A Christmas Carol

It is December. I wake up to frost on the ground, crunchy underfoot. The sky is an icy blue and the low intensity sunlight is amber. It is beautiful out there; fresh, cold and bright, but unfortunately, I am ill and should really stay inside drinking multiple cups of tea. My soul wants to be out there though.

I went to see A Christmas Carol, probably the best story ever written. Dickens was a genius but the thing that strikes me as surprising each time I watch it (adapted for stage, film, etc.) is that it’s set in London. A big city. Where lots of folk intermingle and bustle about wearing shawls and striking matches. 

It surprises me because of the familial feel to the narrative. There is this old miserly man and his nephew’s house is over there and his clerk’s house is somewhere walkable with a giant turkey. When they enter a flashback with the help of the Ghost of Christmas Past, I’m pretty sure the Fezziwig’s ball dance is held in the city of London, which is also where Scrooge & Marley’s investment offices are. Everybody just lives on top of each other. Also, Scrooge has never left London, so he was born and will die there, wow.

I’ve heard that Victorian living conditions were pretty bad. People living in slums, raw sewage flowing in the streets, outbreaks of cholera, but then there were also the magical inventions of industry like gas lighting, which helped Scrooge see the illusion of Marley in his door knocker. Then there’s the climatic epoch that Charles Dickens lived through known as the Little Ice Age, which enchanted him and made us all believe in a snowy white Christmas. 

I bet a frozen Victorian city was so much nicer for its well-heeled inhabitants because all the waste in the streets would freeze and the noxious smells would lessen. That probably added to the magical Christmas feel Dickens was talking about. But how about how cold it got? I’m chilly in a centrally heated house wearing several layers under a Berghaus fleece. I bet a lot of people froze to death or lost a limb during the Little Ice Age in London too. 

Being good tired

June has happened without much deliberation. The onset of summer is heady, and I get filled with the prospect of late summer evenings drinking beers on rooftops and in open fields. Wedding after wedding have filled weekends, a panoply of love. Friends have flown in and stayed at our house enjoying the cosy offerings of the “Japanese Pub”. 

ROLO has acclimatised to new people arriving and has slept on the floor beside them, snuggling into their sleeping bag and pretending they are their own pack, away from civilisation. One guest awakes saying that I tap away at my keyboard ‘just like a drummer’ with intent and in short bursts.

We’ve gained a beautiful bouquet of flowers from friends who stayed here – but didn’t get to set eyes on because we were at different weddings. They left lilies and carnations in a vase, alongside a nice bottle of gin, classy. A new shiny soap dish that’s like a thin polished piece of wood has appeared on my bathroom sink to help out my formless disintegrating soap. 

As they sleep upstairs on the futon, I’m downstairs tap tap tapping away furiously. I’ve met old friends I haven’t seen in years and made new ones who happen to be in London. It feels good for once to be tired because I’ve been spending my time trying to fit it all in. I’ve learnt a new word too: orchidaceous.

My Canterbury Pilgrimage

In the summer of 2021,

I undertook a pilgrimage from London to Canterbury with three friends and a dog.

You can read my account of it here via an ArcGis Story Map: https://arcg.is/15q1CS0

There's pictures and interactive maps too. 

https://arcg.is/15q1CS0

The Kings Arms

The Kings Arms is a pub in Waterloo 

Rating: 3 paws out of 4

Arrived on a busy Wednesday night to a packed pub tucked in the damp alleyways behind Waterloo Station. You can sense there’s a rat at least five meters away from you at all times. ROLO didn’t seem to notice even though she’s a ratter, she was too busy trying not to get trodden on inside this old-time boozer.

An independent pub with an independent spirit. Lots of cask ales and bitters on tap. However, no real refreshing lagers and so, the joint loses a point. 

It was dog-friendly, in the sense that no one seemed to mind the presence of our pooches (ROLO had her mate Echo with her that night). Echo clambered on top of a pile of coats that some women had thrown down next to the bar, in the vein of nightclubs of the pre-pandemic era.

The King’s Arms carried a very English charm and swagger – you know – brass knobs and frayed curtains. There were lopsided lampshades and an old flat-screen TV propped up in the corner that wasn’t turned on. Ceiling fans rotated in ennui overhead at the post-industrial post-imperial landscape. The crowd was older, the music was quieter. There was a humdrum atmosphere to the place. It was the feeling of getting by.

Over yellowing wallpaper hung framed black and white photographs of the Waterloo area. The Cut and Southwark all getting dredged up and built over during the 1960’s. Not usually a fan of pubs with Saint George flags hanging in them, but this one also had a fair amount of St. Patrick’s Day memorabilia plastered on top of warped Victorian glass, which off-set the decor nicely.

