I’ve been promising myself for some time that I’d walk along Shacklewell Lane with my camera. The heat put paid to that idea last week but now it’s cooler so off I went. I’d waited for the rain to let up before I left the house but there were at least three showers while I was out, sometimes heavy.
Walking along Amhurst Road today there were signs of Summer ending. I was admiring the houses and the nice curve the street makes in either direction.
It feels like we live in a scruffier part of Amhurst Road – although not as scruffy as the piece from Dalston Lane over to Mare Street! I say this because some of the houses, architecturally the same, further up the road are set back a bit more and are better taken care of.
During my walk, I was intrigued by the forks in the road. More than junctions, there are often three directions. At the junction of Shacklewell Lane, Amhurst Road keeps going up to Kingsland Road, to your left is Shacklewell Lane, also meeting Kingsland Road at a more westerly point, and to the right, Shacklewell Lane becomes Rectory Road towards Stoke Newington Common.
I had this little email conversation with my brother, John. He says he doesn’t have much anxiety about this crisis and, if it goes on another year he won’t mind too much. (Total paraphrase so forgive me, John.)
I can weather it, I know I can. However, John and I have very different circumstances. He lives in the Southern California suburbs, where pedestrians are few, houses are detached and at the end of their personal driveways, supermarkets are enormous barn-like affairs, his wife Liz sleeps into the mid morning while he is up with the lark for some alone time, they each have a car, and they live in a five bedroom house, with two bathrooms and two living rooms, and a front and back garden.
I think I could have less anxiety there, despite my surburbiphobia! Instead I live in a congested city where even in zone 2 I rarely see no one outside my window, on the top floor of a terraced house which houses four sets of tenants. There’s no access to the garden and the scrap of front yard is the entrance to the lower floor flat. There’s no car but several busy buses and trains. We have two rooms – the bedroom and living room and we are home all day together.
So, as the title says, wandering is mostly in my mind. And, yes, my mind wanders. Like the time I was in the streetcar in Toronto and looked up for a minute, completely confused about where I was and where I was going. Scared me. The doctor said, it happens. And it’s only rarely happened since.
My mind can also wander to all sorts of fabulous and frightening things. I’m switching from full doom to full ‘rosy outlook’ mode, but mostly settling in between – things are and will be different. That’s the way of the world. It’s just a bit more surreal than usual, that’s all.
But I do physically wander on the days I’m not worried so much about it. My friend Susanne has used #walkablecity #walkableneighbourhood on her Instagram account and I am really grateful that I can echo that sentiment. Continue reading “Wandering is mostly in my mind”
There are up days and there are down days. Days I have big hope and days I despair. The worst thing is fear, followed by lethargy, or maybe lethargy is the worst thing. I’ve had to face the dilemma of being an already fearful person in a genuinely fearful situation. Knowing others are in it too can be comforting but adds a layer of reality. Phobias are defined as fear out of proportion to the threat. So, yes, I find my phobic self reasserting itself more these days but ‘out of proportion’? Hmm, not sure.
I’ve heard that we agoraphobics have ‘an advantage.’ That’s because we’re already familiar with panic and the symptoms of generalised anxiety, but we’ve gathered an enormous toolkit of coping techniques that help us navigate and live our lives more fully. Well, yes and no. So I’m trying to push aside the ‘what if’ thinking and ride over the waves of fear and helplessness, because there are so many things I can still enjoy and experience. It’s just different now.
It’s Thursday and I haven’t been out since Sunday. On that day I was feeling wobbly but I went anyway. My phone and my camera were there to keep me company, and I wasn’t going very far. I did a bit more and a bit less than expected. I’d count that as a success.
My goal was to visit Gillett Square, Bradbury Street, Winchester Place and Marks and Spencer – a short itinerary on an increasingly warm day!
Bradbury Street was a bit of a bust since I’d forgotten that places were closed on a Sunday. With so many shuttered fronts, I wasn’t sure if they were closed for Sunday or closed for good. I’ll have to go back and find out. For some reason, despite living in Hackney for so long and just a very short walk from Kingsland Road, Dalston, we discovered Bradbury Street only about a year ago. It’s not hidden – it’s a step away from Dalston Kingsland Station and has its back to Gillett Square – but for some reason we hadn’t wandered along it.
