There was a bright chill in the day. I was walking slowly up the hill when I saw one of my neighbours talking to two men in red t-shirts. She said hello to me and so I stopped for a quick chat. The men were from a building firm, working on one of the nearby houses, and were asking about parking permits. I made a tangential comment about my neighbour's shoes and the men laughed uproariously. Slightly taken aback, I carried on my usual 5 minute conversation with the neighbour, covering a range of topics. Every time I said something even vaguely witty the red-shirted strangers would start giggling and choking. After a while it began to go to my head and I decided to up the ante a bit, trying out a few impressions and mentioning Brexit. You'd think the whole Monty Python team had reformed and were doing their greatest hits outside on a small bit of pavement in the southern slopes of Finsbury Park/Highbury border country. As they spluttered and wiped tears from their eyes, I realised I was starting to get addicted to this and already envisioning my forthcoming stand-up comedy tour.Then a van the pulled up. The driver wound down the window and said "Alright lads?" and made some very bland comment about Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger. The two men nearly wet themselves laughing and I realised that, far from them being highly tuned to my subtle brand of middle-aged beardy dad sub-Marxist Zen banter, these poor souls must have been stoned out of their minds on some kind of knock-off brain melting Skunk. I said goodbye, to my neighbour, the laughing twins and my dreams of comedy stardom, and shuffled off up the street.
High Speed Metaphor Bloke with Lager
I’m trudging back from the park, feeling tired and for some reason dejected by the clammy cold breeze that’s whipping off the pavement into my threadbare old jumper. A bloke in army fatigues heads down the road towards me, at a fair old clip. He’s on one of those self balancing motorized unicycle things. As he zips past me I see he’s holding a can of extra strong lager and talking on the phone in Russian. He takes a nifty left turn, sips from his can and carries on the conversation. He’s a metaphor. Heading north towards Finsbury Park.Though it might have been Polish.
It's A Beautiful Day
I've written before about rain. About how it makes me feel alive. Today the rain was beating down, propelled by cold gusts of wind that made the recently muggy North London streets feel like February in the west of Ireland. I leave the hood of my waterproof down, so I can feel the raindrops on my face. In theory you might imagine steeling yourself against this kind of weather. But I feel it stops me living in my head so much, which I am wont to do too a lot of the time. The heavy rain draws out any deep rooted melancholy so that it is truly felt, but it mixes with the joy of feeling... anything. So that in this rain I am both sad and happy at the same time. There is probably a beautiful word in old Irish for that. And also the sense of being firmly rooted in the physical world, and connected to all things, while being acutely aware of the non-physical, mystical nature of existence that is almost always hidden from us. This cold rain reminds me of those that have gone, especially recently. In fleeting moments of understanding that I *am* alive I accept that they are not but feel, in tiny moments, that they are 'somewhere'. How does rain do that? It makes me live in the now, which means I can see both backwards and forwards without consciously having to think about it... past/future, Highbury Corner/Finsbury Park one-way-system.But I'm not just having a spiritual experience in this rain. I'm trying to catch up with my youngest son, who has gone off to school dejectedly after I shouted at him for breaking his glasses (again). Both my boys live in a 1970s World of Sport type existence, in which wrestling is a key component of a well-lived life. The youngest - 11 tomorrow - breaks his glasses once every couple of months, but has lost two in the last week.I can see him trudging in the distance but I'm walking slowly, as I am dragging the neighbour's dog behind me. Eventually I catch up with my soaking son and we embrace and I tell him to have a good day. He seems happy that we have connected properly. On the way back I encounter one of those road rage situations that seem to crop up more and more these days. An old man, with two bags full of 'stuff', is walking slowly across the road as a car comes up. The driver sounds his horn and the old man takes offence and stands in front of the car, arms outstretched."I've got all day. I'm not going anywhere!" he shouts and blocks the car. I go into the road and try to talk to him. Eventually he leaves the road but as he looks back the driver does that 'finger on the side of the head' sign that kids used to go when they called someone "a loony!" Enraged, he goes back out into the road."That's it. I'm not moving."On a normal, dry day, I would have been tempted to not get involved. To leave them all to it, these crazy bastards. But in this rain, I am connected to them in some strange way. We are all connected... at least the people in our little corner of Southern Blackstock Road. The dog and I go back into the road. I explain to him that the driver is being incredibly annoying, but that it happens all the time when people are in a rush. What about all the other people in cars and vans, about 15 of them, backed up behind. Is it really fair to them? Don't let this person in a car ruin your day. He looks at me and shrugs. Then sighs, and walks off the road with me. The neighbour's dog looks at him as if he knows him. "Have a good day," says the old man, and continues up the hill. The people in the cars are waving and giving the thumbs up.The rain gets harder and my head starts to ache. The lollipop lady has to shelter in a doorway. The neighbour's dog does a massive shit on the pavement.It's a beautiful day. [embed]https://vimeo.com/93591655[/embed]A short video about rain from three years ago.
