornography ?

What will their grandchildren think about knowing just a bit too much about "Nan" when she was young ?  Then there will perhaps be great grandchildren, that they may not meet for whatever reason.  Will they be happy to know about the antics at those hen or stag nights ?

Next time that little box appears which says "write something" think about those grandchildren and their children and write something.

a poem, a little story about your first day at school for first job.

Cant write ?  Course you can.  You did it an primary and secondary school, you do it all the time
on the social networks.

So think about leaving something positive for those kids to know about you.  Life for some is all a laugh at the moment, but take care, it can turn round and bite you on the bum in no time at all.,

My Gran knew all about that.  Her mother died when she was 16 and she had to become "mum" to her younger brothers and sisters , siblings in modern day social work speak.  She married at 20 and had nine children of her own.  Her old Dad came to live with them and one day she found him cold in the back yard having had a fall.  He died soon after.  Her own husband died two years later and she was left with five children under 16 to care for, so if she wasn't working before then she needed to now, and she carried on working until she was over 70.

During the war she was bombed out of the house she had lived in for over thirty years and after a short time in the country, which she didnt like, she returned to London and ended her days in a first floor flat, reading the newspaper through a magnifying glass because she didn't, or wouldn't wear specs.

The Great Wall of Pennington Street.

Along the south side of Pennington Street in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets there is a 30 Foot high wall,  close to a quarter of a mile wall that was built in the early 19th century to be the northern boundary of the new London Docks. It was built this way as it was a part of the security of the bonded warehouses overseen by the customs and excise men.  There was only the one gate into the docks from Pennington Street which was called the Tobacco Gate.

With the decline of the docks due to their unsuitability to deal with the large containerised shipping  the area was later turned into an industrial area so that the the wall still had a security function.  When News Ltd moved their newspaper production to the area in 1986 the wall effectively kept out the striking print-workers and the inevitable scuffles which took place during picketing.  Newspaper reports referred to the" battle of Wapping" but of course Pennington Street was not in Wapping, it had never been.  Newspaper headlines need to be short and the "Battle of Stepney" would have made connotations with the "Battle of Cable Street" in 1936 when east London workers blocked the marches of Oswald Moseley's fascist black-shirts.  Comparisons would have been made.
News International have now gone and once again the site is to be redeveloped.

So will east London's Berlin wall come down ?  "Not on your Nellie" as any self-respecting cockney would say, supposing you were able to find one in Pennington Street these days.

No doubt the new development  will contain more yuppy accommodation and the wall will still be needed to keep the separation from the hoi poloi.   It will remain to cast its shadow over the street as it has done for close to two hundred years.

A hundred years ago my grandparents lived in Pennington Street in a  house which it was claimed had been built in 1767.  Two up and two down, no amenities and long since gone.  In 1881 almost opposite the Tobacco Gate was Lilac Place, just a few four roomed houses, one of which was occupied by 16 adults. Even by the normal overcrowded housing standards of the time for the east end, this was quite exceptional that the enumerator made a note "16 in 4!".