Clerkenwell

I was in London today at City University. In Northampton Square the almonds and the plum trees were approaching perfection.

I had time to walk the surrounding streets. This part of Clerkenwell has some of the best 19th and 20th century social housing in Islington and some unspoilt (or beautifully restored) Arts and Crafts pubs and cafes.

One of my favourite places is Exmouth Market, one of the most perfect streets in North London. It has an unpretentious version of everything civilised life could require. You can eat Turkish, Greek, Thai, bistro or Italian café and buy a selection of items to suit any possible mood (one of Steinbeck’s proofs of civilisation).

I hadn’t been in the music shop for a year, but the guy who runs it was still as helpful as ever, and will happily post me a copy of Electric Gypsyland if I can’t find it anywhere else. You get the sense that the people who live and work here care a lot about what they do.

Maybe nowhere more so than in one of my favourite churches, the parish church of Our Most Holy Redeemer. Apart from a fabulous name, it’s a lovely building, completed in 1888, and it feels like a genuine community space which happens to be a mystical and artistic sanctuary.

I discovered today that the church has close links with the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, only 20 miles from where we live, and I was strangely and rather surprisingly content in the knowledge.