slightly weird

10th February 202312th February 2023

Where is home – An enigma

Wednesday, 8 February, 2023

What does home mean? Easy question – until now, for me. Moving from Hackney was hard. Physically, there was so much to do and I’m not as strong or stable as I want to be. I’m also short, which has limited me all my life in a way other short people will understand – attitude and adaptability counts, but if you’re short you’re short and that’s that. Emotionally was probably harder. More than likely, once the work is finished the physicality of the thing will end. The emotional stuff heals only as quickly as you allow it to.

London was my first home. I loved it from the earliest days of my memory. It wasn’t just about my family or the people around me, it was a solid feeling of belonging. I remember events from around the age of two or earlier, just snippets. It’s true that photographs have helped this. Perhaps I have created my own memories from them, but I sincerely believe they are real, or as real as they can be considering how much time has passed. At any rate, I didn’t just exist within the space but embraced it, inhaled it, became it. I’ve always been an explorer and so I discovered many things along the way about this space. When I was old enough, I would walk great distances including the eight miles from my teenage home in West Dulwich into central London, often joining up with my friend in Herne Hill at the two mile mark. At 17 I’d sometimes go in by train and sleep overnight on a bench in Trafalgar Square so I could spend another day there.

Photos were so tiny in those days and so was I. It’s my second birthday, mum and nana dressed me all in white, and I’m standing on the windowsill of my first home.

Until I was 18 I lived in greater London (Bethnal Green, Essex, Bromley by Bow, West Dulwich) and Woking. We moved to Toronto – another long story – and my parents moved to the greater Los Angeles area after a couple of years. I contemplated where home was when they left. I’d not been mature enough to live alone in London when they’d left, but now I was more independent. Should I stay in Toronto, should I follow them to L.A, or was this my chance to go back to London. I flew to London (my first flight ever) but quickly discovered that I just couldn’t afford it. Toronto wasn’t really holding me and my two-year boyfriend wasn’t clinging, so L.A. it was. I lived there and in San Francisco for two years. Despite my aversion to the U.S. lifestyle, Id count those years as the most carefree of my life.

Then I left and went back to Toronto – I meant it to be a holiday really but I stayed. I had another boyfriend then and eventually we got married. After nine years together my son, Robin, came along. Toronto was sticking and he was the glue.

In my thirties, in Toronto. The only time I ever had a whole house (rented) and this is where I was when Robin was born

All this time I never lost my longing for London. My marriage ended, a new boyfriend came along – Krish – and somehow he too was from London and we formed our plan to some day be there. And then we were. How we made it happen still amazes me. I did, however, leave Robin in Toronto and this is the only reason I do believe home is as much about the who as the where. No matter where I was something was missing. In Toronto, I missed Krish. In London, I missed Robin. I used to, and still do, think about this quadrangle – Me, Krish, Robin, and London. This is in no way to make Krish less, but if life forced me to make a Sophie’s (Jan’s) choice it would be me with Robin and London. But me, London, that’s a no-brainer. Why can’t I make my life about me? Being a mother is hard. And wonderful.

Skip ahead to late last year. Leaving London was heartbreaking but necessary at the time. We arrived to stay at my friend Judy’s home near the lake but after only one day I woke in the night to sense something wasn’t right. Krish had a fever. He’s prone to them when he’s sick and burns hot and fast for a short time before recovering. ‘You’re burning up,’ I said – what a cliche. He needs to test, I thought. ‘I’ll do a test,’ he said next morning, surprising me. He’s usually unconventional about such things. Positive.

Judy’s neighbourhood at Bathurst and Lakeshore. A far cry from Hackney

Judy walking Annie on Bishop Tutu Boulevard, Harbourside

Walking in Judy’s neighbourhood near Lake Ontario

Our room at Judy’s, We were in chaos from travelling

My test on the left, Krish’s on the right

Judy considered this but mostly considered how she couldn’t stay in the same space. She offered to go elsewhere and I insisted that we needed to go elsewhere. I remembered that Krish’s parents were on holiday and suggested we stay in their apartment. They agreed and so we gathered what we could for our ten-day stay and took an Uber to where they lived.

