Category Archives: London People

At Whittington Hospital

Whittington Hospital Main Entrance (Photo by Tony Peacock)

Dear Readers, whenever I enter Whittington Hospital I am flooded with emotion. This is where they looked after my mother when she became ill with sepsis on Boxing Day 2015. It’s here that they saved her life, so that she could go on to enjoy her sixtieth wedding anniversary party, and to relish some of the small sweetnesses of existence as she became increasingly ill. I remember so well sitting in the canteen before the ward opened to visitors and walking back down the stairs in tears after a tricky visit.

Today, I was there for a whole raft of blood tests. I have some strange numbness and tingling in my feet, and as Mum, Dad and my brother all have type two diabetes, I thought I should get it checked out. Never one for half measures, my doctor has also requested lipids, liver function, bone density, a blood count and anything else she could think of. I expect that my left arm is now a few ounces lighter than my right.

The phlebotomy clinic is very well-organised – you’re checked off, given a number, and ten minutes later you’re leaving. The receptionist was apologetic that things were running a little late, but in the end I was actually seen five minutes before my scheduled time, so I’m definitely not complaining. I used to sometimes faint when my blood was taken, but fortunately I seem to have grown out of it – provided I don’t watch, it’s fine. And I should know the results by the end of the week. I never forget how lucky I am not to have to worry about the costs of medical procedures like this.

Anyway, today I wanted to share this original piece with you, written while Mum was still in hospital. It was the first time that I’d shared anything personal on the blog, and it changed everything for me. So, let’s go back to December 2015.

IMG_5116My mother and father came to stay with me in London this Christmas. All three of us knew it was a risk. Both my parents have the full range of late-onset ailments ( COPD, diabetes, dicky hearts) but this is the only holiday that they get, and, besides, prizing safety above all else means that we gradually retreat into our shells, like hermit crabs, afraid that every shadow is a shore-side bird waiting to gobble us up.

On Christmas morning. Mum was trying to pin one of the brooches I’d bought her onto her jumper, fumbling with the clasp. She sat back and smiled, the filigree butterfly a little skew whiff. Then, I remembered.

‘One last present,’ I said.

I’d almost forgotten the orchid that I’d hidden away in the bedroom. As I walked back downstairs, I looked at the flowers. I am not a great fan of orchids – they have an alien quality that looks sinister to me. And yet, my mother has a gift for coaxing them into flower time and again. This one was pale pink with mauve bruise-like blotches. The mouth of each bloom opened like a man-trap with long, backward-pointing teeth.

‘It’s beautiful!’ said Mum, as I passed it to her.

As I removed the wrapping, one of the flowers detached itself and floated to the ground. I picked it up, feeling the waxiness of the petals. I showed it to Mum.

‘Oh, put it in some water’, she said, ‘I can’t bear to think of it just getting thrown away’.

‘Really?’ I said. ‘Won’t it just die anyway?’

But she looked so upset that I found a dish and floated the flower in it. It’s still there now.

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Early on Sunday morning, I heard a rasping whisper from Mum and Dad’s bedroom.

‘I think you need to call someone’, Mum said. ‘I can breathe in, but I can’t breathe out’. I could hear her chest wheezing and crackling from across the room.

An hour later, she was in an ambulance, being given oxygen, heading for the nearest London hospital.

The doctors confirmed that she was 80 years old. They heard the recitation of her health problems, shook their heads over her oxygen levels and the sounds coming through their stethoscopes. They ascertained that at her best she could walk only ten paces without having to stop to gather her breath. They admitted her to the hospital. She was put in a huge room on her own. There were no windows, but there were lots of empty navy-blue storage cupboards, as if this had once been a kitchen but all the appliances had been removed. The fluorescent light gave off a constant background hum. It was like being in the belly of a great machine.

‘I’m not afraid of dying’, said Mum. ‘But it makes me so sad to think that I’ll never walk around Marks and Spencer again, or walk in a park. And I know I’m lucky and there are lots of things that I can still do, but somehow, just now, that doesn’t help’.

Normally I try to protect myself by avoiding what is really being said in these conversations, by trying, like Pollyanna, to look on the bright side. But today, I just sat, and held her hand, and cried with her.

IMG_5085As I walk to the hospital, I notice how bright all the colours seem, as if I’m hallucinating. The thoughts are chasing one another round and round inside my skull, as scratchy as rats. There is a wall alongside me and beyond a wildflower garden, at head height. The low winter sun lights up a patch of trailing bellflower. I see the way that the stamen are casting a hooked shadow on the lilac petals, the way a single raindrop trembles on the edge of a leaf before falling, in what seems like slow motion, onto the soil. And for a moment, I don’t think about Mum at all, and I feel my shoulders relax. I take a deep breath, then another. And then I walk on.

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It used to be that hospital wards were full of flowers, the stink of lilies and gently decomposing chrysanthemums rising above the smell of antiseptic and hospital cooking. But now, all plants are banned ‘for hygiene reasons’. Probably the nurses are so overworked that they don’t have time to cope with browning foliage and wilting poinsettias. But I can’t help thinking that something alive and beautiful is as important for healing as drips and antibiotics. Mum’s bunker looked completely sterile. But I had underestimated her.

