Long ago Hackney was a rural idyll, filled with the plashy frolic of otters swimming its burbling streams, the honk of storks nesting on moss-encrusted rooftops, the merry song of milkmaids, and the innocent gamble of the doughty Hackney pony across the local downs. All lost to the modern-day borough, whose residents know little of this bucolic past. But at last, the much-heralded programme of name changes across the borough has begun, in a bid to recapture those elysian days. Regrettably, due to the severe cuts imposed by central Government, Hackney Council has only been able to carry out a proportion of the proposed changes, with a 10% to 15% change per sign. Here are some of the results.

Here's a doorway on Gammel Kongevej in Copenhagen I noticed recently. I love the way the Danish design aesthetic is evident in how it's been graffitied — the pattern of the tags, with a small overspill onto the stonework, and how this is all framed by the handsome, stained doorcase. One of my pleasures when I'm in Copenhagen is to walk around and look up — it's a visual feast, with lots of ooohing and aaahing and much enjoyment in the detail on the buildings. And my enjoyment is also in the shape of this city's streets — it impresses me that an ordinary domestic street, well off the tourist track, will still have a strong coherent design. I really like this generosity of place that Copenhagen has - it's not all in-your-face but fading into nothing once you're off the main streets — there's a confidence of place about it I enjoy. I like the way people are as much a part of this city's aesthetic as its buildings: that group of people on bikes on a street corner, waiting patiently for the lights to change, under the handsome windows of a nineteenth-century apartment building. Copenhagen has a poetry of place — for me its buildings resonate with a rich mixture — of people and events long gone, sitting comfortably alongside all those people busily living there now. It's an attractive place, full of beetling, everyday ordinary life. I love it.

This is the tomb of John Barat in St Mary's Church, in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. He was a merchant of the town and died in 1467. I imagine he was a successful dealer in wool. Several things impress me about this tomb — the bold representation of death, of a body in the process of decay, and as an unabashed memento mori. As a child growing up in Bury St Edmunds I was a chorister at the Cathedral, just up the road, and regarded St Mary's as the rival establishment. Now visiting the town after many years living elsewhere it's the quiet melancholy of St Mary's that appeals to me, and reveals to me this town's past, and the people who've gone before.

Here's something made of a great deal of sugar, by artists Pip & Pop. It's part of their much larger installation, Sweet, Sweet Galaxy, covering the floorspace at Smiths Row, a contemporary arts space in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. I really liked this piece — looking at it I felt like Gulliver with the Lilliputians, a giant looking onto an unknown tiny world. And I could feast my eyes on its sugary delicacy, but with an uneasy awareness of my giant stature. At the same time I was one of the Lilliputians, imagining myself down there, hiding under a rainbow bulge, a little inhabitant of this saccharine landscape. So not an entirely comfortable experience. This tension created by the artists — My Little Pony territory tripped up by its own oddness each time you started to look more closely — really worked. Interestingly the two artists, Tanya Schultz and Nicole Andrijevic who work collaboratively as Pip & Pop, are Australians. As I was in Bury St Edmunds with my sister Berenice, who went from there to live in Australia as a fifteen-year-old, this felt like the joining of a circle.