Driving up to Krish’s parents. This was nice, seeing all the Fall colours from the Don Valley Parkway (DVP)

Krish’s sister in law – I suppose mine too – met us there. She gave us some fruit, some leftover take away noodles, a huge sack of potatoes (that was weird!), and two packs of disinfectant wipes. And she left. Judy had pushed a bag into my hand earlier – she’d packed butter, cheese, milk, orange juice, bread…but we were on our own.

Where Krish’s parents live is in the suburbs about 18km from central Toronto. It’s a condo they’ve been in for a couple of years and we’d never seen it before. I actually loved the space. It wasn’t ours but it was bright and large and I mentally refurnished it. It was, however, isolated – too far from everything.

Halloween night arrived and Krish was feeling up to a walk so we had fun cruising down the street we could see from our balcony. I had looked forward to seeing the festivities and we took the scenes in.

After five days Krish complained about chest pains and off we went to the closest Emergency department. He had pneumonia. We were on our own, took buses and mostly walked to the hospital, to the drugstore the next day feeling the weight of it all. I’d hoped that help might be offered. We could do it alone but it was hard. And then his brother told us we had to go, that we were endangering his parents by staying. We despaired – his brothers hadn’t offered any help during our isolation, we felt very alone, and his parents hadn’t stepped in to defend us.

Things got foggier in more ways than one

Luckily, Judy agreed that we could return now that all tests were negative and my nephew in law (is that a thing?) voluntered to drive us back down to the lake. The temporary home was gone and so was the trust that Krish had hoped to rebuild with his family. I’ve deliberately skipped details out of respect for them, but I don’t suppose I will ever be able to forget the feeling of betrayal, abandonment, and lack of caring. In all our travel plans we had held tight to the idea of family support. We let go as best we could now.

Back at Judy’s house, Krish struggled. We’d always known that his psoriasis would be a problem wherever we went, but he wasn’t coping. So we looked for somewhere else to be. We found it in a new area of Bloordale, booked two months and packed our things once again.

Our third temporary home gave us a haven. It had issues – our bathroom and bedroom were in the basement, down some steepish stairs with no handrail. It was scary and sometimes I’d lose my nerve and bump down on my bum like a child. We knew we didn’t want to stay too long – it was expensive and the basement was getting very cold (with no heat) as the winter progressed.

Just before Christmas I went to a pantomime with my niece and felt ill during the show. I’ll never know how I sat through the performance but I made it. We took a cab home afterwards and I vomited on the steps outside in the cold. The next morning it was my turn to test positive for Covid. Now those stairs were a bigger problem. I could either stay in the cold basement near the bathroom but without kitchen access or entertainment, or I could stay in the warm living room, with the distraction of Netflix and food close by, but no bathroom. I muddled through.

Christmas was cancelled! It would have been my first Christmas with Robin in six years. It felt like we couldn’t catch a break. We justified it all by saying how lucky we were overall. We had means, although they were gradually dwindling, we had a roof over our heads, we were eating regularly, we had friends, although not 100% we were relatively well. Blah blah blah.Of course I recovered – Paxlovid helped – we had a Christmas get together with Jenn and Robin, and we started looking for somewhere else to be.

I found a place being sublet until May. We’d save money and have a breathing space. We interviewed and got clearance to be here. We packed our bags again and slowly moved over in the first week of January. And here we are. Our fourth temporary home.

Is everything OK now? Well, the place is crammed with the owner’s belongings so we are living from cases and bags. We scattered our things around and Krish is part way through his usual cleaning and disinfecting frenzy. We will need to start thinking ahead to our next move in another four or five weeks and we still don’t know where that will be. Can we stick it out in Toronto, can we return to the UK. If so, where?

Our street in Parkdale. Winter has set in

The fourth temporary home will do for now. We are OK. Except for the bedbugs… Talking about them makes me itch so I won’t but…damn!

You can consider all of that. I feel too old to do this, certainly too tired and disheartened. I feel the years ahead are limited in more ways than one. I feel this pull and need for home again very strongly. So I keep coming back to the question – what is, where is home?

I’ll confess to daydreaming. In my daydream I am not somewhere new. I am sitting on the couch in Hackney and my TV is over there, my window is over there, all the artwork is on the wall, the sun is coming through the leaves of that wonderful tree and through the tissue paper tree on the window. Outside people are walking, traffic is passing, daily life goes on. But now it’s going on without me. I try to remember that I was lucky to have had it and that losing it means I had it in the first place. I philosophise and I rationalise, but I am also angry and heartbroken. Can I reconcile this? I have to.