At Christmas dinner, I had handed out some crackers that I’d bought from a wildlife charity. Each one contained a card that, when opened, released a snippet of bird song. The game was to guess which bird was singing – nightingale, blue tit, wren? Mum had put the cards in her bag. When the very important Consultant and his two trainees came along to see how she was doing, she produced one of the cards and pushed it into the Big Man’s hand.

‘Open that’, she said.

He looked at her askance, and opened the card. The sound of a song thrush in full-throat filled the bare room, flooding the place with the sound of woodland wildness.

The consultant’s face changed. He closed the card and opened it again. He turned to the two trainees.

‘I know you want to go home’, he said to them, ‘But listen to this!’

And he ‘played’ the song again, before closing the card and handing it back to Mum with a bow.

After a few days, Mum is moved to a different ward. As usual, she hates it at first – relationship is what Mum thrives on, and in each new location she has to charm everyone all over again. But she does have a window now.

‘At night, I can see all the planes flying over’, she says.

I notice that there’s a spider outside the window. At first I think it’s dead, but then I see that it is on a web, blowing backwards and forwards as the wind buffets the building. I decide not to tell Mum. She isn’t the world’s biggest spider fan. But it makes me happy to see this little note of anarchy in this antiseptic place.

‘At least I can get a breeze here’, says Mum. ‘Though when I was standing up next to the window yesterday they made me get back into bed in case I caught a chill’.

Her temperature is still too high, she is coughing most of the time and she’s pulled her canula out.

‘ I thought I’d be feeling a bit better by now’, she says. ‘But they’ve still got me on that bloody antibiotic that doesn’t work’.

I know that doctors don’t like to be told their jobs, but still.

‘Did you know that Mum’s been hospitalised for Proteus infections several times?’ I ask the doctor when he’s next on his rounds.

‘No’, he says. ‘Maybe we should talk to the people in Metabiotics’.

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Proteus is a super-bug, and Mum probably acquired it in a hospital. Along with MRSA and C.Difficile, it is infecting our clinics and operating theatres. Proteus is so-called because it hides in the body, changing location. There are several variants, many of them immune to one antibiotic, some to several. The use of several antibiotics simultaneously is called Metabiotics.

This is the age of the antibiotic-resistant bacteria. On a bad day, I feel that we are standing on the threshold of apocalypse. I remember a display I saw about the Jamestown settlers in America. Several of them died from a simple tooth abscess that could not be treated, became infected, and spread through the body.

As we seek to sterilise our homes and hospitals and schools, life is creeping back through the keyhole, pouring under the door, finding the draughty spaces around our windows.

The doctors change the drugs. My mother’s body becomes a battleground. At 3.30 a.m. she rings me.

‘I’m in The Game’, she says. ‘I’m trapped in a room, and they’re murdering people next door, and slaughtering them like animals, and they won’t let me out’.

‘Mum,’ I say, heart racing, ‘You know that none of this is real?’

‘I know’, she says, ‘but I want to get out and they won’t let me go’.

The phone goes dead. I call the ward. After what seems like a year, the nurse answers. I explain the situation.

‘I’ll talk to her’, he says. ‘It’s the drugs’.

The next morning, Mum can’t remember any of it, but her breathing seems better. Then her blood sugar climbs to 32, a dangerously high level. It seems that, somehow, the bacteria are fighting back. This is not going to end any time soon.

On my visit, Mum hands back the cards with the bird songs in them.

‘Take them home’, she says. ‘Keep them safe. They don’t belong here’. And she closes her eyes, a look of concentration turning her face to marble. She is not beaten yet.

IMG_5117

Today, there is finally good news. The blood sugars are under control. Mum’s breathing is improving. Her poor body has fought back again, and if all goes well, she will be out of the hospital in a couple of days.

I am making my peace with the orchid. The buds are clenched fists, but the newly opened flowers are poppy-shaped, like cupped hands, around the soft inner petals. I see that the long, tongue-like leaves have a fine layer of dust.

‘I’d better clean you up’, I say to the plant. ‘Before Mum comes home’.

Update

Mum finally left the hospital on Thursday, and is travelling back home to Dorset with Dad and I on Sunday. She isn’t fully well yet, as might be expected, but she is getting better.I am deeply grateful to all the staff at the Whittington Hospital in north London for their unfailing care of my mum, and for their patience and dedication. The NHS truly is a pearl beyond price.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the Barnwood Silver Birches

Male Large Skipper (Ochlodes sylvanus)

Dear Readers, yesterday I was lucky enough to meet with the Silver Birches groups for the over-55s that are held in Barnwood Community Forest here in East Finchley. What a lovely day it was! We had sessions on pollinators and on the folklore of plants, and the afternoon group learned how to make moss hanging baskets with Ursula from The Flower Bank, an amazing enterprise that recycles and reuses the flowers that would otherwise go to waste at corporate events, supermarkets, weddings and fashion shoots.

