Always a pleasure. #EastHam #Barking #E6

“Sunset over Silvertown.” [View from the Sir Steve Redgrave Bridge, Saturday 14th February] #Silvertown #NorthWoolwich #Beckton #RoyalDocks #E16

Speaking of West Ham, on Saturday we ended up amid the gloomy chasms of a drab new estate just off Green Street and, in the paved space between the high-rise blocks, found a flat circle of muddy grass some 20 yards across, with dead centre a small round plaque. I squelched over for a closer look.

Near the rivery eastern fringes of East Ham, someone’s put up etched metallic panels telling the story of Newham from prehistoric days to the opening of the DLR to City Airport. This one, I think, shows West Ham’s notorious Inter City Firm mastering fire sometime in the 1980s. #EastHam #Barking #E6

My big problem with US sports is the daft team names; Dolphins, Fires, Knicks, Giants – I just can’t take any of it seriously. But anyway, enough of that – we need to focus on this evening. And it’s Tuesday Night Lights here in E10, as Leyton Orient take on Plymouth Argyle. What? #lofc #leytonorient

If I were to tell you that the Chrisp Street chihuahua has now been protecting the people of Poplar almost continuously for nearly twelve years, you’d probably look at me in amazement and then say: “Hang on, what do you mean, ‘almost’…?” #Poplar #E14 #ChrispStreet

If you build it, they will come. Unless you build it in Plaistow, because then they’ll probably go somewhere else. #Plaistow #CanningTown #E13

… ah, you can’t beat Bloomsbury for leafy, sunlit, geometrically perfect Georgian squares… unless, of course, you jump on a number 15 down Commercial Road to Stepney. This was Albert Gardens, E1, on Saturday morning. I just cross-posted this to Facebook, by the way, and FB’s suggested alt text was:

Some more photos from our Valentine’s Day walk from Aldgate to Plumstead via Beckton Sewage Works. There may be others. #Stepney #Limehouse #CanningTown #Plaistow #E1 #E13

Best. Valentine's Day. Ever.

Being a soppy old romantic, I’ve decided to make this Valentine’s Day a truly special one by taking @lucycmunro.bsky.social to look at the view from Canning Town flyover. On a bright sunny day like today, you can pretty much make out Stratford.

I worry I don’t do enough Local Interest stuff on here, so today I’m launching a new series in which I post questions to which the answer is “Probably just off the Walworth Road, mate.” And I'm kicking off with this one: where can I find the biggest bacon roll in London? #Walworth #SE17 #Camberwell

Don’t normally do domestic stuff here on the grounds that it’s none of your bloody business, frankly, but apparently I won’t get any tea if I don’t find a discreet way of subtly mentioning that @lucycmunro.bsky.social was on Radio 4 yesterday morning doing Part 1 of Henry IV for In Our Time.* [1/2]

Some might wonder how it’s possible to get any enjoyment from supporting the 18th best third-rate team in England (and Wales). I know I do. But here we go again. We are Orient. They are… [squints hard across at East Stand]… Port Vale. This is East London. Come on you O’s. #leytonorient #lofc

South London’s cold, but I like where I’m living... (Burgess Park, Camberwell, 5th January 2026) #BurgessPark #Camberwell #SE5 #SE17

Some people say there’s no better way to spend a cold, wet Tuesday evening in December than sitting in a cold, wet West Stand at Brisbane Road watching Orient fail to beat Luton Town. Some people are idiots. But this is East London, so… come on you O’s. #leytonorient #lofc

Santa! Noooooo!!! You’re my besht mate… I bloody love you…

Ishh… issht beginning to look a lo… a lollike Chrisshmash… [Green Lanes, Saturday, somewhere south of Manor House station…]

Some photos from yesterday’s walk from Aldgate to Enfield via Green Lanes: repurposed clocktower from the Eastern Fever Hospital in Hoxton Community Garden; Wood Green (for those of us of a certain age who grew up listening to Capital Radio, this will always be Wood Green Shopping City); [1/2]

Having spent last Saturday walking an ancient route (Roman Ermine Street) from the City to Enfield, we thought this week we'd walk from the City to Enfield along the old drovers' road from Hertfordshire, aka Green Lanes. First, though, breakfast at Copper Coffee in Aldgate (view from the top floor).

Our walk up Ermine Street on Saturday took us through Tottenham and past this great glassy lump. Orient are currently planning a new stadium too, and the fact that we’ve just engaged the very same architects that Spurs used has got a lot of people extremely excited indeed; [1/2]

Having already hoofed it like a Roman down Stane Street and Watling Street, we spent yesterday walking out of London along another ancient trackway, Ermine Street, following it from Bishopsgate to Edmonton; we’d hoped to reach the M25 and Waltham Cross, [1/2]

Bit late with this, but… Colours Yet To Be Named, the gorgeous new album by Lightning In A Twilight Hour, is a bewitchingly beautiful thing, all hazily layered atmospherics that dissolve into crystalline, heart-melting tunes with words that haunt and linger. It's as good as [1/2]

Pigeons in puddles! (One for old readers of Smoke: a London Peculiar…) #WalworthRoad #ElephantAndCastle #Camberwell

A 3-hour walk through East London in the rain, then 2 hours in a freezing West Stand seeing Orient fail to score in the rain - small pleasures Premier League fans will never understand. Don't think much of the Blackpool team bus, by the way. This is East London, come on you O's. #leytonorient #lofc

Uh oh, looks like Boris has whipped his little chisel out again... #bermondsey #bermondseystreet

Watering the pitch? Today??? This is East London. Come on you O's.

