Between Fashion Fair and Bronx is High Spirits, (Tel: 020 8520 7061) an apt name for the off licence at 188 High Street which sells alcohol to the many good people of Walthamstow, but also supplies some of the more annoying drunks who abuse the privilege and lounge about locally in our Town Square in front of BHS. There is talk of an alcohol free zone being imposed in this part of the borough, which will be a pity for the law abiding rest of us who can take our ale, but may have minimal impact on people who don't much care abut rules in a place where they aren't much enforced.

As you would expect, as well as flogging the booze, High Spirits supplies calories in the form of sweets and snacks and nicotine in the form of cigarettes, though how they manage to compete with the sellers of the untaxed smuggled variety who infest our neighbourhood is a mystery to me.

To the right of the door is a message window, which is a classic of the genre. There are lots of adverts for rooms to rent, some of it in overcrowded accommodation provided by chancers; 3 adverts for massage services (only half as many as at Bexters News, punters should note), flyers for a tattoo artist, a polish beautician, a painter and plasterer, a photographer and an unnamed loan shark of no fixed abode or license as a provider of financial services.

[Since this post was written, the 3 adverts offering thinkly disguised prostitution services have risen to 9. Technomist 17 October 2008]