Talking About Love on Drayton Park
I'm walking from my car to Tesco to go and buy some chicken dippers... the latest shit food fad in our house - when out of the corner of my eye I see someone walking across the road in my general direction. I look over and see a shortish man, around 5 foot 7, with his shirt off and displaying a muscled torso that suggests heavy martial arts or gymnastic training."Hey, mate!" he shouts. "Mate... can I talk to you?"I sigh inwardly, and stop. He comes up to me and stares intensely into my eyes. He has a very red face, and is sweating profusely. Maybe he's just done some heavy work on the parallel bars or something."What's up?" I ask."Mate, do you know what love is?"My initial reaction is to want to laugh - this feels like the title of a Cockney Rejects cover version of that famous Foreigner rock ballad."I know what it feels like, at any rate. Why do you want to know?"He frowns. "Well, what do you do if you love someone but you're not sure they love you as much?"I'm about to quote the lyrics of a famous Sting song here, but I don't know this unpredictable hardpan well enough yet and not everyone responds well to the work of the ex-Police frontman. So rather than actually say "if you love someone, set them free ", I suggest that he gives the object of his affection a bit of space."YES! That's just what she said. She wanted more space. You do know what love is!"He's smiling now and he introduces himself. His name is Jimmy Reilly. He's just come back from a court appearance in Hackney. We're still walking but we've come to Tesco now and he has to make a decision - does he want to carry on chatting about affairs of he heart but also commit himself to helping me get some food for the kids' tea, or does he cut and run. He asks me a few more questions about love, and I try to be honest and not too profound and Zen-poetryesque with my responses. It seems as though he's about to calm down. Then he remembers that when he was in court he saw his girlfriend and she was just texting on her phone and not watching him at all."I don't know what's in her head, what she's thinking." He frowns again, his face gets redder and he bunches up his muscles, as if he's he wants to punch the living shit out of something.I tell him that we can never really know what someone else is thinking and that he probably needs time to work out what he wants and feels because he sounds a bit... heavy. He takes this well and decides that we should be friends. By the way, could I give him some money and also drive him to his new flat which is several miles away. At this point I realise I can do no more to help him and explain about the chicken dippers. I wish him good luck. He tenses his muscles, waves and heads west to the Holloway Road, still unaware that he's forgotten to put his shirt on.
