Mile End.

I recently moved into a house supplied by the Bow Arts Trust. They take old council flats where the tenants are moving out, and fill the empty spaces with artists. This keeps the squatters at bay, and also provides cheap housing in London for those crazy enough to make art for a living. (like me!)

Most of the flats are boarded up, there's great 70's graffiti all over the place and the whole thing looks like it's been made out of a single block of gray concrete. Seriously, It's like living in the Barbican.

Anyway, when I took the property on, the cleaners hadn't been in to clear out the stuff left by the previous tenants. As I entered I heard one of them shouting down to his colleagues; "Don't worry guys, doesn't look like there's any needles!"

I was planning to post up some before and after pics, to show the amount of work we've done on the place to make it our own, but it's not quite done yet, so you just get the "before". I'll put some after pics up soon, or none of you will want to come around for tea! It's not fantastic now, but at least if any of you ever see it when it's done, you'll at least know what we were working with at the start!

Since we're only in the house for a year, and we can do whatever we want with it, I want to get all my cartoonist friends to come over and paint one of their characters on the walls. (that means you, by the way) then it'll really be a home.

Also, When I first saw the house it was full of boxes and boxes of strange African on VHS drama shows , and porn. O_o
~John~