Winter is hard. We tend to forget but it’s out there so it becomes top of mind very quickly

Our mutual love of food has helped us. Toronto is a wonderful cultural mix of people and customs. I want to blog about the food, but for now I’ll just add a cheerful note. Grocery shopping is horrible – more about that in time – but going to restaurants is fun and worthwhile, almost always. We’ve had good meals out and good meals in, helped along by that multiculture. I don’t want all our bright spots to be fattening but for now I’ll take it.

There’s so much else to say. As far as writing goes, I’ll talk about Bloordale, and I’ll talk about Parkdale, where we are now. I’ll talk about our explorations here. I’ll do all that. I want to minimise the misery but I also want to speak the truth. And with any luck, it won’t be too difficult or boring to write or to read.

29th January 20231st February 2023

Gaia – “My Earth” exhibit and a flying visit to Borough Market

Friday, October 14, 2022

October 14 is our anniversary. We usually go somewhere to eat, but I find unless we’ve booked it, it often doesn’t happen. We did make an attempt though, looking for a roast or even just a cream tea somewhere.

We were well into our clearing out and packing days during our anniversary week. I’d say that we wouldn’t ordinarily choose to go to London Bridge for such an occasion but I’d booked a couple of months earlier to go see the Gaia My Earth exhibit at Southwark Cathedral. The cathedral is somewhere that we’ve always loved and the place Krish had met our close friend Emma and her husband many years earlier.

Anyway, I’d been wanting to see the Gaia and London Bridge and the cathedral ticked a bunch of boxes so we were going.

Looking down on Southwark cathedral from London Bridge

There’s no way to avoid the crammed passage of eating places bordering Borough Market when you climb down from the bridge

The cathedral is at the edge of the market and there was the usual well-organised entry path. No one asked to look at our tickets so in we went.

Then as you clear the entrance, there floats Gaia.

Gaia was created by UK artist Luke Jerram. It’s a suspended, revolving seven metre diameter model of earth. The artwork has been touring around the world for some time. In Greek Mythology Gaia is the personification of the Earth

There’s also audio – music and voices, including many who are at once awed and fearful of our earth and its future. The model wants to create more respect and responsibility for each other and our planet.

As large as it is, this Earth is “1.8 million times smaller than the real Earth with each centimetre of the internally lit sculpture describing 18km of the Earth’s surface. By standing 211m away from the artwork, the public will be able to see the Earth as it appears from the moon.”.

The atmosphere in the cathedral was hushed. People stood and watched it, some walking around to view it from all sides. At one point a group of school children were escorted in and each one gasped at seeing it for the first time because, yes, it’s very impressive. The backdrop of the cathedral was quite lovely. I’d actually like to have seen it in dimmer light.

The cathedral has some great artefacts scattered about, items that have been found and kept from its earlier days. Originally called St Mary Overie, then St Saviours, there’s been a church here since the early 12th century, but over the years it has been added to and restored. It became a cathedral in 1905. Since Shakespeare lived in Southwark, he also has a memorial here – a statue and stained glass window – so many visitors think he is buried here. He isn’t but his brother Edmund who died in 1607 at the age of 27 is. Each year on Williams’s birthday there’s a memorial celebration here in the cathedral. I’ve never managed to be there for it.

When I came to London in 2002, I’d often go to Borough Market. I loved walking along from St Pauls, over the Millennium Bridge and eastwards from the Tate Gallery – my favourite part was between the Globe Theatre and London Bridge so took in all of the market. Over the years the market has become busier and more trendy, with more and more cooked food stalls popping up. This is true of most markets but it changes the ambience and attracts more crowds of young people. It’s still fun to go there when it’s not so crowded and I tend to stick to the shops in the surrounding streets, like Neals Yard Dairy. I really do try to stay away during lunch hours and weekends.

The very modern Shard presides over the very old market

It was one of those days when nothing appealed in the way of food. We checked out some menus and turned away. We looked at the menu for Roast, inside the market, but again turned away. I grabbed a sausage roll for the bus home and I no longer remember what we ate that night but I think someone still owes me an anniversary dinner!

