Starbucks, Highbury Corner

As usual on a Saturday late morning I’ve dropped 7 year old off at football then rushed to grab a coffee and continue my ongoing Great Lincolnshire Novel. But I can’t get a seat anywhere. It’s Arsenal v Spurs today , starting early at 12.45. So everywhere round here is packed, even the coffee bars. How did I not know this? There was a time, not that long ago, when the first page I turned to in the papers was the Sport. Then the news, then international news, then the sport again to check if there’s anything I’d missed (not motor racing, horse racing or tennis, though, of course – but proper sport like football, rugby, boxing, cricket).

But now I have to read the Review section first, find out about the latest short story collections, history books, kids’ stories. This morning, rather than checking to see what the opinion was about the North London derby, or talk about the upcoming Ashes series, I’d turned first to Maggie O’Farrell’s short piece about the late poet Michael Donaghy in The Guardian. Sport isn’t like ‘’Finance’ or ‘Work’ sections – it doesn’t get used for cleaning boys’ football boots or clearing out the ashes. It’s also still not on a par with ‘Travel’ or ‘Family’, which are put in a ‘saved’ pile to read on a rainy day. But when the rainy day comes, we’ll cook soups, watch a film or look for pianos on Ebay or just stare out of the window.

I queue up for ages at Starbucks behind noisy  fans buying skinny lattes then edge my way down the back where the fans disappear and it’s just mums and dads with prams and Guardians or students with laptops.

It’s a latte with an extra shot, with a BLT. It’s obviously not a proper bacon sandwich. For a start, the bacon is cold. How could it be otherwise when it’s covered in tomato and lettuce.  They should have a big pan of bacon on the go at all times. The bread is good – tastes like granary Hovis. Too much mayonnaise on it though. And of course there’s no brown sauce. The coffee? It’s OK, but there’s just too much of it, and even with the extra shot it’s drowned in gloopy hot milk.

Is that Frank and Nancy Sinatra singing “I Love You’ on the speakers? No, it’s the rubbish Nicole Kidman and Robbie Williams version. The sound of muzak, jetplane woosh of the coffee machine and general hubbub makes me hear an extra layer of tinnitus, like a water rushing through a weir in my eardums. Brown sauce might have made it go away.

Noo Noo & Bebo's, Kentish Town Road, London NW5

I was passing this when I saw the chalkboard sign “The best coffee in London”.  There was no mention about who had bestowed this accolade – possibly the owner – but it certainly made me curious.

Noo Noo and Bebo’s (Even though I double checked, I’m sure I’ve got the name wrong) is a tiny café, about the size of a big school store cupboard. At one stage there were about eight people in there, some ordering, others just chatting or listening to the French rap music that was playing on the speakers.

For my sandwich I was asked “white or brown bread, love?” I asked for brown and so, a short while later, a neat little white bread bacon sarnie appeared. The brown sauce was a bit sweet – Daddy’s rather than HP perhaps – and the bacon was a little stiff and not quite fatty enough.

But the coffee really was very good. I had a latte with an extra shot. This is my current crush as I try to wean myself off Americanos.  Admittedly latte with an extra shot is the alcopop of the caffeine world but Americanos after lunch give me a headache as well as flashbacks to a rugby tour to Paris in the mid 1980s. But this lovely little latte – which was like a kind and gentle, hair strokey version of an espresso - reminded me of sitting in an apartment in Mamers, France with my pen friend and his cousin, staring at flowered wallpaper and discussing the works of Laurent Voulzy.

Afterwards I walked up Highgate Road to pick my daughter up from school. On the way I passed The HMV Forum (formerly the Town and Country Club) which I last went to in 1991 to see a Throwing Muses gig. Even though I’ve been in London for over twenty years I’ve never walked the stretch from The Forum up to the railway bridge (which I’ve previously approached from the  north). Another little piece of London is now joined up in my mind.

"It's the half term holiday!"

I had a dream last night that I was in the west of Ireland and had left a pub to go in search of a mandolin so I could join the session. (This is dream bravado, of course - I've had three lessons and can play two and a half tunes at walking pace). I wandered through the night, getting completely lost, until I came to a little boreen and turned down it. At the end of this lane was a large, modern detached house, surrounded by grass. I knocked on the door and the writer Arthur Mathews answered it. Yes, he said, there used to be a mandolin here. He invited me in. He would have a look, he said.