Of course, being Bugwoman it was very important to get people up close and personal with the amazing variety of insects that live in Barnwood. Here are just a few…

Comma Butterfly

Tree Bumblebee

Marmalade Hoverfly

Side view of the Comma, showing the ‘comma’ mark on its underwings

Speckled Wood underside

What impressed me so much with the Silver Birches was how much fun they were, how welcoming, and how patient they were when chasing some very flittery insects from one place to another with their camera phones so that we could get a snapshot of what was around on this sunny Midsummer day. It has been a long, long time since I’ve had the chance to do something like this and I had a wonderful time. So thank you to Leo and Linda who organise the sessions and to everyone who attended, it was a day that I’ll remember for a long, long time.

Goings on in East Finchley

Statue of Susanna Wesley the ‘Mother of Malethodism’

Dear Readers, I was on my way to St Pancras and Islington Cemetery for my usual weekend walk when I was stopped in my tracks by this extraordinary statue. It appeared this week in the grounds of East Finchley Methodist Church. Last week, this was a red cedar tree, but this week it has been transformed.

The sculptor is Simon O’Rourke, and the funds for the project were raised after a 103 year-old parishioner died, and left money for something to be created ‘for the children’, with extra funds raised by local people and donated by the Heathfield Trust, a Methodist charity. The design of the sculpture incorporates some lovely details that I’m sure children will love.

Susanna Wesley was born in 1669, the youngest of 25 siblings. Although she never preached a sermon, she was a strong believer in the moral and intellectual education of young people, both boys and girls, and her meditations and commentaries on scripture attracted large crowds to her family services. Susanna and her husband had nineteen children, of whom only eight were alive at her death. Amongst the children were Charles and John Wesley, who went on to found Methodism, which now has about 80 million followers worldwide.

The whole of the area around the sculpture will be transformed into a garden for adults and children.

I rather like the statue, with its intricate details and the sense that Susanna Wesley is both welcoming everyone with open arms and simultaneously jetting off into heaven like a Red Arrow trailing smoke.

There is an explanatory sign hung on the railings.

In spite of this, I was intrigued to hear one male passerby describing Susanna Wesley as ‘John Wesley’s wife’. And this is how women are regularly denied their place in history and relegated to the role of appendages. Our assumptions betray us, every time.

After this, a walk in the cemetery was going to seem a little ordinary, unless the foxes would oblige with a spectacular showing. Alas they were keeping a low profile, but there were lots of more subtle delights on show. For example, my husband said that his hay fever was kicking in, and sure enough, lots of the conifers have their tiny cones just opening.

I love the way that the sun shows off the smooth silver bark of the young ash trees. It’s easy to forget how many there are in the cemetery. If/when ash dieback hits hard, it will be a very different place.

I love the way that horizontal branches develop their own ‘moss gardens’ as well. In the tropics they have bromeliads, in London we have moss.

The lesser celandine are really starting to kick off now….

And whilst in some places the snowdrops are in full flower…

…in other spots the buds are just starting to emerge, like little rockets.

Everything is starting to push up through the soil, and it will only be a few weeks until the cemetery is a riot of birdsong and crocuses. This year the winter has seemed very long to me, and the greyness unrelenting. How lovely to see the days grow longer (at least here in the Northern Hemisphere), and to feel winter losing its grip for another year.

You can read more about the Susanna Wesley statue in the Ham and High article below:

https://www.hamhigh.co.uk/lifestyle/heritage/susanna-wesley-sculpture-in-east-finchley-church-8652556

A Wet Saturday in East Finchley

Rain dripping from the awning outside Coffee Bank

Dear Readers, our usual Saturday walk in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery was terminated abruptly today in favour of a flat white in Coffee Bank on East Finchley High Road. What a morning! It poured down relentlessly, and I look forward to the statistics which are going to announce that this was the wettest August ever. Even in the rain there are still things to see, but I wanted to start by showing you who popped into the garden yesterday.

This little one is very skinny but otherwise healthy – her tail looks mangey in the photo but it’s actually just a lighter silvery colour. She is all legs, and ears,  and is clearly one of this year’s cubs. Normally they haven’t been visiting until it’s properly dark,  but I imagine this one was very hungry. After about five minutes she loped off into the undergrowth and disappeared. It always feels like such a privilege to be visited by these animals.

Back to the High Road!

Coffee Bank stands right next to what is known as Carol’s Crossing. A wonderful local woman, Carol Jackson, was killed in a car accident at this spot in 2019. There had been many complaints about the difficulties for pedestrians who wanted to cross the road at this point, and it was very sad that the refuge in the middle of the road which makes things so much easier was constructed literally weeks after her death. Flowers are often left here in memory of Carol.

The ‘Carol’s Crossing’ embroidered sign

The crossing that makes life so much easier for East Finchley pedestrians

While I was watching the rain, I suddenly noticed the terracotta panels on the houses opposite. It’s these little details that make the mixed architecture around here so interesting. Clearly Tudor roses were very much in vogue.

And there are some fine floral swags too.

At least the plane trees are enjoying the rain, after the long dry periods of the last few summers.

