Penny Wiles Comment

I've been very busy making a fuss. It seems the Waltham Forest Council think it's OK to cut £56,000 off the budget for the Vestry house Museum and William Morris Gallery. Child of the Sixties that I am, it seemed only appropriate to turn up at meetings and write letters to MPs and the like to make the point.
What point would that be then ?
It appears to have to be a very simple one, as the esteemed Leader of the Council thinks that he supports the Arts because more people went to a festival in Leytonstone in one day than go to a museum in a year.
I guess if more people watch East Enders in a year than watch Shakespeare we don't really need an RSC.

The Jack Straw Comment

Went down to Walthamstow Market, ( 250,000 faces, 1 community) to do my own bit of research on the topic. You rarely see a face veil in the market. If you do, it's usually on a fairly elderly woman, all in black, and invariably in a group of other women.
Today i saw 3 face veils, and as far as I could tell they were all on young women, ones I might be tempted to describe as girls if I'd had a better view of them. Hard to tell how young anyone is when they're wearing a face veil, but these were all slim, and none of them had children in tow, or appeared to be doing any serious food shopping, judging them by what they were carrying. Two of the women had what appeared to be proper, commercially manufactured veils, but the third was the most interesting. She was by far the most glamorous, with a patterned hijab, that she seemed to have improvised into a face covering. This was accomplished using a natty little pin, embellished with a Nike symbol. It made me smile.

Let's see if it's any easier the second time around.