Hackney Trip

Took a trip out to that great progressive land of the East end, or as you may know it Hackney. An upmarket hipster paradise that also has its fair share of hideous stabbings and is of course a left wing hell hole, its also a great place to go searching.  Like every progressive shopping area there are no real shops that ordinary people go in such as Poundland or WH Smiths but plenty of boutique shit with inflated prices and such.

There are a few good charity shops even if they are few and far between, I always seem to pick up stuff from the Salvation's Barmy and this is no different.  We had a Disney T Shirt, a noise comp CD and an original Hardy Boys detective novel (the original version of The Secret Of The Old Mill) in hard back.  Have a complete armada run of the UK titles so will have to read them to see what differences there are from revised to Original.

No the most important thing is that there is a pretty good cactus shop just down from the Toy Museum at Bethnal Green.  Its called Plant Warehouse and is almost opposite the pricey flower warehouse, I first took notice whilst walking down the street and they had some large plants in the window that looked decidedly succulent.  A Cyphostemma no less so with that I had to take a further look.  There were a lot of massive plants in the window including a Cleistocactus with dried flower remains for £1200 and a few of the bigger Euphorbias including a Tirucalli type and Ingens.  They had smaller Mammilarias for £10 in pretty nice clay pots and a few Hoya leaves in pots for £5.

Worst of all were some strange bowl garden selections including 3 columnar types a few  Mammilaria's  a Titanopsis and a Faucaria.  Also they had Ganoderma mushrooms for sale in  a small wooden arrangement, they are the ones with the dubious health claims and such.  Also our Pilea Peperomioides* is worth £20, which is pretty cool.  All in all the stuff they had there was massively pricey, if you have deep pockets and the heat to keep some of this stuff then good luck, me I'll stick to our club shows and stuff.

Didn't come out properly but £20

*this fucking site. really. I got my original Pilea from an old lady who came to the club who called it the Oriental Jade Plant.  Its a massive progenitor of offspring which means that unless you send them out to people you will be stuck with ever more piles of Pilea.  Like all nettle family its flowers are insignificant green string although perversely would love to see a macro shot of the bloom itself.

See nothing to write home about.