And above the shop there’s a ‘ghost sign’ for an off licence – it’s interesting that there is still an off licence on this spot.

Then it’s off for a brisk trot along Leicester Road. Someone has planted borage and corn cockle in their front garden, and once it gets a bit drier I’m sure the bees will be delighted. I see some enchanter’s nightshade in there too – for the longest time I never saw this in East Finchley but suddenly it’s appeared.

All Saints Church looks rather forbidding against the grey sky….

But as we turn into my road, there’s a patch of blue sky.

And there is also something of an Alfred Hitchcock moment. Look at all these starlings! What are they waiting for?

They are all clicking and preening and whistling and generally discussing something I’m sure.

Maybe one of these days East Finchley will have enough starlings to have its own murmuration. Wouldn’t that be exciting? As it is, my conscience is unwrung because I topped up the bird feeders before I went out. In the film ‘The Birds’, I don’t think it was ever clear why the birds started to attack humans, but goodness knows they have enough cause. Let’s hope they don’t ever get it into their heads to take revenge.

 

R.I.P Bailey, King of the Cats

Bailey, the world’s most magnificent cat in 2017

Dear Readers, a few nights ago Bailey, the King of the Cats, went to sleep for the last time at the fine old age of nineteen years. He has been so much part of our life, and of the lives of many people who lived in the County Roads, that I wanted to pay tribute to him here.

I first met Bailey before we even moved to East Finchley. We were standing on the patio of what was to become our new home when we heard a loud and persistent miaowing issuing from the bushes. Up strode Bailey. He bobbed up for a head scritch, rolled on his back and then marched up to the back door, demanding to be let in. As it  wasn’t yet our house, we decided that this probably wasn’t the best idea, but once we were living there he became a regular visitor.

On one occasion I heard the voice of Bailey’s owner, followed by an all-too familiar wailing.

“Bailey! Come down from there. Don’t make a show of yourself”.

And there was Bailey standing on top of the ten-foot fence at the end of the side return. He had gotten up there, but seemed not to have worked out how he was going to get down. We humans stood and considered what to do. I tried standing on a chair but it wasn’t quite high enough. Fortunately at that point my six foot three inch tall husband arrived home from work, fetched a stepladder and rescued him. Carrying Bailey up the road to his actual house became part of our weekly routine. I think he regarded us as some kind of taxi service for when he was too tired to walk the last hundred yards home.

We soon made friends with Bailey’s actual family (or ‘subjects’ as I’m sure he thought of them). We were in regular contact, as Bailey developed a habit of wandering off. We never fed him, but other people did, and locating him became quite a problem. I am convinced that Bailey never thought of himself as a cat, but as a small furry human being. He would make himself at home on the armchair and watch benignly as I worked. He also loved sitting in the sink, normally (but not always) when there was nothing in it. We learned that what he loved was to drink from a running tap.

Bailey trying to get us to turn the tap on by telepathy.

Finally!

You would not believe that in these photos Bailey was already fifteen years old. He retained his elegant good looks for most of his life, and he was such a popular character on the street that everyone seemed to know his name. Well, you couldn’t really miss an extremely vocal pure-white cat who simply demanded to know who you were and what you could do for him. I had the sense that Bailey always knew what he wanted, and a bit more besides. We found we had a lot in common with Bailey’s owners, and we would probably never have found out how much if Bailey hadn’t ‘introduced’ us. He always seemed preternaturally wise to me.

As the years wore on, Bailey got a bit slower and a bit stiffer, like most of us, but he was still a regular visitor to the garden. The birds never bothered about him, and I never saw him try to catch anything. Other cats scattered at a glance. He would sometimes pay a visit to the garden ‘waterhole’ for all the world like a domestic lion.

Bailey drinking from the pond

He’d always march straight up to the back door and yowl to be let in. If he caught your eye from an upstairs window he would re-double his efforts.

Let me in!

In April this year he paid a visit to the garden. He was clearly a very elderly gentleman, and yet he still announced himself in the usual way,

He was very wobbly on his legs and so we called his ‘Dad’ who came to carry him home. It is so sad to see an animal towards the end of his days, and yet Bailey was a cat who defied pity; he was still the same regal cat that he’d been when we first met him eleven years ago. He loved people, was never happier than when he was plonked down in a patch of sunshine, and seemed to be of the opinion that everything had worked out for the best. He was, as Samuel Johnson said of his beloved cat Hodge, a very fine cat indeed.

R.I.P Bailey. The street is quieter, and much sadder, without you.

 

An April Walk in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery

Primroses on one of the graves

Dear Readers, spring is really gathering pace in the cemetery, in spite of the fact that the temperature has gone from the low ’70’s at the beginning of the week to the mid 40’s Fahrenheit today. It’s a worrying time for gardeners with half-hardy plants, but the natives could care less about the cold. I saw my first wood forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica) today….

and my first cuckooflowers, also known as lady’s smock (Cardamine pratensis), which are another real sign of spring for me. The cemetery has several patches of these delicate flowers. Who’d look at them and think ‘cabbage?’ but that’s exactly what they are (or members of the Brassica family at any rate).

The cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) will be abuzz soon as well – it’s naturalised itself all over the cemetery. I have one in the garden just behind my semi-circle of sleepers at the back of the garden, so I know how it self-seeds. The flowers have a heavy, almond scent that I find borderline sickly.

 

But look at the horse chestnut leaflets! Last week they were just emerging from their buds, but this week the familiar hand-shaped leaves and candelabra flowers are already unfurling. It’s a shame that these leaves will be blasted by fungus and leaf-miners in a few months time, but at the moment they look young and slightly fuzzy and very, very green.

It’s fair to say that the grape hyacinths are doing very well on some of the older graves.

And while the lesser celandine is disappearing in some places, it’s at its peak in others, forming a carpet of yellow flowers.

Down by the stream, the blackthorn is in flower.

And the creeping comfrey is, well, creeping along the river bank. Later on it will be overwhelmed by the Russian and white comfrey that also grows here, and so the bees will be happy for months.

‘My’ cherry plum has stopped flowering, and so it’s the copper-coloured leaves that are coming into prominence now.

On the way back, we passed a man who was planting up one of the graves. I paused to tell him how lovely it looked, and he mentioned that his wife had passed away in March and that he was sorting out her grave, and the grave of her parents and grandparents. He had a pile of paving slabs next to him and while he wanted to let me know what had happened he clearly didn’t want to talk about it. I see what a help hard physical labour is for people who are mourning, and I suspect this is for a variety of reasons: exercise brings endorphins that help to soothe, physical exhaustion is good for sleep, and I think that the physical pain can be a kind of counter-irritant for the emotional pain. Plus, I suspect that making a grave beautiful is a way of communing with the loved one who is gone, and of serving them even though they are no longer here. Finally, there is meaning in the creation of beauty, and after a bereavement everything can seem very empty.  Working in the midst of the new spring flowers and the bird song may bring a kind of solace, if even only for a moment.

I look at this Cedar of Lebanon, and think of it spreading its branches over all the many, many corteges who have passed under it. Whenever I look at it I somehow breathe in some of its peacefulness.

 

Spring Comes to St Pancras and Islington Cemetery

Dear Readers, after the fog, the snow, the icy winds, the rain and the general gloom it was a delight to be in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery today. The crocuses seem to have all burst into life within the past few days: the temperature was in the low thirties Fahrenheit last week, but today it was nearly sixty degrees, and everything seems to be in flower. What a joy it is! I spotted this queen buff-tailed bumblebee in the grass about ten metres from a patch of snowdrops, and I was quite concerned.

I thought she was dead at first, but as I crouched down she reached out with her middle leg in a very clear ‘don’t mess with me gesture’. As I hunkered back and considered what to do she picked herself up and flew in the opposite direction to the snowdrops, only to do a big loop and head back to them. How do they know, I wonder? Are they smelling the flowers, or had she visited before and remembered them? Anyhow, she had a good feed and then headed away at speed, so it was a most welcome false alarm.

There are two kinds of crocuses in the cemetery: Crocus vernus, which is the more typical garden crocus in its shades of purple, yellow, white/maroon and lilac, and Crocus tommasinianus, which is always a delicate lavender colour, and which seems more inclined to naturalise.

Crocus vernus (Spring crocus/Dutch crocus)

Crocus tommasinianus, or Woodland Crocus

Although the Woodland Crocus gets a bit floppy and falls over more easily than the Spring Crocus, I must say that I prefer it to its blousier relative. Some graves are absolutely covered in Woodland crocus, and the bees and hoverflies are already enjoying it. What a joy it is to see some colour after such a long, dark winter. And I am reminded that Woodland Crocus is known as elfenkrokus in German, which is just about perfect.

The native flowers are coming out too. I saw my first Lesser Celandine, but soon the paths will be carpeted with it.

First Lesser Celandine

There’s some red deadnettle, another favourite with the bees….

Some germander speedwell, with its sweet sky-blue and white flowers…

and of course some daisies, with their faces turned towards the sun.

But really it’s the crocuses and the snowdrops that are the stars of the show this week. They lifted my spirits and reminded me that the bulbs that I planted last year won’t be too far behind, though they are always later in my north-facing garden. Here are a few more photos, to cheer you up too…

And finally, it wouldn’t be me if I hadn’t found a grave to puzzle over. I had never noticed this one before, although it is literally the first grave that I pass if I walk my usual route.

There was a big Welsh community in the Kings Cross area of London, and I love how this headstone bears the daffodil, the National Flower of Wales. I used to live very close to Amwell Street, and just half a mile away on Pentonville Road there was a building that used to be the Welsh chapel, with the London Welsh Centre about the same distance away on Grays Inn Road. The story seems to have been a sad one: Lloyd Lloyd was listed as being an ‘invalid for the last seven years’ in 1939, while Margaret was ‘a helper in business’. Their son, David, was a ‘master dairyman and provision merchant’. However, they at least had the money to have not only a servant living with them, but also a male nurse. Margaret passed away in 1946, Lloyd in 1948, and according to the probate records, David received what would have been a very decent inheritance of almost £8,000. A little more digging reveals why – their home at 42 Amwell Street seems to have actually been a dairy, so David had taken over the family business. Something about the name ‘Lloyd’s Dairy’ rang a bell, and so I turned to Google for some help. And here is the site of the dairy. Apparently it opened in 1905 and finally closed about a century later.

