where angels fear to tread

Saturday night was spent in my old stomping ground Islington. It’s been a while since I have been there, particularly on a Saturday. It was a night where I experienced both sides of the Borough I grew up in and has left me rather melancholic.

The first stop was meeting friends in a pub with a Saturday night buzz just off Chapel street,where I went as a child shopping with my mother who used the promise of pie and mash to get me to go with her. Now normally I don’t really like a place that could be described as having a buzz but this was nice. I guess you would describe the clientele as upwardly mobile (to cut and paste a phrase from days gone by) what was so pleasant was that the people in there seemed to be having a nice evening and there was no undertow of aggression that can sometimes rear it’s ugly head at the weekend.

We then moved on to a pub on Caledonian Road,always a strangely isolated part of Islington, to celebrate a friend’s birthday. As with these get togethers there was a mixture of people I knew and those I had not previously met. Those that I knew, I had got to know through work, even so I felt more comfertable half an hour before surrounded by strangers.The place was almost the opposite of the previous pub in as much as it felt old fashioned and reminded me very much of old Islington.I have clearly changed over the years as I felt more at ease in the first venue than the latter.It reminded me of the many nights spent out and about in The Angel and it's environs.It made me realsie that I had changed(a lot)not in to a snob i don't think but into someone who has self educated themself and seen that your upbringing need not hold you back. A night on the 'Cally' had given me a chance to dip my toe back into an earlier period in my life.

As i departed, like Cinderella, on the stroke of midnight I felt that I was leaving an old forgotten part of me behind.I felt quite sad but also glad that I had outgrown the past and moved forward to better things.

A Movie set in Islington for reference;


In one of her first roles, Australian actress Diane Cilento plays an angel sent on a goodwill mission to Earth. Landing in the Angel, Islington — ho, ho — she pawns her harp, wins some dosh on the greyhounds and sets about sorting out the romantic, economic and housing problems of the ordinary folk she encounters. What this movie relies on is the charm and attractiveness of Miss Cilento, who later became Mrs Sean Connery