The house was huge inside, with many corridors and dark rooms with big modern furniture. I could hear Arthur talking from somewhere but his voice was growing faint. I then glimpsed some light and walked down another dark corridor until I came to a small white room which had had a whole wall removed. It was a bit like Darth Sidious's anti-chamber on the Death Star in Star Wars. In the middle of this white room, on a big white chair, sat Graham Linehan (Arthur's former writing partner), reading a tabloid. I introduced myself and tried not to to be too fawning. He sort of grunted and carried on reading. Then Arthur reappeared with lots of other people and we all went in to a big living room. One of them was Graham's Brazilian model girlfriend/wife who said she had a really bad headache. Most of them were drinking some kind of green potion to get rid of hangovers. Then Arthur made milky coffee for everyone. I sat on a big sofa next to Graham and Mary McAleese (President of Ireland) stood up and started to explain who they all were. Graham turned to me and said something but it was in a faint, high-pitched shouty voice. It sounded like "It's the half-term holiday!" Then the voice got louder. "What? What are you trying to tell me Graham?" Then I was lying awake in bed and my kids were upstairs shouting and jumping up and down on their beds. "It's the half term holiday!"

I've got wheels and a full tank of gas

I've got wheels and a full tank of gas. To be more specific, it's a full tank of high performance  unleaded petrol. I drove out of the garage on Hornsey Road thinking to myself "I could go anywhere, do anything. Just drive and see where the road takes me."

But rather than head up Scotland to camp out in the hills I drove straight home and then spent 40 minutes looking at the Star Wars Lego website with the kids.

Cheese sandwiches in the fairy fields

 A walk down to thefairy fields at the end of the Cahermacrusheen boreen where we have a grand picnic of cheese sandwiches and Tayto crisps and a flask of tea. The sea is still and the Aran Isles look very close. Most of the land around North Doolin is parched and the grass dry and brownish as if this was August rather than early April. But here, on the way to the rocks at the edge of the Burren, the turf is thick and wet like black gold and little patches of intense green burst out from beneath the stones.

The kids do a cow attracting dance that achieves its objective, expect these are bullocks not cows. On the way back we see a thorn tree decorated with ribbons, materials, toys, holy water and candles. Next to this is the dry stone wall part of which is made up of massive horizontal stones, which I have a feeling had once been the lost Cahermacrusheen dolmen.

Forgotten Small Towns of the Midlands

Driving across Ireland from Dublin to Co. Clare at high speed yesterday I thought, as we flashed by yet another turn-off to a small town, how the Irish driving experience has changed for the worse. No longer is it a slowish procession through interesting main streets with bars, hardware shops and town halls. No longer does one get stuck behind a tractor and start looking at the landscape and buildings and hedgerow flowers.  Where once a driver would talk about the changing scenery and the stories of his journey, now people boast how quickly they did the drive. In some ways it’s a manifestation of our need for instant gratification, wanting to get to a destination as quickly as possible. The midlands then become just an annoying interlude from Tourist Zone A to Tourist Zone B.

Eventually we turned off at Loughrea and sat and ate cheese and ham sandwiches in an old churchyard while the kids played and suddenly I knew where I was once more. Then we continued on to Croughwell on the old road and time stopped speeding past so quickly. I lost the temptation to be permanently overtaking and we became part of a lovely slow convoy behind a lorry, pootling along at a more authentic 50 miles an hour.

The View Down To Highbury Vale/St John's Church

My late neighbour, Edna Crome, seemed to know more about Highbury then anyone I know. She was always telling me stories about some aspect of local history, often relating to architecture, football and schools. One afternoon, as we chatted over the garden fence, she started to tell me about St John's Church. I didn't know anything about this and she explained that it was demolished int he early 80s and a block of flats was put up, on the western side of Highbury Park. (Like many old talkative people Edna had never had her stories put down on tape future generations. All I have the memories of the countless conversations, usually conducted over the garden fence or out in the street when we bumped into one another.)

  This spot is is one of my favourite parts of Highbury. When my daughter stared school at the top of the hill I'd sit on the bench at the junction of Highbury Park and Northolme Road and look down into the vale and beyond, marveling at the semi-rural template that lay beneath the concreted scene.

I haven't managed to find any photos or illustrations of the old church. In some ways it doesn't matter so much that the church is no longer there. If I concentrate I can see it just as plainly as it was there in front of me. It's the same with other parts of the village. I sit on the viewing bench and imagine the scene without the buildings, imagine looking down over pastures and meadows with the new river winding its way through the landscape from Hornsey over towards Stoke Newington. And there, to the left of the scene, snaking down from the Crouch Hill heights to the west, is the Hackney Brook.

