RETURN TO THE WICK

I had a week off from work recently, so I decided to go straight back to London, as I was missing it. The difference with this return visit to the capital was that I was staying in Highgate with my friend Kat. The flat was beautiful, the location great and the power shower was to die for. All that said I felt unsettled, tense and I didn't sleep well at all in my stay there. It was during this time I realised I never stayed anywhere else in London in the last 5 years other than Hackney Wick. No wonder everything feels weird, I thought to myself. It was like some strange cold turkey and I was suffering from withdrawal symptoms! I kept myself busy so I didn't have to think about it, filling my days with appointments with friends that I had not seen in so long. Luckily I received an invitation which gave me an excuse to go back to Hackney Wick and thus giving me my Wick fix. My friend Jon who is an artist, found out I was back and asked me to come and see him in his studio as I'd never seen it. Jon doesn't leave the Wick much and at the moment he doesn't seem to leave the studio that much either as he has a show coming up, thus has holed himself up in there, so I felt quite honoured that he came and met me at the station and walked me to the studio. As we walked along the canal, I saw it was a buzz with people taking pictures, a film crew and builders. In the back ground the nearly finished Olympic stadium loomed over us. Jon started on one of his rants in his thick northern accent (even though he is actually from the midlands, but sounds more northern than me)?:
"Honestly Carly, you got out of the Wick just in time! It's turned into some tourist attraction! Everyone is just taking f**king pictures all the time. There are cameras everywhere because of the Olympics. I hate f**king cameras! I hate having my f**king picture taken! I need to get out of the Wick, I'm thinking of going to Wales for a bit like you. I'm looking into places!"
He says all this, while throwing his hands around with a cigarette in them. I would of taken a picture a picture of this for you readers but as he hates his "f**king" picture being taken, this was not possible. He also doesn't like people much either. He is quite eccentric actually, if I think about it, but that's OK I like mad people.
I then sat on a sofa in Jon's studio for the next hour or more, while he fluttered around the place constantly moving (he can't keep still for more than two seconds!) and painting canvases, only stopping briefly to have cigarettes which he used the floor as an ash tray . He informed me of news in the Wick, which wasn't much he said as he hadn't seen many people as he was now in his hermit mode locked away in the studio. He complained about his neighbour in the studio, who was always moaning about any noise he made and he admitted to a new crush of a fellow artist in the studio downstairs, who doesn't like people very much either (a match made in heaven I say)! I told him of my new life in Wales, that I missed the Wick and how I was finding things very strange at the moment. I could of quite happily of stayed and been entertained by Jon for the rest of the day, but then I heard the sound of thunder in the distance and saw it as an Omen to leave. As I walked back to the station, I looked around and thought how much the Wick had changed over the years since I'd known it. Most people blame the Olympics for the changes and see the event as a bad thing. I don't see it as all bad. Change is never bad? Well that's what I keep telling myself right now. Anyway once the eyes of the world have finished looking at this place for 2 weeks, maybe the Wick will be forgotten again and it can go back to being its little enclave of misfits? As I got to the station I saw there had been a change since my last visit. The Huge wall painting that had been created by Coca Cola to advertise them and endorse the Olympics had been given a make over. The outraged local artists who had, had their work painted over by the brand, had taken their revenge. Now in its place, just stands the letters H W (Hackney Wick)! I guess it's our little communities rebellion to the games. Though I agree with what Jon said:
"It would of been a lot more witty and funnier if they had just f**king painted the word Pepsi over it instead!"
I slept a little easier that night after my Wick fix.