They served good Thai food. The bar staff were calm and friendly, fondly cooing over our dogs. I left the pub with a slightly sad funny feeling, like that scene at the end of Mary Poppins (OG) where you see the pigeon lady feeding the birds, something akin to that. Thanks Windmill Taverns, will return with ROLO again!

*

Addendum: During my pub search I came across this gem of an article published in the Architectural Review on the Typology of pubs. Definitely worth a read.

The Sail Loft

For my new year’s resolution, I have decided to go to pubs in London that are dog-friendly. It’s not really a resolution and more of a fun task I’m going to tick off whenever I feel like it. However, to make it a bit more like a game with rules, I’ve made a Google map with lots of dog-friendly pubs pinpointed. When I visit a pub I like I turn the pin into a heart. If I don’t like it then the pin gets deleted. Also, I’ll try and do a little review of the pubs that I heart.

Starting with this one that I visited today in Greenwich called The Sail Loft

Rating: 4 Paws out of 4*

Definitely dog-friendly! The sweet staff asked me whether I’d like a water bowl upon entrance. I said, yes please and they whipped one out and placed it under my table for ROLO in a shot. Great dog-service.

You get a splendid view of the River Thames. There are enormous windows with lots of natural light filtering in, you can even see the spikes of the Millennium Dome (do people still call it that? The O2 sounds so boring) across the river.

The décor is very appealing. Wicker baskets hanging for the ceiling reminiscent of lobster pots. The pub is spacious with a mezzanine. Importantly – it’s not echoey, so the sound of screaming kids don’t bounce back at you harshly. They’re child-friendly as well as dog-friendly. I watched well-dressed families with prams swan through the downstairs pub with ease.

Top marks for cleanliness – I smiled at a lad spraying and wiping down tables as punters left. The bathrooms are big and have cool faucets, they’re made of re-furbished pipes and have a pressure valve handle instead of taps. 

I ordered a shandy lager and automatically it came with Peroni. Fancy. I could read a book quite comfortably in the ambience of this light and modern pub. It’s also five minutes from the Thames Clipper boat service, which takes me home. Perfect.

*because dogs have four paws. Four is the highest rating.

Southwark Cathedral

I’m thinking back to my first jab. Such are life events these days: weddings, funerals, first and second jabs. I’d booked mine at London Bridge Guy’s Hospital. My best friend Will (of the same age and near enough postcode) was also getting his vaccination the same morning as me, so we’d decided to meet up for a drink on the Southbank afterwards.

I got out of Guy’s Hospital earlier than Will, so I walked over to Borough Market. I didn’t fancy a delicious, overpriced coffee just yet. I strolled on over cobbled streets, under damp arches, smelling the faint ammonia and salt-breeze wafting off the Thames. 

I arrived at a lovely old building with sandy-coloured stone walls crumbling at the edges. Bright in the soft daylight, not like the muddied grey of elsewhere reminding me of a limp sponge. I made my way to the entrance. Southwark Cathedral. I had never been inside. 

I bowed my head automatically when I went through the doors. I notice I do that when I enter sacred spaces – has it been ingrained in me from Shinto shrines and the general bowing culture of Japan? You bow to show respect and humility. And I am humbled by ancient lore and spiritual sediment left behind. Old places filled with meaning is what I’m about.

The inside of the cathedral looked shiny. The stained-glass windows were clear and new, not even crazed. The stone floor tiles were smooth and uncracked, however, there was a weightiness in the alcoves. For such a large space it felt like the air was closed-off, as if we were in a vacuum. 

I checked my phone for messages from Will, but my signal had dropped. I padded around the perimeter taking in the high-relief engravings, plaques mentioning recent war, late kings, old territories. I wish I knew what stories the stained-glass windows told. 

I had walked to the very end of the chapel; if this had been a ship I would’ve been at the helm. A tannoy-speaker switched on and a woman’s voice broke the silence. ‘Hello. I am the Reverend of Southwark Cathedral. I will now say a prayer. If you can, please take a moment to stand or sit for contemplation.’

There were some empty chapel chairs in my vicinity, so I shuffled towards one and took a lonesome seat. Looming above me was one enormous stained-glass window tinted in deep blue hues, cherry reds and shafts of marigold yellow.

She spoke of wishing to curtail the virus. She spoke of wanting the vaccine to work and giving people the security, they so needed. She asked us to remember those left behind and to hope for better days. 