What I can’t work out is if there were actually cows on the premises. Many Welshmen, especially from Cardiganshire, set up dairy businesses from about the 1860’s in London, selling milk and cream by the bottle, and also running a milk round. This continued until about 1954, so it’s not ancient history. The dairies tended to pop up along the line of the Euston Road (like this one) so even if cows weren’t kept on the premises, milk could be easily picked up via Paddington Station, which had direct links to the Welsh farms. And (light bulb moment) this is probably why the first trains in the early hours of the morning were known as ‘milk trains’.

It never ceases to amaze me how a simple headstone can reveal so much and yet so little about the people that it commemorates. I now know  a lot about Lloyd and Margaret Lloyd, and yet I know nothing about them as people. Still, I think I shall take some daffodils for their grave next time I visit, to say thank you for the insights they’ve provided into a whole area of London life that I knew nothing about.

Photo One from https://collage.cityoflondon.gov.uk/view-item?key=SXsiUCI6eyJ2YWx1ZSI6ImFtd2VsbCBzdHJlZXQgcml2ZXIgc3RyZWV0Iiwib3BlcmF0b3IiOjEsImZ1enp5UHJlZml4TGVuZ3RoIjozLCJmdXp6eU1pblNpbWlsYXJpdHkiOjAuNzUsIm1heFN1Z2dlc3Rpb25zIjozLCJhbHdheXNTdWdnZXN0IjpudWxsfX0&pg=3&WINID=1533845224776#daMHWlkAf9EAAAFlIEy1ag/62626 via https://alondoninheritance.com/london-streets/lloyds-dairy-lloyd-baker-estate/

Lloyds Dairy as it was (Photo One)I found this photo on A London Inheritance, a very interesting site run by one of my classmates from The Gentle Author’s blogging class back in 2014. If you are at all interested in London and how it has changed, I recommend you dash over to A London Inheritance right this minute.

Photo Credit

Photo One from https://collage.cityoflondon.gov.uk/view-item?key=SXsiUCI6eyJ2YWx1ZSI6ImFtd2VsbCBzdHJlZXQgcml2ZXIgc3RyZWV0Iiwib3BlcmF0b3IiOjEsImZ1enp5UHJlZml4TGVuZ3RoIjozLCJmdXp6eU1pblNpbWlsYXJpdHkiOjAuNzUsIm1heFN1Z2dlc3Rpb25zIjozLCJhbHdheXNTdWdnZXN0IjpudWxsfX0&pg=3&WINID=1533845224776#daMHWlkAf9EAAAFlIEy1ag/62626 via https://alondoninheritance.com/london-streets/lloyds-dairy-lloyd-baker-estate

The First Cemetery Walk of 2021

Dear Readers, our first walk in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery this year saw us getting some glorious weather for a change – this week it has felt as if the sun hasn’t really risen above the horizon, so some brightness was most welcome. The birds seemed to feel it too – this ring-necked parakeet was uncharacteristically obliging as s/he posed in this horse chestnut tree and munched the buds. I see that Defra are talking about culling parakeets, but only in areas where they are new. They are well-established around here, so hopefully they’ll be safe. Personally, I think that with everything else that’s going on, shooting a few parakeets should be low down on the agenda but there’s  no stopping some folk.

Elsewhere, the ash trees were a-twitter with goldfinches, who kept up a constant babble of contact calls that could be heard even over the traffic noise.

There were redwings everywhere, and they were being shy, as usual.

I must have counted twenty blackbirds, probably newly arrived from cooler parts of the continent – although it was long thought that blackbirds didn’t migrate, it’s now known that they often rear their young in one place, and over-winter somewhere else, with one bird spending every summer in a Devon garden and every winter in the south of France. In the winter the birds are much less aggressive and territorial, especially where there’s plenty of food, but they also seem shyer. Not one stood around long enough for a photo.

Fortunately, the moss is a lot more obliging, and on some of the older graves there is a whole miniature ecosystem.

I can just imagine all the tiny creatures slithering and creeping through the ‘jungle’ in search of safety, or prey. And look how the sun catches the moss sporophytes (the ‘flowers’ of the moss).

We have been walking different paths over the last few weeks, and every trip I find another new interesting grave. How about this one, for example?

Gillian Elinor was a bit of a late starter, having given up education to look after her children. However, she was nothing if not determined – she did her A-levels part time, followed by a degree in English and Art History at Birkbeck, followed by a Masters in the USA. Her first teaching job was at the Polytechnic of North East London (now UEL) where she started, at the age of 40, with a one day a week appointment. She stayed for 20 years, for the last 5 of them holding the post of Head of the Arts Department at the University of East London, and devoted many years of her life to the subject of women in the arts. She brought the African and Asian visual arts archive to the university, and was a founder member of Feminist Arts News and was heavily involved in the  Women Artists Slide Library. In 1987 she was joint editor of Women and Craft, published by Virago. She was also involved in the Women’s Art Group in Education, which sought to disclose how few women there were in academic posts.