There is still a C of E primary School named after St John's. Going back further there had been at college of St John's around Aubert Park (it was demolished in the mid 40s and a block of flats put in its place) in this area (there still exist some old illustrations of this http://www.antiquemapsandprints.com/p-3679.jpg). Arsenal FC bought part of the college grounds to build their original stadium before the First World War. Going back to the mediaeval era Highbury had been given to the Priory of St John of Jerusalem, also known as the Knights Hospitallers in England. by the landowner Alica de Barrow in 1271.  They controlled the area until disbanded by Henry VIII in the 16th century. The thread still survives in the name of the school.

I have a more recent example of this feeling for "ghost buildings" for it is not that long ago that the old tin box factory on Blackstock Road was demolished to make way for a new block of flats. On the other side of the road, where now Il Baccio restaurant and further new flats exist, was an old-fashioned garage.

Unlike some London churches, such as old St Mary's in Stoke Newington, , the Church of St John in Highbury Park was relatively new. It was only consecrated in 1881 so according to the information available didn't even last 100 years as a working church. Perhaps the people of Highbury built simply too many churches in that late 19th-century is their rush to development of the area. As wel as St John's there was also Christchurch a few hundred yards up the road, Saint Augustine's in the smart backstreets of Highbury New Park and St Thomases in St Thomas's Road  down in the Vale.   

Almost 20 years ago,  when my wife lived above a launderette at the other end of Blackstock Road, I'd sometimes walk southwards until I got to Highbury Vale. And for some reason I never walked up the hill towards Highbury village proper, the Barn and Highbury Fields, as if I wanted to keep some kind of mystery for a later date. So we moved in here together in the late 90s it was with great excitement that I began to map out the territory to the south Blackstock Road and was pleasantly surprised to find old-fashioned little shops and a tree-lined boulevard.

There's a smart new bench now at the junction of Northholme Road and Highbury Park. It's more comfortable than the old one but for some reason I'm less inclined to sit on it for very long. I tell myself that I should spend half a day sitting down at this spot watching life unfold around me and see the changing light over Stroud Green and FInsbury Park as the afternoon unfurls. These days I tell myself I'm too busy to do this. Perhaps one day, soon.

 

The Auld Shillelagh

Stoke Newington Church Street, N16

This used to be my favourite pub in North London but I haven't been in for a while. I must be getting old because the ruralesque walk around Clissold Park at night doesn't seem as appealing as it once did.

I was there with old friends from the Real Psychic Genius Football Prediction Society. The Shillelagh is really our spiritual home but we now tend to wander a bit down the road to the Rose & Crown, where the music isn't loud and there's lots of space for assorted fortysomethings to shuffle around slowly. Leeds v Spurs was on the telly. I picked a famously unlucky seat - where I had watched England lose to Brazil in the 2002 World Cup and from where countless times I'd seen Ireland throw away the lead in the last minute in qualifiers. It didn't disappoint. Leeds lost. But the Guinness was as good as ever and there's still a good mix of old and young drinking away. One big change is last orders which is now an orthodox 11-ish rather than four in the morning. But I suppose that's progress. As my wife said when I rolled in, last orders was invented for people like me who need authority figures such as barmaids to tell them what to do.

Reading Glasses

Went to the optician the other day, after losing yet another pair of glasses in a messing-about-with-the-kids incident. 
"Your eyesight is maturing" said the optician?" 
"What, you mean I appreciate art and ballet a bit more now and fancy Fay Weldon?" 
"Er, no, you need reading glasses."
"Hmm. So I'm not short sighted any more?"
"You're still short sighted. You'll still need distance lenses as well".

In other words, there is only a depth of field of about three inches in which my vision is clear. 

I am shagged.

 

Clissold Park/Narnia Crossover

  Last week, as I tramped happily around in the snow, it occurred to me that in The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe, CS Lewis created Narnia as a methaphor for Clissold Park in Stoke Newington. The gap in the fence on Church Street is the magical entrance to this world, certainly after pub closing time at any rate. Aslan the Lion represents the old bowling green.  It's got old lamp posts, deer, an old house.  Did CS Lewis spend a lot of time in Stoke Newington and are any of his other books about the area? A Horse and His Boy could be about the Lea Valley Riding School. Prince Caspian surely refers to that gastropub on Kynaston Road. The Last Battle might be a sly comment about the anti-bendy bus movement on Church Street.