I was staring up at this colourful vibrant light streaming through the glass and I cried. I sniffled at the beauty of the way. I had been grieving my mother’s death all this time inside my head, I knew about it, thoughts constantly whirring whilst sitting at work, staring at screens, clicking irrevocably. All I required was a few stolen minutes, the kind of clarity you get when you smoke a cigarette. Surprisingly, this had not happened until I was sat in a church caught in a prayer.  

It might have clicked then, that what I wanted was a reason to move my body without my brain having to think. I wanted to give the relationship with my mother some breathing room. A pilgrimage. Treading a path often tread would give me a way out – an excuse! 

(I mean I deleted Instagram, as if that required any excuse although someone did ask, ‘why did you delete Insta?’ ‘too much rubbish to scroll through’. I don’t have the emotional energy for that, I’ve lost my mother, I cannot stomach seeing your focaccia.)

The prayers were over. I was given back to myself. I stood up and felt like I should bow but I didn’t and ambled through the cloisters. I checked my phone: two missed calls from Will. I went out past the Gift Shop to return the calls. ‘Where are you? I’m out of the hospital.’ ‘Cool, I’m at Southwark Cathedral. Come find me.’

Epilogue: Tomorrow, Saturday 21st August 2021, I am setting off on my pilgrimage. Me, my dog and two good friends will start from Southwark Cathedral and walk for ten days to Canterbury Cathedral. To be continued. 

 

Mad sad happy

I rode the train to to see my two friends in a park and that was liberating. If you curtail a person’s freedom, then the smallest acts take on the weight of something meaningful. Of course, it’s illegal to travel unnecessarily, but I needed to see my friends to discuss mainly death, otherwise I would have gone mad.

A friend calls my mobile phone and I let it ring out. Then I pick up a pen and paper and write her a letter. Postage First Class, so she’ll get it in the next couple days. It’s better than a wearisome week-old unanswered message. 

Tap tap tap; delete delete.

Screen time and online communication is a chore. I have to do it every day for work and speak every night with my mother. I give over so many waking hours to the Internet. I wish longingly for the dial-up modem tones of the past to fill the silence of my future. 

I check in the fridge. Scraps of lettuce and olives with pits. I have more time these days, so I can deal with pits in my fruit. 

I make egg mayonnaise for a party of ten – to discover no body likes egg mayonnaise and I labour through it over three consecutive days. I made egg mayo to use up the watercress I’m suddenly growing on my windowsill. I planted it on one of those days where I had endless time to kill, never expecting them to sprout with such gusto, I wish they’d calm down.

My entire world is my dog, my kitchen, my bathtub. I roll between the three, happy as Larry, until it gets too much. Then I cry. Then I finish and pick up where I left off. 

*

Today the sun shone on my face and I felt its warmth bloom in my body. 

The kitchen is the place where I make things happen and consume. Consumption used to be something I did on the fly, like on the way to work reading an advert, or at a theatre watching a show. I used to enjoy trying new things, like going to a different food stall for lunch on a Friday; or an altered walk cutting through Covent Garden to Leicester Square. Meeting friends for a drink in a place I’d walked past a dozen times but hadn’t been into. Chance encounters with ex-colleagues in a scrabbly pub in Soho. Beer gardens on the canal-side with a pale ale in a chunky glass. The kitchen is where I foster new experiences now, over a saucepan, or watching a fish grill in the oven. Cutting into a freshly baked loaf with a sharp knife and being excited to see air-bubbles small and consistent, or disappointed to find them deflated and flabby.

The bath tub is where I do my lounging. Luxuriating. Stopping thinking time. I sit there in the near dark with my wrinkly fingers, absorbed in the warmth and the not-doing-anything of it all. The bath is indifferent to the timetables of outside, even when life was at its most hectic, I stewed in bath tubs. All through my younger years until here I am again, gaining solace from being closed off from the world, truly private. Re-charging like a monster in the depths of her cave.

The dog gives me delight and spontaneity. The kind of thing that might happen when you’re closing down for work and a mate messages you to see if you wanna come to a gig because they’ve got a spare ticket. You scoff a Sainsbury's meal deal and get to the venue, queue, buy expensive beers in plastic cups and listen to a warm-up band and shout over them to chat to your friends. The small dog barks up at the sky when she sees an aeroplane. She farts when I’m trying to concentrate on an excel spreadsheet. She licks my face when I’m clouded in gloom and makes me laugh.

