This beigel shop on Brick Lane has been a staple of East End life. No place for a leisurely breakfast, it has been a welcome stop for early morning market traders as well as busy area residents who want a quick bite on the way to work.

BY LISETTE FELIX

While I wait for the others to arrive, I reminisce about the area I am about to visit. I grew up in London's East End and witnessed its residents and their accents change from cockney to what some consider a more polished version of English.

Now, after several years away, I am about to rediscover my former home, this time in the company of strangers - an American mother and her two teenage children who on this chilly December day, are like me pretty well wrapped up. In all we are five, including myself and the guide.

We are led by Sue, Context Travel's expert on this walking seminar, titled `East End Sunday Market Walk.' She is an art historian and lecturer, exactly the kind of guide that has earned the company wide-spread acclaim for its intimate, information-packed tours.

We begin in Brick Lane where we grab a beigel and something hot from the famous 24-hour Brick Lane Beigel Shop; there is nowhere to sit so we stand. But that's natural. It's never has been a place to pass the time of day. When the market stalls packed every inch of this busy street - 10 minutes was enough time to queue, grab, pay and run.

Sue meanwhile talks about the immigrants that have flocked to the area since the 1800s - the Russians, Polish, Jews and Asians - mostly from Bangladesh. They all at one time ran the clothing industry here, before moving on to more affluent London addresses. Black families like mine came en masse in the 1950s.

She points to the weaver's houses in Hanbury Street, showing where the silk would sit atop the building and the Huguenot church that is now a mosque in Fournier Street. We briefly touch on the interesting debate about whether a proper minaret should have been erected.

Our walk takes us past the old Truman's brewery to Petticoat Lane and across to the Old Bell Foundry, which apparently made the U.S.'s Liberty Bell, to the trendier, now expensive in-door craft markets that line the streets in-between Aldgate East and Liverpool Street.

Nothing looks the way it used to when I was a child, progress has brought wealth. Gone are the cheap fruit and vegetables stalls where you could buy large boxes of produce - mostly good, but some bruised, and the cheap clothing stalls manned by Arthur Daily types selling 'knocked-off' gear.

Back then, you handed over your hard-earned cash for the latest transistor radio or portable T.V., and hoped against hope when you got it home that it would be the one that actually worked.

Selling (and buying) dodgy gear was a way of life. Well, at least some things have changed for the better. The ‘got it off the back of the lorry mob' have long since departed.

Most of the East End's well known local history centers on Jack the Ripper, the Kray Twins and the Elephant Man, but its architecture, immigrants, and vibrant clothing industry - which still exists today - are largely ignored.

That the tour teaches me something I don't know, about a place I know like the back of my hand, bolsters founder Paul Bennett's claim that Context Tours walking tours are for the discerning traveler. I wonder what else I can find out if I take another one.....

Visit www.contexttravel.com for information on tours in London, New York, Paris, Philadelphia, Rome and Instanbul.

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