25th January 202327th January 2023

Things I needed to do – Liberty and the Elizabeth Line

Monday, 24 October, 2023

It was almost crazy to think about doing anything during the last week in London. We were absolutely snowed under and stressed out with everything we needed to do, but we had promised each other that we would try to get away from all the work once or twice a week, even if just for an hour or two.

When Krish asked me what things I needed to do before leaving, I thought first about Liberty. And then I thought about the new Elizabeth underground line which had just opened. I didn’t want to leave without seeing it.

It’s just two stops from Liverpool Street to Tottenham Court Road, the closest station to Liberty. The Bond Street station would have worked, but it hadn’t opened yet. With more time I’d have travelled to Paddington.

The Elizabeth line opened for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. I was excited to see it and hadn’t wanted to go in the first week or so when everyone else would be flocking to it. Liverpool Street had a separate entrance for the line on Old Broad Street and we’d walked past and photographed it many times when it was being built so it was easy enough to find.

Leaving Liverpool Street by the Broadgate exit and heading towards the Elizabeth Line entrance

The corridors are long once you’ve gone through the turnstiles. I was wishing for a moving walkway

The platform was like the Jubilee Line and we thought of Torino, which has a similar system with gates lining the platform instead of an open track

The carriage seats are large and clean and felt more comfortable than on other lines. The colours are grey and purple

Once out of the station we made our way through Soho towards Carnaby Street. We were feeling nostalgic and happy to be out. The sky was a beautiful blue that day and lifted our spirits as we walked along.

Soho has been weird in the last several years. Somehow, despite the money that must have poured into the area, it’s become a little sadder and more rundown for a while. There’s a bunch of construction – the roads, some buildings – and I wonder if I will ever see it finished. The rundownness is part of its charm of course, and it’s filled with history and memories, and so I still love it and its ability to get me a bit lost no matter how many times I’ve been there. That day we were just weaving our way through past street art, chaotic popculture shopfronts and Berwick Street Market with little time to spare on our way to Liberty.

Liberty, a London luxury, is a sharp contrast to the often shabby back streets of Soho. But it also backs onto Carnaby Street and, along with the rest of the world, in 1960s London I loved any excuse to at least window shop there. Carnaby Street isn’t the untidy jumble of independent shops it used to be. Now it’s full of midrange franchises with only a touch of the bohemian and bizarre. It is a passage that feels transitional, merging beatnik Soho gently into Regent Street splendour.

The back door of Liberty on Carnaby Street

Liberty is a department store in central London off Regent Street, the West End. It’s iconic and beautiful – a faux Tudor style building. When I was a teenager and able to travel into town on my own, Liberty was top of my list at Christmas time. I’d head for the basement. Down there you could find magical, gorgeous stationery and cards and wrapping paper. On the ground floor, which is overlooked by mahogany balconies each one leading to small rooms of goods, I’d buy small things but never any of the richly coloured and patterned silks. I could never afford those. Once I bought two pairs of small silver scissors and some peg dolls. Lovely things. When a friend of mine visited London and brought back a small silk Liberty print scarf for me, I gasped. I still treasure it. When my brother’s mother in law was downsizing and parting with many of her scarves, he asked me if I wanted any. ‘Anything Liberty,’ I said, without hesitation.

From the front of Liberty you can already guess you are in for something a little different. When I was younger I was fooled by its Tudor look, thinking it very old and historic. In fact, it’s about 100 years old, built in 1922. You can read about how it came to be built on the store page. Just a teaser so you can understand the abundance of wood and why it has a much older air: “. In 1922, the builders Messrs Higgs & Hill were given a lump sum of £198,000 to construct it, which they did from the timbers of two ancient ‘three-decker’ battle ships.”

Every time I go through the lobby, which reminds me of a fine hotel and often has a florist in place, it just about takes my breath away. The polished mahogany trim, balconies, and staircases throw off an air of luxury and indulgence.

There are lifts (or just one?) leading upstairs but I like walking up the stairs. It feels like I am inside a country manor but, now I know the history, a large ship or ocean liner. The upper floors have rooms leading off from the balcony, each small and housing small but lavish collections of things. That day I covered just one small section so that I could peek inside, check out the freestanding racks of designer clothing – I only once looked at the price tags and…never again – and take a photo or two looking down to the main floor.

We set off again, through the arch and over to Regent Street, down to Piccadilly Circus, bus to Tottenham Court Road and back to Liverpool Street on the Elizabeth line.

