Walthamstow Market

I did not give Walthamstow a fair chance at all. When we moved to the ground floor of a seemingly nice house with a newborn baby, I hardly expected that we would be on the move again within a bit more than six months. Very early on the signs of rising damp appeared, previously hidden by a fresh layer of thick wall paint. Our suspicions were confirmed when the neighbours, who were moving out, told us all about the struggles of the previous tenants of our apartment and how they fought to get out of the contract as the damp had badly affected their health. The owner tried to do some work on the damp walls by drilling holes in them and pumping special stuff into them, but even during the summer months it made very little difference. Stuck between the landlord and a horrendous estate agent from hell, we were caught in a nightmarish, never-ending battle of ignored phone calls, bureaucratic and anal emails and a situation where we had to stay there till the winter, when the damp would be severe enough for us to be able to break the contract without any charges.

One day it just clicked to me that this house was never meant to be there. It was built on a road where it stood out, built at a different time and with a different style. It seemed like it was built where a passage used to be between the houses, maybe an old road. So it was wedged there blocking the previous passage. At the back of the house there was a small concrete garden/parking place, making the road leading to it a dead end. That must have previously been the road that run through, where the house now stood. There was also a gutter there with water always running deep underneath, even if it had not rained. A similar deep gutter, at the front of the house, also had water running vigorously in it. One day we dropped a leaf in the gutter at the back of the house and watched it in disbelief appear in the running water at the front of the house. There was basically water running always underneath this house and when I saw that I knew that no matter what we did we would never be able to get rid of the damp.

So we decided to move out before the winter arrived regardless of the consequences. As a result of this early decision we never unpacked properly, we never settled there and we lived more or less day by day in a suspension, till the time came to leave. Of course we had nowhere to go, but that is a different story. Meanwhile, not very far away, about seven to ten minutes walk from the house, lay Walthamstow Market, apparently the longest street market in Europe. In the early months of motherhood, my basic aim of the day was to get there with the pram and Aretousa and then to get back to the house. Even that house, which was by no means a welcoming place, damp and full of boxes, was my base and there must be some sort of prehistoric instinct at work there, for I never thought I would be so magnetised to return to a house -a safe base- in my life. I was never really into houses and domestic matters, but at the time it signified Aretousa getting a good feed and a shelter from potential rain, cold and wind. So every day I walked with her in the pram to the base of Walthamstow High Street, the very bottom end of the Market. And then I could see all the shops going upwards on the pedestrian street. Charity shops, fruit and vegetable stalls, exotic fabric shops, DIY shops, a supermarket, clothes shops, old cafes, eel shops, tea shops, toy shops, second hand shops and countless stalls selling everything, even bird's milk (this is a Greek expression for more or less anything you could wish for).

But in the beginning I did not make it further than about ten shops' length. It was the most ridiculous thing, but I could not bring myself to go any further away from the house. I really wanted to get to a shop that sold exclusively ribbons from Pakistan. And also I wanted to get to the supermarket, which I could see from the bottom of the street. But I thought that I had already been away for twenty minutes and then it would take me another twenty minutes to get back and Aretousa would be hungry by then and I did not feel very comfortable feeding her outside when I was alone. So I went back and eight times out of ten she was very happy and contented when we got back. But the two times that she was crying and hungry were enough confirmation to me that I did the right thing and did not stay out any longer. By the end of the fourth week there I had made it to the supermarket, which was still less than half way up the Market, but was progress nevertheless. As the weeks passed I made it further up the street and could feel comfortable enough to go into the shops with the pram and have a good look around. Aretousa of course was oblivious to this internal battle to distance myself from that hideous house and indulged in all the colours of the fabrics, the busy noises and music and the people cooing at her.

One day I just forgot myself and suddenly realised I was at the very top of the Market. That was a great day for me and it signified a new sense of freedom. Once I did that there was no stopping me really. I started to go further and further out, trying streets to the right and left of the main Market Street. Also it helped that by then I got to know the rhythms and needs of the baby quite well, which gave me more confidence to work around them. I still feel that I did not properly appreciate Walthamstow and its Market, as it was all darkened by the house situation and I was always in a bit of a rush. Plus I knew I was not going to be there very long so I never let myself really discover the place properly. I cannot quite believe it that even now, thinking of that terrible house still gives me a sense of security, because it sheltered Aretousa in the best way it could -albeit humid and damp-, for the short time we were there. But if I think about it for too long it makes me so angry and furious that people are prepared to keep on putting families through such financial and emotional strain and abusing the property market difficulties for their own gain. It is really quite disgusting.

The funny thing is that when I did make it to the shops of Walthamstow Market, I felt such a sense of accomplishment that I often bought small useless things, just because I had made it into a particular shop. I ended up owning small sections of African batik fabric, Pakistani ribbons, Indian lace, old tennis rackets, books on beetles and the undergrowth, old postcards and I don't even remember what else. Nothing was expensive or valuable, or indeed needed, and I am pretty sure I would have not bought half of those things had I been just visiting the market on a normal occasion. Since moving out from Walthamstow, I have returned to the market but once. A good friend of mine accompanied me and I am afraid to say that I managed to buy something useless this time around too, but with a plan in mind. We came across a man who was selling foam of different colours, the kind you use to upholster chairs. When I saw it I thought of a way I could use it and also use some of the other Walthamstow-time materials to make something of some sense. Several useless items combined together are bound to make something of some use.

The photographs are of the materials used to make four jellyfish for Aretousa, suspended from two old tennis rackets. I wanted to use some small blue and white LED battery operated lights, for the tentacles, but I have not managed to change the circuit so that several lines branch out from the same control box. Without this essential change I could only get one lit tentacle per jellyfish, which was no good. So instead I threaded the lights through a hole on the plastic semi-spherical body of the jellyfish so that they light up that part instead.