your letters

N16 Magazine, PO box 44624, London
N16 5WN, email: info@n16mag.com

Dear N16
I have just read 'the fragment of Charles Dickens 'private diary' in the Autumn issue of N16. I presumed it to be a piece of humorous fiction, and was surprised that this was not mentioned. May not some readers have been beguiled into thinking this was fact? A danger when real people and real places are used, confusing fact and fiction.

Anyway, 'scholar Nick Webb' should have got his geography right. I know that Charles Dickens did visit a house in Church Row, Stoke Newington, but if he 'clattered past Islington across the little bridge of the New River' he could not have passed 'through the market gardens of Hackney'. Islington adjoins Stoke Newington, and nowhere did the New River flow through Hackney. 

Our desire to know what happened in the past is not helped by articles like this, clever and amusing though it undoubtedly was.

Yours sincerely
Betty Gough
Hawksley Road, N16

Dear N16

Curious to read Chris Harris's article (Natural Health, issue 20), which seems to imply that Cranial treatment in Stoke Newington has hitherto only been available at Clissold Park Natural Health Centre, and that he and his osteopathic colleagues have brought it to Shine Holistic for the first time.

Craniosacral therapy has been practised at 52 Church Street (formerly the Alternative Therapies Centre) for years, by me since about 2000 and before that by Ged Sumner, director of the Healthy Living Centre, which sadly failed in its recent attempt to revive the former Clissold Park NHC.

And I'm still there! If you would like to know more, please contact me - and it would be nice if you would print an afterword to Chris's article in your next issue. There is really very little difference between Cranial osteopathy and Craniosacral therapy - much more difference between individual practitioners' approaches, I would say, than between the two in principle. Just that when osteopaths do it they call it one thing, and when non-osteopaths do it, they call it (not surprisingly) something else.

Many thanks
Anthony Wren

Dear N16

I urge your readers to try La Fenice in Stoke Newington Street. I realise that it is a bit of an adventure straying from Church Street, but it is just round the corner. The food is perfectly cooked, and the pizza are better and cheaper than a certain chain not a million miles away (and they do takeaways). I just had the most brilliantly cooked seabass and carefully cooked side vegetables. I have nothing to gain from this note, apart from, hopefully, getting enough people to go there to keep it going. There is a whole world outside Church Street, folks, and some of it is in Stoke Newington!

It is seriously good, but customers are being tempted to places in Church Street which I really believe represent worse value. Please check it out, as I don't want it to go for lack of customers, as it is a restaurant that is worth keeping.

Mike Preston

Dear N16

I saw your article at www.n16mag.com/issue3/p18i3.htm  and the photograph of the Londesborough and Barbauld Road bomb damage. Maisie and Bill Nash have lived in the house at that site since 1961 and Bill's pond occupies the part of the site (in the picture) with timber on it.

Bill was away for the whole war - in the Western Desert and at Normandy - getting all the way to the outskirts of both Tripoli and Berlin before waiting for 'others' to march in as 'victors'.

Interesting that, innit?

Best wishes
Greg McNeill

Dear N16

How come you don't report the Hackney rugby matches? They play in Springfield Park and always recruit at Stokefest? Whaddya say? Their site is on www.intheteam.com  under Hackney.

Cheers
Gen Clemens

(Well, readers, whaddya say? Ed)

Dear N16

The year did not begin well. Just a few days into January, news arrived that Junk and Disorderly, that most magical of establishments near the bend on Church Street, would be closing its doors forever at the end of the month. There had been similar rumours in the past, so a brief period of denial seemed justified, but once closure was confirmed, gloom descended. 

We take many things for granted in life - bin men, Hackney Council, the company of friends - but had always appreciated our good fortune in having such an Aladdin's Cave in our midst, where from a tatty purse a few pence could purchase a thing of beauty. Junk and Disorderly, ideally situated between park and cemetery, was the perfect place to potter, chatter uplift even the most gloomy spirit on a sombre Sunday and no-one left empty handed.

Over the years my Stokey flat has become more J&D than Junk and Disorderly itself, brightened by the addition of planters, pots, picture frames, picture sticks and all those requisites essential for a civilised existence, from tin hens to a lavatory brush shaped like a toucan.

Fiona put in long hours and worked hard to make a success of the business, but was up against a Council who seemed to prefer wall-to-wall restaurants, ignoring the street's original attraction - its dotty and demented little shops. Good luck, Fiona. Love to Mark and Lilly. Clare, keep in touch. And Ginni - remember the time you bullied a total stranger into carrying those shelves home for me? Thank you all, for your friendship and ability to entertain. Thanks a lot. We shall miss you. RIP J&D.

Maggie Griffiths
Lordship Road, N16