In her later years, Elinor moved away from the visual arts and became more interested in poetry. Her headstone is an elegant and rather beautiful tribute to her dedication to the recognition of the talents of women, so many of whom are still unsung.

My husband is particularly interested in the war graves in the cemetery: there is a ‘proper’ war graves area, but many are scattered about, often hidden amongst the trees, although all of them have bright, well-scrubbed new headstones, dating from the hundredth anniversary of WW1. This week we found this one; the graves of those who were in the Navy when they died often have more details than those from other services, as in the one below.

A little bit of research shows that Able Seamen Dennis Watts died of ‘illness’ after the war, on 9th March 1946. H.M.S Orlando appears to have been a shore-based HQ on the Clyde in Greenock, sometimes also known as a ‘secret facility’. The trail goes cold at this point however (unless I want to shell out another £180 a year for Ancestry.com). What a sad loss of a human being, though, at only 22 years old.

And this one actually brought me to tears.

George W. Dell was killed at the land-based centre H.M.S Christopher, which was again in Scotland, and was a base for training personnel to use the anti-submarine and patrol boats which were on constant watch around the coast. There are no details, but the lad was only 19. We can only imagine the sorrow with which his parents, back in Barnsbury, Islington, received the news.

That heartfelt message ‘Just one of many – but he was ours’ echoes down the years. I’m sure that the people who are losing their loved ones in the pandemic are just as intent that those that they’ve lost shouldn’t just become another statistic, but should be remembered as the unique individuals that they were. When I read that Joe Biden is planning a remembrance event for 19th January in the US, the day before his inauguration, it makes me think how much we will need something similar when this is finally under control.

But finally, I had never noticed this very elegant little figure before. I am not sure if she is the Virgin Mary, or another saint, but I love how precise and neat she is, with that air of austerity that I usually associate with Japanese sculpture. I think she will be someone that I’ll look out for on future visits.

And finally finally, here are a few more goldfinches, because you can never have too many 🙂

 

 

A Misty Walk in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery

Dear Readers, what an atmospheric walk we had in the cemetery today! The freezing fog seemed to muffle every sound except the cawing of crows and the screeching of jays. The frost had touched the plants on the more open areas, turning this stonecrop into what looks like a mass of miniature cacti.

We decided to take a slightly different path from the one that we usually do – when there’s no view of the sky it seems perverse to take the route next to the North Circular Road with its constant traffic. So we passed this enormous mausoleum which is the tomb of Ludwig Mond, a German industrialist and chemist who developed a way of extracting nickel from its ore (called the Mond process). He was a benefactor of many scientific institutions, including the Royal Society. The tomb is based on the Temple of Nemesis in Rome, and is Grade II listed.

On we go. I love the underused, overgrown paths through some parts of the cemetery, like ‘Straight Road’ here. To the right, the moss has grown over something. I think it looks rather like a sleeping dog.

A sleeping moss dog?

We pass the grave of poor Percival Spencer, described here as an aeronaut – he was in fact an early adherent of hot-air ballooning. Legend has it that this tomb once bore the effigy of a balloon, but there’s no sign here. Spencer was the third generation of balloonists in his family, and made many cross-Channel crossings. He was the first person to fly a hot-air balloon in India in 1889, and subsequently passed his knowledge on to Ram Chandra Chatterjee, who was the first Indian to fly solo later that month. In the same year, Spencer was the first person to parachute safely in Ireland (one worries somewhat about the unsafe parachute adventures, but history has drawn a veil over those proceedings). After such an exciting life, Spencer’s end was decidedly earth-bound – he passed away from pneumonia at his home in Highbury, aged only 49.

Close by is this splendid headstone – there are a few of these monumental blocks in the cemetery, but none of the others have an artist’s palette on the front. Sadly, the wording is almost gone so I’m unable to tell you who was buried here. My husband thought that the palette was the cartoon figure of a man’s head smoking a cigar, and once you’ve seen it it’s difficult to see it any other way.

Further on I passed this rather cubist piece of tree surgery. I find all the planes and the way that the algae is shading the faces fascinating. The tree itself seems none the worse for the experience, and is already bursting with buds.

Then we pass another very fine mausoleum, this one with gold mosaics and a finely-wrought angel over the door. It’s the tomb of Letizia Melesi who, in 1913, was struck and killed by a taxi cab – this might have been the first road accident. One of the panels at the front shows the poor lady being helped to heaven by an angel while an alarmed taxicab driver gesticulates from his vehicle. The other panel shows Letizia’s husband, Gaetano, praying beside the tomb. All progress comes at a cost, for sure.