Since You've Bin Gone
Today I walk the neighbour's dog again. On my return leg I am reminded that the rubbish bin at the top of one of the nearby streets has gone missing. We walk back around to the next street, but the bin has been taken from there, too. That hasn’t stopped an accumulation of rubbish, of course. In the way that the light from a star shines down to us millions of years after the star itself has died, so refuse will continue to accumulate for years on an empty street corner due to the historic placement of the bins.I phone the council and, voice rising in indignation, explain that it just will not do. Somebody says that somebody else will get in touch with me. Probably write a letter. And the 'somebody' wouldn't be a 'person', it would most likely be a computer – the actual person on the end of the phone doesn’t actually say that, I just know. I sigh inside. I do that a lot these days. The actual person on the end of the phone didn’t make the decision about the bins. It’s not her fault.The dog then does a massive crap, but the tennis ball he's been holding in his mouth starts to roll down the hill. Should I continue to clear up the dogshit or chase the ball? Life is full of tough decisions like this. I decide to do the right thing and clear up the mess, but luckily for me the ball comes to rest on something sticky - I think it’s a big patch of 24 hour old vomit (brown with a hint of red… Merlot mixed with kebab?). I walk the dog back to the house, slightly concerned at the realisation that he can't shit and hold a tennis ball in his mouth at the same time. What sort of dog is that?Back at the house I’m feeling slightly guilty at getting on my high horse about such a trivial thing as bins. I need to get things in perspective. It's Donald Trump's inauguration tomorrow, for God's sake. I should be complaining to the council about that. Or out on the streets. What the hell is wrong with me? What is that saying? - that evil triumphs when good people turn into stupid wankers, or something...Then my youngest son comes home and says that his school have decided to scrap afternoon playtime."I'm going to do a petition," he says, looking very earnest."Good to hear," I say.He frowns. "Dad...""Yes?...""What's a petition?"
The Portable Bouncing Playground
My youngest has become very excited at the new portable bouncing playground that's been installed at the western end of our street. Since its introduction, he's had no desire to visit the swanky modern play zone in the park. Every school morning he rushes up the road and starts to bounce up and down, shrieking and laughing. Sometimes other kids join him. I've tried to explain to him that the portable bouncing playground is actually just a temporary installation and that it won't be there for ever, but he doesn't want to listen.One afternoon last week, after I'd picked him up from school and was watching him have his regular bouncing session I overheard another parent complaining about the PBP."That old mattress has probably got fleas. Why doesn't someone just take it to the recycling centre?"
"In Your Days"
I'm walking through the park with my eight year old son. He's asking lots of questions at the moment. The main thrust of all this is that he can't believe how old how I am."Dad - in your days did you ride those funny bikes?""What do you mean by funny bikes?""Those ones with the big wheel at the front and the little wheel at the back.""Ah, Penny Farthings.""Yes!""Those are from the Victorian era.""When things were black and white.""Well, the photos were black and white. But I wasn't brought up in the Victorian era. That was over 100 years ago. I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s.""Oh. But it was black and white then, wasn't it?""Not really, no.""So did you have a colour TV?""Er, no. It was black and white."He goes quiet and looks at me. He's thinking... "My poor dad is so very very old."
A walk in Clissold Park
Had a great walk out in the rain yesterday morning in Clissold Park, during which I outlined my four point plan (or is it seven?) for fully appreciating your local area. Brought along one of my sketch books and a few copies of my latest dodgy hand-drawn map. Various people did readings from my book A London Country Diary and we discussed important topics such as how to decode discarded beer cans, when to break into parks and why magic trees talk in Yorkshire accents.
Getting Waylaid While Buying DIY Supplies
Yesterday I went out onto Blackstock Road with the specific task of buying a replacement blade for my hacksaw. A nice, simple, job - there are three hardware shops within half a mile or so so it shouldn't have been too difficult.
Read MoreThe Seagulls
Urban Country Diary - Seagulls are extrovert birds. In fact they are very annoying.
Read MoreThe Crazy Modernist Building At The End Of Our Street
For years we looked at the crazy modernist building at the end of our street and said "What a fucking dump!" (It's not exactly Nikolaus Pevsner, I know.) It was either sheltered accomodation or an athletes village for a joint East German/British Olympic bid in 1972. A few people lived in the crazy modernist building - walking past at night you'd hear crackly garage radio blaring out from an open window, or shouting coming from another window. But nobody ever went in or out.
A few weeks ago the crazy modernist building
began gushing water like an incontinent cow. Then a wooden wall was put up around it, which usually means demolition time. I asked a hard-hat bloke what was going up in its place.
"Dunno mate. I only started today."
So, looks like there will soon be a crazy free improvised building at the end of our street.
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.
Clissold Park/Narnia Crossover
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.
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."
Treadmill late appointment simulation jog
I did just over two and a half km on the treadmill in an attempt to recreate that excruciating jog to an appointment or interview on a hot day when you're late and the buses are not running properly. Ideally I should have been carrying a big art folder or at least a bag with lots of papers inside.