And home. When we arrived at Hackney Downs from Liverpool Street (eight minutes away) I thought, this could be the last time I’m on this platform, so I stood a minute. And it was…for this time.

I’m grateful now that I chose Liberty for ‘my last look.’ While the west end used to delight me, a special treat, it hasn’t factored into my list of things to do in London for years. Yet Liberty lingers, and I will never tire of it.

(Afterthought – I’m on catch-up here. I’ve skipped editing duties. The photos are sometimes overexposed, sometimes in too much shadow, and some are my usual slanted view (I lean). My habit is to ‘point, click, and pray.’ It suits my lopsided stance and limited ability to stand, balance, or wait around generally. The important thing is to capture the moment as it is, no excuses. Could you tell? If there are duplicates, let me know.)

22nd January 2023

How I ended up in Toronto

Thursday, 15 December, 2022

Once again I find myself having written dozens of blogs all in my own head. I can hardly believe that I’m sitting here actually typing…but I am. I had to check what I wrote in my last blog and at that time I was aware that I’d have to move but had no clue it would be such a monumental one.

My plan is to just keep blogging and I may skip around a bit while doing so. I don’t know. If I’d blogged all the way through this experience it would either have been therapeutic or mindblowingly depressing/confusing/traumatic – to me at least. What I envision is filling in events throughout rather than hitting anyone with too much pouring out of misery!

Somehow in most of crisis times I’ve not been able to write a thing. I find that intriguing. I’m a big believer in writing things down during difficult moments or times, but somehow during every major crisis of my life, I have become numb and unable to do this. So at least I can write about things after the fact and shorten the timeline enough to make it bearable.

Looking for a place in Hackney was tough. So many bad looking places, so many that were above our budget. I applied for some anyway but heard nothing back. Sometimes I felt I was close to seeing a place but then the trail went cold and I can only assume they were somehow snapped up directly. We did manage to see one but it wasn’t for us – it had a single counter open plan kitchen and was above a pub, which would have made it noisy.

We finally got an interview at another place. We played our hand when we saw it was quite nice compared to others. To avoid a long story, it became a nightmare of an application. We got the place (in theory) but the demands were overwhelming. We needed to bid over the stated price, we needed to pay a whole year’s rent, we needed to accept a lot of the current furniture, we had to jump through many hoops to satisfy the landlord’s wishes. It got more and more crazy and we couldn’t understand why, after paying so much more than the advertised price (and the amount we were comfortable paying) and promising a whole year’s rent, we were badgered for every sort of check possible.

In the end, we’d had enough. We had had thoughts of this being our last year in Hackney after which we would return to Toronto so I could be closer to Robin. All of these hoops for a year in a place we couldn’t really afford and didn’t love – it just didn’t feel worth it. So we made a decision to move our Toronto journey up a year.

For the next couple of months (or was it less) things couldn’t have been more difficult. Arranging shipping, packing for the day everything would leave, listing things for donation and sale, fielding the potential buyers, sending things off to new homes, taking things away to people by ourselves, all the admin work… Every day felt worse than the last, our stress level was crazy. What had seemed like a good decision suddenly felt like it was killing us. Krish questioned our sanity in returning to Toronto. Every day he was reading about all the reasons not to. I tried to buoy him while all the while questioning it too. I felt that one of us needed to stay resolute somehow and I seem to be better at that than he is. He’s the person who I say will have a one word epitaph – ‘OR‘.

We were up against a tight deadline – we had to leave our place, we had booked our plane ticket, our shipment date was looming. But finally, our stuff was shipped off. Our furniture and the belongings we didn’t need to hold onto were disappearing day by day. It felt good to know we weren’t going to be stuck with stuff but it also felt bad to know our Hackney life was dwindling.

We thought we could get out a bit to see the things we knew we’d miss but every time we did find a couple of hours to do it, it was mostly sadness I felt – a need to be out but at the same time a need to get back to the safety and comfort of home. I want to blog about these experiences and I hope I will – if I do, I’ll be skipping about in time. I’ll cross my fingers.