Bonfire night

The other night was bonfire night, which coincided with the beginning of lockdown 2.0. I went for a walk while explosions happened all around me in the sky. The evening air was still and smoky; it was like I’d walked back through a veil of time. How the lamp light filtered through the autumn leaves and was held by the smog reminded me of period dramas, like in The Crown when they fill a dampened room with fake smoke to give it that stale, liturgical look of old Britain. There was no one else on the street. A blacked-out Range Rover stealthily crept up beside me, before uneventfully rolling away, perhaps the driver was looking at the fireworks too. Shots rang out! Peals of fuchsia swerved up from behind a brick wall to crackle into sparks and fade out over a garden wall. There was a bottom-heavy moon that night and its creamy glow effused in contrast to the vivid smattering of lights.

Thames River Time

When we started walking the sun was up. I got us toasted sandwiches from the main coffee shop in the town centre. There’s something provincial about Woolwich and I want to be part of it. I’m gazing across the central square – while I wait for my coffee – that got done up for the Olympics, a forum with a huge television screen overlooking the concrete steps, where people are sitting. A child is creeping up behind pigeons, afraid he might actually catch one, so changes tact mid-way and runs at them screaming. Two women are chatting over a bag of corn snacks. Tracksuit bottom boy strides by flaunting a Gucci strap-bag on his hip.

You can glimpse all the movement of Woolwich, in one swoop of the eyes because of this central square. I’ve never really noticed it before because London doesn’t have town squares – apart from Trafalgar – the levelling of everyone on the same plain, people passing from side to side, like a game of tennis.

We walk towards the Thames. There is a farmer’s market in the new Woolwich Arsenal development, lined with stalls with striped tarpaulin roofs. People milling about with their dogs on leashes and holding coffee in cardboard cups; it’s not too crowded and could easily be pleasant. I notice more dogs away from the town centre, where all the city commuters live. The price of coffee steadily rises with each step you take towards the river.

There are so many un-built, part-filled flats on the riverside. There is a water-feature that’s worthy of any contemporary housing development - invisible spouts spurt water up and down in time to silent music. At night they light up in fuchsia glows, to give it an East Asian shopping mall feel. Kitsch and modern, also a deterrent for crime and rough sleepers, to cover a whole area with colourful water. Two big Alsatians play-fight amongst the spritz and look like they’re enjoying it.

If you keep walking the Thames footpath stops and you have to skirt around a warehouse complex. We made the wrong turning and found a climbing wall at a dead end. A woman in skin-tight leggings re-directs us and on the way out, we step into a gallery being set up for two artists. I'm won over by their mixed-media art – acrylic paint sandwiched between two sheets of Perspex then hung from a wooden frame by thick chains. Black ink applied with a palette knife over powdery Instagram filter backgrounds. The artists were setting up their Dark Silo exhibition, wearing pandemic face shields. One of them looked like David Hockney crossed with Garth from Wayne’s World.

The sky is filled with drizzle. We press on through streets flanked by enormous boarded-up warehouses and dilapidated civic buildings, and on to the Thames Barriers. The barriers were built in the 1970’s with an intended life-span of up to 2030. That’s only ten years from now. I wonder what the people who constructed the Thames Barriers thought life would be like today. It was a time of retro-futurism and Star Wars and that sci-fi ideal is definitely reflected in the giant curved stainless-steel structures, rising up from the riverbed like the optimistic past, which I have little connection to except through the nostalgia effect.

It’s properly raining now and we’re almost at Greenwich. There's a well-situated pub in between called the Anchor & Hope, where we stop off to have a half-pint and shandy. Music plays from a jukebox. Next to the pub is a seafood van with W-I-N-K-L-E-S painted on the side in royal blue, in old-style signage lettering. The catchy pop-beat of Maria by Blondie pulsates through the pub. Outside on the grey horizon, I can see the strange shape of the Millennium Dome with its toothpick yellow stilts, piercing up through the ground. 

The Thames is a good place to walk, it's like moving through vignettes of bygone eras, and it’s nice to forget sometimes what the day is like.

The Creature

Moonlight

It started with moonlight. It shone so brightly that it woke me while the night was in full swing. I opened my eyes and waited to get sleepy again but decided instead to go to the bathroom. It was still a novelty to walk upstairs to the white tiled bathroom, which I think is beautiful, in the way hotels in foreign cities are. I had only just moved in. This was my third night’s sleep in clean sheets, in a room no longer filled with dust bunnies. Even though it was night – like I say – the moon was bright, pouring in through the windowpanes like muted floodlights. Outside was still; the days had been hot, and the grass had been scorched.