Bradbury Street is a short – 110 metres long – street which is lined with restaurants either side. They’re all small and unpretentious, and only one is a chain – Honest Burgers. There’s more than a hint of the Caribbean here, and jazz, and doing your own thing. And I’ve never eaten here! I’ll come back to see what’s surviving soon, take more photos, and perhaps try the home made patty I’d seen advertised in one window a year or so ago.
I went in from Boleyn Road to Gillett Square. The square was created as part of a plan to develop the Bradbury and Gillett Street by Hackney Co-operative Development and others. Started in 1998, it opened in November 2006 as the first of 100 new public spaces for London.
If you cross Kingsland Road from Gillett Square, you hit Ridley Road Market. It’s not open on Sundays right now and is still on my list to look at more closely. However, my brother John had told me that on his Google Streetview explorations, he’d seen the Hip Hop Raised Me mural in Winchester Place. As soon as I saw it, I knew I’d seen it many times – it’s not on my Favourites List, but it’s a large piece off the main road.
John had also noticed Colveston Primary School. It’s on Colveston Crescent, just off Ridley Road. It’s described as ‘a close-knit and friendly one-form entry primary’ and it looks like a little village school. It has a focus on creative arts – music, drama, art and it’s housed in a grade II listed building – I’m still chasing what makes it so, although it’s obviously a remarkable building. The railings are especially noted online but I didn’t discover this until later so missed the point.
It isn’t easy to see the whole school in one go. From across the road I’d be able to get an interrupted view, with all the fencing and railings from the market, but there was no way through, so that will have to be another day – I hope next week.
What followed was a quick trip into the not-too-busy Marks and Spencer for fruit, vegetables and a pork pie! Nothing too exciting to report. I walked through the back streets to my bus stop and then home.
In the UK, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak came up with a scheme to help restaurants and encourage people to ‘dine in.’ It’s called Eat Out to Help Out. On any Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday during August you can eat in a restaurant for 50% off to a maximum of £10 a person. We’ve talked about taking advantage of this and waver between being very interested and not interested at all. I’m still not sure we will do it. I suspect not but the month has just begun.
I have a plan to take little corners of the local area and explore them with my camera. They aren’t likely to be things or places I’ve never blogged about before, but this is my exploration radius now.
Yesterday I was meeting two friends outside in Dalston, so I gathered a list of things I needed to do and buy and off I went.
Sandringham Road is opposite my flat and goes up to Dalston, where it stops. Along the way there are historical and older parts, and the council buildings – houses mostly but some flats. It’s residential until you reach the top, where there are a few cafes and you are facing the Rio Cinema.
St Mark’s Rise is an interesting point along Sandringham Road. Its name is taken from the very large church at the corner, St Mark’s.
From Wikipedia – St. Mark’s Church: St. Mark’s is a large Victorian church primarily built in the period 1864–66 to a design by Chester Cheston. It is reputedly the largest parish church in London, larger than Southwark Cathedral, capable of hosting congregations of 1800-2000 people[12] and its great size has earned it the nickname, the “Cathedral of the East End””. The residential area around the church is also of high architectural quality and has accordingly been designated the “St. Mark’s Conservation Area”.
This seems to be another spot where there’s a lot to be learned, just a couple of minutes’ walk away.
On Sunday morning, Krish brought up the idea of getting on a bus and going somewhere. He said maybe it would be quiet on the buses and we could wander around The City on a peaceful day. The City is dead out of office hours as a rule but surely now it would be even deader. I thought about it for a little while and then said yes, let’s go.
We took the 242, which goes along Kingsland Road, then turns down Commercial Street at Shoreditch High Street Station. We sailed past a very splendid new Dan Kitchener geisha art piece but stayed on until we went one more stop, where the crowd – if there is one – will have dissipated. And out we got.
We walked back a little bit to Christ Church, where I’d seen a cattle trough. I’ve taken lots of photos of the church but this time it was the trough and drinking fountain that caught my eye. The church itself was the first of three that Hawksmoor built between 1714-1729 and for me, it’s the landmark that dominates the area.
The trough and fountain are lovely. They were put there by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association, set up in London during the 19th century to provide free drinking water.
We decided to get off the main street to head towards The Gherkin. I’ve walked along Toynbee Street many times but never past Middlesex Street. We saw very few people, but there were a few stalls set up at the top near Commercial Street.