Maybe this theory needs a bit more work.

Bottle Pen

The stationer breathed a sigh of relief today when I went in and brought four colour cartridges for my printer.

"Ha - you thought I was just going to ask for one envelope," I said. He smiled weakly, then quickly and with total stationeresque skill shifted his eyes to a display of pens on the counter. They're recycled. "Made from bottles" said the stationer. I'd just been in the library on Blackstock Road, reading an article in New Scientist about how the distant future for the earth is the extinction of all life, so buying a recycled pen, while a futile gesture, seemed like the right thing to do. Then the stationer's son (Stationer Jnr) came up to me.

"How are you?" he said.

"Poorer after coming into this shop," I said. The stationer looked hurt.

"I don't mean poorer spiritually. Just financially."

The stationer smiled.

C4 brown envelope

The stationer is now officially worried. That's two visits in a row in which I've bought just a solitary envelope. I'd agreed to sell a print of one of my Writers' Workshop cartoons - the one about Franz Kafka's tips for self-promotion - but it has taken me three and a half years to get around to sending it off. There was a massive queue at the Post Office on Seven Sisters Road so I worked out that it would be quicker to get the tube into town, drop off the envelope with the illustration to the buyer, then go for lunch at a nice Italian cafe. I timed it at two hours all in, pretty much the same time as I would have been waiting at the Post Office to buy my stamp.

The person who wanted the print has promised to send me a biography of Franz Kafka, written by her husband. I like the idea of biographies becoming a new kind of currency.

Jiffy Bag

At my local stationers I bought a size 1 Jiffy bag. The Jiffy bag is made from heavy duty brown paper and has a high quality sealing system. I'm trying hard to cut down on stationery items at the moment and managed to stop myself buying some more pens. The stationer looked at me with sad eyes.

"Are you not going to buy an ink cartridge for your printer?"

"No thanks, I'm going easy on the printing at the moment," I said, trying not to look him in the eye.

He sighed. "Oh," then did a sad thing with his eyes - made them big and a bit watery like a lonely puppy - and at that moment I nearly caved in. He then stepped aside so I could see all the great stuff he had behind the counter - pens, CDs, staplers, caligraphy sets, calculators, filing systems. I got very excited but managed to take the receipt and escape from the shop with just my Jiffy bag. 

Maybe I have started to beat my addiction.

Stuff

Versatile concept that can refer to anything, from a 1970s football bubblegum card with a picture of Leeds United's Peter Lorimer on the front, to emotional issues or programming languages. 

Computer

Plastic box with a screen, that buzzes at night. Has wires inside. You can type stuff into it. Sometimes it goes dead and you want to smash it to pieces.

Pentax Optio S4 digital camera

Tiny sliver of camera hardware that's smaller than a fag packet. It's lovely, but the controls are hard to operate if you've got farmer's finger (like my wife and I).

Urban Tractor Scene

Sitting at a bus stop on Stoke Newington Church Street I heard a sound both familiar yet strange. In the midst of the normal sounds of the city - police sirens, buses, cars, motorbikes, car alarms, roadworks -  came a low rumbling engine rasp. Then, chugging slowly from Green Lanes, along came a weather beaten John Deer tractor, pulling some kind of plough/rake contraption. It carried on towards Albion Road then disappeared into the centre of Stoke Newington. 

Is this now the fashionable drive of choice for the smart Stokeyites?

Quink (black)

"Do you sell Quink?" I said to my local stationer."Do we sell Quink? Of course we sell Quink. That's a strange question." "Well, it's the digital age. I wasn't sure that people still used Quink." He snorts with derision and sells me the Quink, while also slipping in some crafty cross-selling and getting me to buy two expensive black ink cartridges for my inkjet printer. I used to do loads of stuff in Quink, until I bought myself a Wacom art pad in 1997. There was a girl I worked with when I first came to London who drew wild landscapes in Quink. I fancied her, of course, but she had an on-off relationship with a Scottish rugby player so I didn't get involved. He didn't play for Scotland or anything, he was just Scottish and played rugby. We lost touch around 1989 but I kept her memory alive by starting to draw my own pictures in Quink. My pictures weren't wild, mostly just sketches of fat people at Walthamstow market or caricatures of my flatmates. The stationer also cross-sold me some nice writing paper. I'm going to stop emailing my friends and write them proper letters instead. Masterpieces of the genre such as: "Howdy. Fancy a pint Thursday? T."