I stood on the staircase and looked out of the window on to our back garden. There was a small creature, sitting in an upright position on the lawn, peering back at me. At first, I thought it was a squirrel. Its coat was the right colour, grey and dusty looking. But my eyesight is very bad. Also, it was before dawn, so it was difficult to make out defining features. I thought the creature was too large for a squirrel. It may have been a tiny cat. I went back to bed.

Compost

Holly received plants from her parents. Lush basil, tender thyme, spindly mint which she planted in the wooden trough next to the rosemary bush. Annina re-planted the mint into pots of their own, because apparently, they hog water. Over the coming days I would don gardening gloves and rip out the vines, which were threatening the tomatoes and had already strangulated the lavender. I would also make compost from old soil, dead leaves, eggshells and used coffee grains.

We all had seeds to plant. I had shiso. A herb that’s used in Japanese cuisine, which taste a bit like basil and plum – the seed packet told me they were ‘erratic and unreliable’. Simon had unidentified seeds, which he scattered into free pots. Holly planted sunflowers.

Hole

The plants were growing exceedingly well. All this sunlight and humidity was sublime weather for a seed, it seemed. I had my morning coffee black, sat at the blue table in the garden in my string vest and shorts. The sunbeams drenched me at the start of the day, it was like being on holiday. We can all close our eyes and imagine we’re abroad – I remembered a friend saying during peak-lockdown. Then I noticed this hole in the lawn. A dusty puncture where yellow shoots of grass should have been.

Something had been digging!

I noticed a fallen flower head next to it. A white rose had been pulled apart, its petals strewn about, like feathers of a pigeon attack.

‘Oh my god it’s the squirrel.’

‘I thought you said it was a cat,’ Annina said from behind her book.

‘Whatever it is it’s digging holes.’

I totally believed it was doing this because of our stare-off at moonlight. My not reacting to its presence, probably gave it some perverse confidence to go ahead and dig up our garden.

The next day it was worse. The creature had only gone and dug up our basil plant! It had really gone to town and shifted all the soil back and forth, so that black earth covered the remaining herbs.

‘Fucking squirrel.’

I got the hoe and filled in the holes. I did not find any buried nuts in the process. I asked my surrogate mum Susan what to do. She gave me a gardener’s tip: spray diluted washing up liquid around the affected area because squirrels don’t like the taste of it, apparently. I didn’t do that.

The final straw was on a sunny Tuesday morning when I came out for my morning coffee. On the lawn, next to the original hole was a pile of shit.

‘Oh my god! Look what it’s done!’ I was abhorred.

‘This is definitely not a squirrel, or a cat’, Annina said. Of course, she was right, it was a fox.

Monster

‘At first it was a big squirrel, then a tiny cat and now it’s a fox?’ Simon laughs at me, ‘I just don’t trust your eyesight.’ I am now too offended by the chimera to care. Each day I go back to the trough and cover up the holes with more soil. Holly has been doing the same furtively, and so has Annina. We are fighting a losing battle. Twigs of rosemary are being snapped off in the fox’s digging routine, all of which I throw into my compost pot, dejected.

“If you can remove temptations or create an atmosphere that causes a fox to feel nervous about coming into your garden, you’re on the right track to stopping the digging and other problems that the fox is causing.”

My phone lights up with this message sent from Annina upstairs. She knows I am wildly plotting against this fox. I had the idea of putting chilli flakes into the hole, scattering them around the lawn, so maybe it would sting the fox, but Simon pointed out it would be a waste of good chilli flakes.

Showdown

The eve before Genevieve’s birthday the whole household had mysteriously, simultaneously, woken up in the early hours. I recollect hearing blood-curdling screeching from outside and turning over in my bed, so that the duvet gripped me uncomfortably. Caught in a daze, Annina had stopped on the way to the bathroom and was looking out of the window at the erratic movements of a fox.

‘She was running around in circles,’ she recounts bewildered. ‘I don’t think it was a dream. Going from here to there with wild energy, digging frantically. I saw her jump onto the trough and start digging again.’

‘I knew it.’

‘So, I opened the window and she stopped. We looked at each other for a while and I stared at her. Slowly, she retreated to the garage and climbed on to the roof and slinked away.’

‘Oh my god Annina. You did it. You won!’

I hoped the fox would be too disturbed to return to the garden. Maybe she would think twice, now that she knew there was someone here who was a worthy match, who wouldn’t let them get away with murdering our basil.