Juxtapositions. (Hackney Wick, en route to Brisbane Road.)

Also this, outside St George’s in Beckenham, a church which, coincidentally, has possibly the UK’s oldest lychgate. I did say “coincidentally”. And also “possibly”. (It’s 13th century.) So, if you want to feel Bowie’s magic as the cool cats of Beckenham once felt it, head to St George’s on the 21st.

Three more photos from our trip deep into the London Borough of Bromley, which is so proud of “former Beckenham resident and entertainer David Bowie” that it’s painted an Aladdin Sane lightning bolt on the pavement outside Zizzi. #Beckenham #DavidBowie

On Saturday, apropos of nothing in particular, we walked down into Bowie Country. So, this is the site of the house on Southend Road, Beckenham, in which David lived from October ’69 to May ’73 and passed the time writing The Man Who Sold The World, Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane. [1/5]

Highlights from the Catenary Wires on Saturday were the gorgeous Things I Love, with its namecheck for The Fall and @heavenlyamelia.bsky.social’s vocal as beautifully, perfectly fragile and tremulous as I remember from that first gig at the Arnolfini back in 2014, and Mirrorball, surely the [1/4]

A photo of @brianbilston.bsky.social from last night’s fantastic gig with the Catenary Wires. Songs being poems and poems being songs and guitars being utter guitars – what more could you want? Tickets still available for the rest of the tour. @heavenlyamelia.bsky.social @skepwax.bsky.social [1/2]

I was always so impressed that @clarewadd.bsky.social did her first fanzine when she was just 16; when I was 16, I was still hiding away in my bedroom, listening to John Peel with a tape recorder jammed up against the transistor radio… it hadn’t occurred to me I could actually be a part of all this…

This morning I discovered – somewhat belatedly, on account of not being very cool these days – that there’s a band in Shenzhen called Atta Girl, named after the Heavenly classic; and it got me wondering whether any of the members of Heavenly had ever gone on to do anything else interesting, [1/3]

The lights went out when I was halfway down the cereal aisle in Morrisons this afternoon. I look on this as an omen. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime. [1/2]

Whenever we wanted to annoy the bands, which was surprisingly often, we used to claim that the best thing on Sarah Records was Saropoly, the board game we made to celebrate our fiftieth release. And now this gorgeous [1/4]

Back in 1986, when I was working on the fourth issue of my old music fanzine, @leytonorientear.com published its first. I managed to do one more. The Orientear have done another 299. I'm not sure what this proves. But it seems good reason for a beer. As does Orient 1 Lincoln 0. So, two beers...

I’m a bit late with this, given we got back over a month ago, but – a small piece of travel advice. If you’re going to Lyon from Paris, Trenitalia’s Frecciarossa is about half the price of the French TGV. If you choose the Silenzio (“Quiet”) coach instead of the Allegro (“Party!”), though, you [1/2]

More old Sarah people with new things, but this one’s literary: the internet diaries of @dickon-edwards.bsky.social collected, edited and – archly raising an eyebrow at Beardsley* – wrapped in yellow paper and inky black woodcuts to produce, you might smile knowingly and say, a yellow book. [1/4]

Something else we passed en route to the O’s last week: the old gateway to Northumberland House – a Jacobean palace that stood on the Strand till 1874 (see Pic 2) – now relocated to Bromley-by-Bow health centre. Don’t say I never tell you anything interesting. (Photo by me, painting by Canaletto.)

... and five days before Heavenly's London gig, Blueboy are doing this. It’s almost like the last thirty years never happened. Um – they *did* happen, didn’t they? Absolutely all of them? In order? Because, if they didn’t, I’ve got some photos that really will need a bit of explaining... #Blueboy

Even though I grew up two stops down the Central Line from Stratford, it wasn’t somewhere I ever went: other than the scruffy old shopping centre where my mum worked, there really was nothing there, nothing at all. It’s all big and shiny now, with faux-rustic signposts and coffee shops, [1/2]

A slow response to such exciting news from @skepwax.bsky.social – I’ve been trying to find the right words. Corrugated, morose, gherkin, squeamish and balustrade, for example, are not the right words. But they’ll have to do, or else you might miss out on something I know will be totally corrugated.

I keep meaning to raise a glass to the Leyton Engineer, our usual spot for Saturday-evening post-match sorrow-drowning, for having a Harry Beck Booth, complete with historic maps (Leyton-born Beck invented the Tube map). My old Smoke co-conspirator @juderogers.bsky.social would approve, I’m sure…

It's 5pm and the wyverns are dancing. Orient 4 Doncaster Rovers 0. #leytonorient #lofc

Soon, that stand over there will be full of happy, excited folk from Doncaster, happy and excited that they're not spending the afternoon in Doncaster. This is East London. Come on you O's. I need to buy some bricks. #leytonorient #lofc

Well, this always was a poem I’d find myself whistling while doing the washing up, so no surprise that @skepwax.bsky.social have made it a single; and if the train in the video looks familiar, check out Heavenly’s I Fell In Love Last Night on YouTube – there’s thought goes into this stuff, you know.

When we started Sarah back in 1987, our aims were simple: release 100 fabulous pop records and bring about socialist and feminist revolution. The idea of being international superstar DJs never crossed our minds. But with the rest now sorted, here’s Clare on the wheels of steel in Osaka last Monday.

Great news about the new stadium, but why all the guff about it “redefining sport in East London”? Orient have been doing that ever since I’ve been watching them – it’s why you’ll find me in the West Stand at 5pm every other Saturday shaking my head and muttering “I don’t know what that was…” #LOFC