Stroudley Walk redux

Stroudley Walk has reopened! It's been four miserable years. Memo to non-Bow residents Stroudley Walk is a pedestrianised street in Bromley-by-Bow near Bow Church, the church. It was redeveloped in the 1980s, exceptionally unattractively, wiping away all but three of the original Victorian buildings. Formerly it was the top end of Devons Road but they renamed it Stroudley Walk when adding the hideous brick colonnades. It's just been redeveloped again. I went to the pharmacy on Friday afternoon and noticed most of the hoardings had been removed, with just a feeble plastic tape to keep people out. When I came back out a few minutes later a man was rolling up the aforementioned tape, and I asked "have you actually finished?" and he said yes. I'm not sure we had much of a language in common but he must have picked up on my enthusiasm because he grinned, and when I said "you must be proud" he nodded and continued to roll. By collecting a prescription I had accidentally borne witness to the…