Photo One from http://www.mmtrust.org.uk/mausolea/picture_view/214/Melesi_Mausoleum

Photo One

Photo Two from http://www.mmtrust.org.uk/mausolea/picture_view/214/Melesi_Mausoleum

Photo Two

I think I’ve featured William Alexander Lamond before, but I never fail to be impressed by his statue. He looks almost as if he’s just about to step off his pedestal. He died in 1926, aged just 57, but his loving wife, Helena, lived on until 1961 when she was 95. Whenever I pass, he always has a bunch of flowers in his hand. Someone still loves him, clearly.

By now I’m thoroughly chilled to the bone in spite of the thermals, so we head for home.

But what is this, blooming by the side of the path? Did no one tell this plant that it’s the end of December? Well, this is winter heliotrope (Petasites fragrans), introduced from Italy in 1806 and known from the wild since 1835. The little flowers are said to be strongly almond-scented, but there are too few of them, and it’s too cold for them to make much of an impression today. Still, if any bumblebee was foolish enough to stick her furry head outside for a quick nip of nectar, at least her search wouldn’t be totally in vain.

Flower of winter heliotrope

Photo Credits

Photo One from http://www.mmtrust.org.uk/mausolea/picture_view/214/Melesi_Mausoleum

Photo Two from http://www.mmtrust.org.uk/mausolea/picture_view/214/Melesi_Mausoleum

A Busy Walk in Highgate and Queen’s Wood

Bark!

Dear Readers, it’s Boxing Day and all those who have been at home, eating turkey and watching Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special on the TV have suddenly burst out of their abodes and headed for the woods. We made the mistake of heading to Highgate Wood ‘for a change’ but it was so packed with people that ‘the dance of two metres’ became trickier and trickier, especially as the paths had been so trampled that there was thick mud on either side. It’s wonderful that people feel such a need to get out into nature at the moment (and I’m one of those people) but it does point up how much of ‘nature’ we’ve lost, when the small areas that remain are so overcrowded.

The love of the woods is clear, as seen by this bench, with its bowl providing water for dogs and its bunch of roses. The inscription reads:

I sit here with memories for company

Knowing  that if life were moments 

we’d all have a good time’.

Sean Hughes (1965 – 2017)

Sean Hughes was born in North London but raised in Ireland – he was a very successful comedian (the youngest ever winner of the Perrier Award for stand-up comedy at the Edinburgh Festival) and was one of the team captains in ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’, the TV music quiz (not that that exactly sums up the complete anarchy that characterised the show). He was a vegetarian and a lifelong animal rights activist, but had a long struggle with alcohol, ending with his death from cirrhosis of the liver in Whittington Hospital at Archway in 1917. I remember his cheeky grin and his way with a one-liner, and had no idea that this memorial bench was here. RIP Sean. The doggies love their water bowl.

On we go, side-stepping the runners and choosing paths largely based on which large groups are approaching. I do take a detour to admire some fungi. I’m thinking this is probably not the hairy curtain crust that I spotted in Coldfall earlier this week, but maybe something exciting like Stereum ramaele, which is often found on oak.

Anyhow, just after this point we give up and head into the slightly quieter and wilder environs of Queen’s Wood. For some reason this doesn’t attract quite the footfall of Highgate Wood, I guess because there is no children’s playground or grassy area for little ones to play. I like its slightly eerie atmosphere, and I find myself admiring the way that the trees grow into strange contorted shapes in order to reach the light.

There has been a lot of coppicing here over the years, which has helped to bring light into some of the darker areas. I must definitely come back in spring and see what appears (before it’s trampled into the ground anyhow).

And by one of the entrances there’s a warning as to why dumping garden rubbish can introduce all kinds of plants into ancient woodland. I think that this is probably yellow archangel (Lamiastrum galeabdolon ssp argentum), a popular garden plant and one which is widely naturalised in many hedgerows and woodlands across the UK. While the plain-leaved variety of the plant is a native, this variegated garden variety is not and, as it flowers earlier than the native plant it often out competes it. However, I am reserving judgement because I have no idea if the native species grows here, and this is still a useful plant for pollinators. David Bevan, who was the Conservation Officer for Haringey for many years, was relaxed about ‘introduced species’ in his recent LNHS talk, and my instinct is to agree with him.

By this time Queen’s Wood is getting a little busy for my taste as well, and so we head back towards Muswell Hill and home. On our way along Connaught Gardens I spot this street tree, which is covered in pink catkins. I rather think that this is a grey alder (Alnus incana var ‘Ramulis coccineis’) – if so it will have red shoots when spring comes. I must have a wander along and check.

Home we toddle, through Fortis Green, where we meet this very friendly cat. He does that ‘slow blink’ thing that cats do when they’re attempting to be chums, so I stand there like an eejit and do the same until my husband reminds me that it’s lunchtime.

And finally, I notice this single cyclamen in someone’s front garden, glowing like a small candle flame. I know that it’s not a fancy wild one, but it still cheered me up. And then it’s home for toast, and a cup of tea, while we wait for Storm Bella to arrive (70 m.p.h winds! Torrential rain!).

Yep, 2020 has definitely been a year for grabbing pleasures when you find them.