In front of me were three screens with no sound. On one screen was discussion of the budget with the BBC's Nick Robinson and a woman in a purple blouse. There were subtitles but because of my detached retina eye I couldn't really make out much - the odd word here and there, that's all. Then we saw shots of MPs in the Commons. A screen to the left showed a cookery programme about bread making and on the right was a period feature film. Could have been Gone with the Wind. On my Ipod was a new playlist called running music:
1. Autobahn 66 - Primal Sceam
2. Swastika Eyes - Primal Scream
3. Mr Blue Sky - ELO
4. School of Rock - School of Rock
I won't be using these again, apart from maybe the first one. 'Mr Blue Sky' made me want to change my running speed to stay in time to the music. School of Rock was too all over the place for running music.
The acne red faced bloke dogshit incident
The bloke was in his early 20s and had a stripey t-shirt and a spotty red face. He swaggered out of the King's Head with his dog then watched, transfixed, as the dog did a big runny shit all over the pavement. He was about to swagger off in the direction of Finsbury Park when I announced that if everyone acted like him the whole world would be covered in dogshit. He looked at me in disbelief. How will I clear it up? he whined. I pointed to the paper bag he was holding, which contained a brand new tube of what I presume was acne cream. The dog looked up at his master as if to say "want me to bite his gonads, master?" but the bloke in the stripey t-shirt still seemed confused, as if he had never realised that leaving dogshit in the middle of the pavement was wrong. I left him standing over the pile of crap, wondering what to do, though my daughter informed me that as soon as my back was turned he had swaggered over to the bus stop as if nothing had happened.
The Origins of Danebottom
My six year old son often asks me, when we walk up Canning Road, to tell him about the Viking battle of Blackstock Road.
"How do you know about that?" I said the other day.
"You told me."
OK. I did read something about that a few years ago and must have mentioned it to him once. So I took to researching - on the internet, you understand - where the story comes from.
The archived paper 'Perambulations in Islington' by Thomas Edlyne Tomlins (1858) can be found here:
http://www.archive.org/stream/yseldonperambula00toml/yseldonperambula00toml_djvu.txt
In this he mentions Danebottom several times, such as:
"in writings so far back as the reign of Henry II. demon-
strates that this name of Danebottom has peculiar reference tosome of those encounters our Saxon ancestors had with theDanes."
"some battle fought there in earlier times,perhaps so far back as the period of tlie Danish incursions, the memory of which, as I have ventured to suggest, have been tra-
ditionally preserved in Danebottom, at Highbury Vale."
There is no older source for this story but what Tomlins is saying, essentially, is that the Saxons held the bridge over the Hackney Brook, presumably near the Arsenal Tavern, and the Danes came down from the heights of Finsbury Park and tried to 'take' the Arsenal Tavern, er, I mean bridge. There was an almighty rumpus but luckily it took place on the site of the present police station and most of the miscreants were carted off, though not charged because no witnesses came forward.
Talking with The Dog People
While the numbers of Dog People frequenting Clissold Park has grown enormously over the past few years, one of the things that hasn't changed is their inability to 'see' normal humans. I have always been able to walk amongst them, seemingly invisible, without so much as a glance. I could have marched into the middle of a group of them and emptied a bag of Winalot on their heads and they wouldn't have noticed.
This week, because our neighbour is poorly, I've been walking her dog most days (breed? Er, it's a little brown dog that looks uncannily like Robin Smith the late Labour MP) and today we ventured into the park. I wasn't in twenty seconds when two Dog People approached me, smiling in a strange friendly way.
"Hello!" one of them said. Was she talking to me? I must have looked startled.
"He looks like he needs a good run!" beamed her friend.
"Aren't you going to let him off his lead?"
"He's very friendly!"
Their eye contact was unbearably intense. I didn't dare let him run free yet, I said. But if I let go of the lead perhaps I would become invisible again. Most likely the effects of the dog wear off over time. Luckily I was pushing a pram with the other hand and my son was able to get me out of danger by crying.