It was a glorious summer’s day. The air was pregnant with humidity, but the thunderclouds stayed away. Simon inflated two gold balloons in the shape of a number ‘3’ and ‘0’ and attached them to weights, so they could float freely in the garden. We all pitched-in to make Genevieve’s birthday magical, even under the restrictions. Annina commandeered the kitchen and whipped up a banquet. We had two equally complicated and delicious cakes. At the end of the night, after candles had been blown out and all the prosecco drunk, we placed the big shiny balloons on to the lawn next to the original hole.

‘I think this should work,’ I said firmly.

‘I hope so.’

‘Well surely. Anyway, you’ve done the hard part by scaring her off. The balloons are just extra.’

‘Good night.’

‘Night.’

 Epilogue: The fox has not been back since.

London Wildlife

I went walking with a friend after Lockdown lifted, ever so slightly.

We met in Clapham because of the promise of a fresh gelato ice-cream. Yes. A double dark chocolate dream, but when we arrived at the front of the queue in the gelato place, it turned out my friend had eaten the last scoop the night before. So, I made do with a raspberry sorbet – still delicious and not something I could make at home, or crucially, get delivered to my door. It still counted as a pure #Lockdown experience.  

I walked with Georgia across Clapham Common where everyone was meeting again for the first time after Coronavirus hit the shores of the UK. We both stood in amazement at the park-scape. People enjoying themselves in groups, real people – not lagging behind tech, actually affecting the space surrounding one another. It was amazing.

‘This is so much better than television.’ Georgia said staring, eating her ice-cream.

‘Yeah. SO much more interesting.’

We were starved of human interaction and frozen stiff from too much screen-time. It took us a while to defrost.

The sun was bright and the common was green. It looked like paradise.

We walked through scrubby woodland in the middle of Clapham Common. There were little dens made of folded down twigs and so many wet wipes strewn across the branches. Then we ambled around to the lake to see the ducks and some geezers fishing. Rows of wildflowers had been planted on the Common, but it was mainly dandelions and they’re sort of weeds, aren’t they?

The finale was the urban heron.

A bunch of pigeons were pecking at a pile of chicken pasta salad somebody had thrown over the grass. A stealthy, very lean heron was approaching it, looking pretty awesome in an outfit David Bowie could have worn on stage. Feathery tassels, azure patterns down its razor thin neck.

A brown cocker spaniel bounded onto the scene – scattering the pigeons – screaming infants ran in the opposite direction – the heron swung its legs into the air, like when you get off a bar stool and retreated to a pond.

There were joggers, cyclists, runners, fitness pros live streaming workouts, skaters, cars, shirtless picnics, hampers: London wildlife.

Lockdown London

Lockdown has not been so bad for me. I live with two brothers, both of whom tolerate my ups and downs – mainly ups to be honest, shouting at films and munching crisps and drinking wine. They let me come and intrude on their peace, which I am grateful for because it would be less entertaining living alone through isolation. Although I find I have begun to miss the oddest things during my waking hours, while in my dreams I have a very busy schedule these days, like managing a successful touring band.

During my one piece of exercise allowed per day, I began to miss King’s Cross. Not anywhere in particular but the concept of King’s Cross (the sensation of being in it.) There’s this pub I like called King Charles I which used to be more of a dive if you can imagine it - only enforcing the smoking ban about a year or ago, from what I recall. The pub has these stuffed proud-looking animals nailed to its wood panelling, like little deer and stoat, and the beers are really cheap. They put on these mad drag pub quizzes that descend into mayhem whenever we’re there, usually after a poetry and music night at Housmans, the radical booksellers down the road. The member of staff there, I think her name is Luna or Lyra, or neither, chills at the back of the shop not really into whatever’s going on on stage, but overseeing the crowd, in case they fancy buying a humanist badge, or a manifesto on something very important.

I used to work at a venue that’s changed hands many times over because they over-spent on branding and not enough on selling tickets, but it was fun and I’d get to see shows for free on my way back from flyering. I used to flyer-drop places all around King’s Cross, cafes, kebab shops, hair salons. They’d let me stick posters of comedians across their windows, which I thought was dumb because surely, you’d prefer natural light to seeing a scruffy poster every day. I traipsed over the streets with a rucksack full of A5s and poster tubes and blue tac. I would end up walking from King’s Cross through Somerstown, across the tow paths to Camden Lock and Kentish Town. I’m not a North Londoner, so I’m not sure why I feel such nostalgia for these places, or even this time of life because I was broke and living on a boat. Yet, I miss it. I miss it because it reminds me of the hubbub and what it isn’t anymore. You can’t walk from shop to pub to club. You can’t knock into people like billiard balls on a table and have awkward chit-chat.

