hackney, london

Paradise = Hackney

Hello there fine, fine readership of the Worship Street Irregulars. You may have noticed that our posting over the last month has been tardy at best (at worst downright disgraceful). We’ve delivered less post than our neighbours have managed to steal from us in the same period.

Let us not dwell on our shortcomings, as life is simply too short to indulge in such a lengthy endeavour. No, let us turn to the events of the weekend just past and revel in the sheer brilliance of what was the Paradise Gardens Festival held in the abundant greenery of Victoria Park, Hackney. I take my bobble hat off to the councils involved and those who helped to deliver such a breathtakingly enjoyable and feel-good event.

Take my hand and I will recant my experience of the sensory odyssey that was the event.

It’s not often you’re greeted in a park by a Knight riding a 10ft tall Troll or watch a precession of 12- foot butlers with musical instruments for heads (see below) trot eerily past you but this was the very start that we encountered upon entrance to Paradise Gardens.

Whilst we gathered our bearings after this surreal beginning we wandered the stalls offering wares from bongos to helicopters (made out of reclaimed tin cans) then moving on to eats from all corners of the globe from fajitas to falafel, from chicken tangine to jerk chicken with hardly a morsel of World food missing in between. On the first day we plumped for chilling on the grass and listening to the tunes from the main stage which proved to be an excellent choice in retrospect considering the first day (Saturday) had the best weather. After lying down for a long period of time reading Culture Jam, it felt pretty amazing to stand up and look around at the swelling crowd to see a sea of smiling, happy people to quote the oft-derided REM. Scensters pruning next to liberal 30-something parents being painfully smug next to hippies who were tuned in next to punks who were skanking next to rastas…the list goes on. The common denominator of all the diverse people there was that they were massively enjoying partaking in some of life’s simpler pleasures.

The Irregulars themselves can testify (after playing both a hotly contested game of Chess and Swingball) that maybe this neo-luddite thing has some legs after all. I also have to admit that there was a fairly broody smell in the air when we checked out the “bongo school” where little kids from all parts of the World were getting some pretty good beats out of the assorted instruments under the unbelievably enthusiastic direction of the dude in charge.

The tea dance tent provided some old school lulz in terms of classic showmanship and theatre whilst also providing some unconventional lulz when we caught sight of some of the folk trying to learn to Charleston. We nearly ran out of Victoria Park during the Avant Garde Dance group’s performance in one of the wooded area of the Park when their tribal-influenced performance came running straight at the assembled crowd!

To put the icing on this wonderfully diverse cake, there was also Carter’s Steam Fair in attendance which had your usual selection of favourites from bygone years. The Irregulars showed the World that they weren’t quite as good at shooting/playing darts/throwing balls/throwing baseballs/catching ducks as they may have made out previously. However, one thing we were immensely good at was getting our teacup to spin round at near-physically impossible rates, much to the admiration of the onlooking crowd.

All-in-all, sublime fun for all. Bravo you council folk – perhaps I will give you less grief going forward. However, if you think you’re going to get a rooftop bar on the top of Industry Bar on Curtain Road you’ve got another thing coming!

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