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By

Ivor Davis

Opinion

Fings ain't what they used to be around Olympic Village

July 20, 2012 14:23
3 min read

'Known for its cutting-edge bars, off-beat galleries and ethnic restaurants, East London is by far the city's trendiest area…" so trumpeted the New York Times in April.

Was this chic neighbourhood - now the site of the Olympic village - the one in which I spent the first 21 years of my life?

I was born in Whitechapel on July 27 1938. During the Blitz, along with many of our neighbours, we slept in our back-garden bomb shelter or crowded into a three-room house opposite a noisy laundry on Leaside Road, 100 yards from the then very smelly River Lea.

After the war, we were weaned on ration books, powdered eggs and cod-liver oil, as the bomb-devastated city pulled itself together. Every day, my baker father walked four miles from Hackney to Brick Lane in the early hours to make bread at Bernstein's Bakery. Does it sound too Dickensian to say we always had a crust on our table?