But. That is not the whole story. Because there are some things I have done for the first time ever during isolation and these things have been good and cannot be overlooked just because they are slightly less exciting than going to the pub. No. So here they are, in no particular order:

·      Watched a MET Opera production of Sigfried from Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Phooey that’s some intense singing (4.5 hours of it) and the production value was heinously high. You can stream a show every day for free.

·      Roasted a butternut squash! I have never roasted a squash before. I had assumed that they were a legume but they’re not – they’re their own class of plant and actually a courgette is a squash, how about that? Also, what was fun was after the squash had been roasted to a pulp, it sat in the oven squeaking for a few minutes like a mouse until I took it out to film, then it shut-up.

·      Getting engrossed in a terrible overly technical low-budget film about time-travelling called Primer, which by the way, won the Sundance Festival in 2004 beating Garden State and Napoleon Dynamite to the title, which let’s admit are very Sundance-y films. I watched this bad sci-fi film and then spent the next 3 hours reading all the forums and watching a 20-minute explanation video about what happened in the film, and now I am wondering when I can watch it again, to look more closely at the wardrobe changes.

Bedz on the Rye

‘It’s no time to be making plans for a holiday Ron. You should’ve done that years ago.’ Says Antoine, who is perched on a solid pine bedframe. Ron continues to stare out of the window. ‘Anyways, not at your age, there’s this virus making its rounds like the grim reaper.’

‘Don’t be so gloomy Antoine, let an old man dream.’ Ron turns around with both hands in his pockets sticking out like paws. He has small blue peepers studded in his round, pink head and wears a beige coloured sweatshirt over cream trousers. Ron is slightly blurred at the edges, but when he puts on his reading glasses to go over the accounts, he gains a certain edge like a betting clerk.

Ron runs a shop called Bedz on the Rye and he has done so for the last twenty-seven years. He bought it off his uncle when he became ill, likely asbestos - things were different then. The market was looking up, there were loads of new families moving into the area with money to splash, everyone needed a bed. Waterbeds came into fashion for a little while, nearly did his back in carrying one into the store with Larry. After that they always drained them before moving. Nowadays everyone’s about memory-foam and low bed frames, although tighter with their budget. He doesn’t make enough business these days. Ron has to keep the shop open all hours in case somebody comes in to buy; ‘Can’t miss an opportunity and can’t compete with them online retailers.’ His beds are middle-of-the-range, affordable, no frills and he’s got Larry with the van if you want it delivered to your door.

The only regular customer he gets is Antoine who works for an old people’s home. Elderly care worker is what you call them these days, and Antoine looked after his old mum before she went, so he’s a good lad, still a bit young but who isn’t when you’re over sixty. Still no plans to retire – ‘I couldn’t afford it!’ but still with an itch to get out there, to see the world. Every day he stands at the shop window looking out, watching the street, waiting for someone to come in. Ron wonders how much longer this sort of thing can go on. Every time he takes stock of his beds and mattresses, he is reminded that he hasn’t sold enough for this quarter. At least he owns the leasehold he muses, though that must be running low too, can’t quite remember or find the energy to locate the deeds.

He never married - didn’t want to - not really. There was this one lady friend he made called Veronica. Oh, she was lovely. She had this shop a few stores down selling vintage clothing and furs, she was actually older than Ron by several years, but he daren’t ask by how much, a woman must be allowed to keep her secrets. He’d buy her coffees and croissants and take them a few doors down in the mornings, chatting while she got the place ready. Veronica had these trunk suitcases that looked like they belonged in the back of a Fiat 500 and picnic hampers, which she would open up all over the shop and delicately toss mountains of shawls and silk scarves into them, pulling out little wisps, enticing customers to reach out and buy one. Those mornings were bliss. They would talk about politics and hit records, Veronica spoke about wanting to move away and start all over again; Ron felt trepidation and excitement at the possibilities that could materialise out of thin air. It was the last time he felt young.

Drizzle started falling and it got chilly standing by the door, Ron trod lightly into his back-office, switching on the overhead heater that made a faint hum. In moments like these he wished a customer would come in to make him not dwell. She did as she set out to do. It was the summer of 2005 when Veronica closed her shop forever, selling the business to a yuppie couple who transformed it into a yoga studio. She came by to sit on one of the many bright beds for sale that day and dazzled Ron as she spoke with certainty about where she was off to and what she was going to do.

‘I’ll swim in the most beautiful crystal-clear lake in the summers and be able to buy and sell as many silks as I like.’

‘You can speak Italian can you?’

‘Capisco benissimo!’ Ron raised his eyebrows impressed and besotted. ‘You must come and visit me. Will you? Yes promise.’

What would happen if he turned over the “Open” sign to say “Closed” for a week? The shop door swings open and Antoine steps in wearing a drenched raincoat with the hood pulled over his hair, holding a blue plastic bag.

‘Do you mind it’s too rainy to walk back just yet.’

‘You know something Antoine? I’m going on holiday.’

‘Oh yes, when?’

‘Right now.’ Ron looked pleased with himself and had some colour in his cheeks for once.

‘Where to?’ Rummaging in his shopping bag.

Already Ron had put on his jacket and folded his reading glasses into their case for travel, ‘To Lake Como in Italy.’

Antoine stops and looks at him like he’s loopy, ‘You can’t you know it’s been quarantined.’

‘I don’t care about that I’m going.’ And with that, Ron gave Antoine his umbrella and switched off all the electrics in his shop and swung the sign round to say “Closed”.

November surprises

November is one of the hardest months to deal with. Shadows get longer, the commute becomes steamier, the night dominates. Trees are lovely and orange, but then slowly their foliage disintegrates, and the roads are covered in moisture, so you can’t wear Converse anymore. You need hoods and umbrellas; waterproof coverings that help you have more extraneous belongings to leave behind at bars and on train carriages. One frosty faff after another, with the added runny nose.

A colleague of mine suggested I try a store on Rivington Street, which sells bits of fashionable wood to find a going-away gift for my flatmate. He is basically a zine, so I trust his recommendations and it took the pressure off me having to find the “right” shop. I walked in wearing my raspberry beret and mohair coat. The doorman gazed past me through the glass pane at the street tinted blue.

In the store were mobiles hanging from the ceiling that looked like Alexander Calder, and I thought, ‘When I own an apartment, I’d like to fill the void with abstract art that twirls around on a wire.’ I sat in a smooth wooden chair made for Eames enthusiasts, beneath bare low-wattage bulbs that flared above my head. There were books and binders, aprons made from bark, terrarium, cacti, succulents. Small vest for a dog.

The run-up to Christmas is tiring with Santa schemes and end of year drinks, industrial-sized fairy lights flashing on all over town. It’s easy to go along with when it’s happening, but in November when you know that mountain of merry is looming, I get tired. I get that premature feeling I’ve frittered away another year when really, I haven’t, this is called life; where like walking, every day follows another, like your left foot follows right.

Over there on a shelf I spot something.

In a flimsy, square, see-through casing – no it can’t be?

Few objects are seared into your memory like they are from childhood. The avid collectors and hobbyists we are at age ten. You remember your favourite yoyo that lit up when you performed “walk the dog”, or your special eraser that smelt of something sickly-sweet kept in your smudgy pencil case. There it was. My plastic, carrot-scissors. (Tiny with a magnet on the underside – the blades hidden in an orange sheath that looks like a carrot stick – the handles lurid green - moulded into the shape of leaves - like a cavolo nero.) I loved this pair of carrot scissors and I stuck them to my table-leg in Year Four. I can’t remember why I liked them, they may have been the perfect size for a ten year old’s hands, or the cuteness of them was fun to contemplate, who knows.

One day after sports, I came back to find that they were gone. I checked all the other tables, disbelieving how they were gone. I looked on the whiteboard, which was also magnetic in blind hope. I began to panic and asked the form teacher what had happened to them? Did she know about my important scissors, or did teachers try not to pry into the lives of little children, with all their hideous collections of soft toys and stickers?

‘Don’t worry.’ She said. I couldn’t convey to her the gravitas of the situation. Quietly, I hoped. And she was a good teacher, so she wrote up on the board, ‘Has anyone seen a pair of carrot-shaped scissors? If you borrowed them, please return them by the end of the day.’ Weeks went passed and I got used to it. Someone stole my carrot scissors and they were going to get away with it: what a world!

Now I turn its flimsy packaging over in my hands. I can’t believe it. To be re-united with these feelings after twenty years. What I would give, to be able to go back in time, to present this to myself. And I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid at whoever gave me the scissors (a la Back to the Future) because they mattered so much to my formative sense of justice.

Thank god the shop didn’t have any reindeer food or eco-friendly candy canes, otherwise I might have been put off the whole idea. With Christmas coming around the corner, why not? It’s the price of a pint and I could forget about the whole thing, making the surprise even sweeter on Christmas Day. (I felt silly, but I shouldn’t have because I owed it to myself.) The man in the fisherman’s jumper behind the counter, folded down the edges of a brown paper bag over my plastic purchase. I plopped it into my tote to forget about it, then browsed the shelves for gifts. There was nothing here for her.