I may or may not blog about the agonies of the physical move, or I may allude to it here and there, but I do have photos…

Gathering things we definitely don’t need to hang on to

We decided that our red wall unit was the only thing we would keep from our furniture. And so began the laborious and inevitably nostalgic part of our packing

Our living room and kitchen became a war zone slash obstacle course for about a month. Sorting took forever – what to pack, what to give away, what to try to sell. We chose to ship our belongings and got our ‘plan’ in place – a piece of plastic that outlined the dimensions of our container. Krish planned and planned and then planned again, calculating over and over every day. His Tetris expert status was going to come in very handy, but the headache…

The daily shuffle of stuff. And Krish calculating, packing, taping…it went on for days and days and…

And then one day, the van arrived to pick it all up. Krish had staged it carefully and carried it downstairs to go out. The boxes began to leave our hallway, one by one, until they filled the container box. And then at the very end, there had been a half centimetre miscalculation and one slim box had to be sacrificed and brought back in to reconsider. (We unframed several pictures and mum’s needlepoint – the only heartbreak since it had been custom-framed and looked amazing – and mentally tagged them for carry-on baggage.

It was done. All ready for its ocean voyage. The driver was justifiably full of praise for how it all fit together. Tetris expert indeed!

When everything was gone, goods sold, stuff donated, friends happily (we hoped) taking leftover food and toiletries and bits and pieces of furniture, we were without a bed.

We slept two nights in the nearby KIP hotel. I liked that little black and white room over by the Narrow Way. Then we went back, finished our packing and cleaned up. The rooms were bare at last. We drank champagne and waited for the cab to take us to Gatwick for our final night in (sort of) London.

Our cases sitting in an empty flat. We had only the floor to sit on. It had been backbreaking work. But we were done.

The hotel room at Gatwick – we spent hours and hours working on our shipment forms for customs. It’s a miracle we didn’t kill each other really

We don’t like flying. We’d carefully chosen the cheapest day to get a premium economy on Air Transat. Such a good choice. We were comfortable, well taken of, fed and fed and served as much champagne as we could stand (that’s not much for me…) and there was very little turbulence. Krish rightly felt thoroughly spoiled right up till we landed.

Eventually I’ll have the time and energy to blog about our time here. I will at least catch up for now. It hasn’t been easy. In fact, it’s been a continuation of the nightmare that started in the UK. We’re going through a patch of calm at the moment and grateful for it. We miss Hackney and London very much, but most of all we miss our life which seems to have been lost, at least for now. Our only goal is to find it again no matter where we are.

Stick with me and see what happens. Just don’t get motion sick as I jump around in my timeline for the next little while.

12th August 2022

Catching up and matchstick girls – Bryant and May

Wednesday, 10 August, 2022

My friend Tari helps me with this blog. She has all the tech know-how I don’t. Thanks, Tari. The other day she messaged me, By the way, you had 279 unique visitors to your blog in July. What? If you are one of them, say hello in the comments. I have no idea who you are, where you live (does Tari?) but I’d be richer knowing. I also hope you like what you’re reading and, if not, let me know what I can do better. Blah blah.

We are looking for somewhere to live. I love moving – well, most of it. The part where you’re looking, though – this part – is horrendous, and right now so disheartening. Rents are high, places are often dire, and competition is stiff. Yet it has to happen. I worry all the time about where, when, and even if. As time goes by the what becomes less important, and yet it doesn’t. I know, no matter how desperate I may get, I can’t resign myself to some of the places I’ve seen that are on offer right now. Part of this is because…Hackney. It’s an area that’s being gentrified – everywhere you look there are scaffolds that tell you that someone else is gutting or improving their living spaces. It’s a double-edged sword. While places are improving, rents are screeching higher, and what passes for an open plan living room is really only a medium sized kitchen with a couch, coffee table and television thrown in for good measure. Couches are backed against ovens, no division, and you can only pray for enough counter space to actually prepare a meal. For a couple of foodies and spontaneous chefs like us, it’s not supportable. Where will we land? Stay tuned.

With the prospect of a move ahead, we’ve been determined to do a few things, even if we stayed local. This includes some restaurant visits. I’m getting lazy about reviews. I have a list of places I want to visit and revisit but the Bryant and May Factory (who manufactured matches, or lucifers as some of their publicity reads, in Bow from 1861 to 1979 when it moved to Liverpool) has been on my list for a very long time.

I’d read about the factory and the Matchgirls Strike several years ago. Bear in mind that this factory and the area is well known to me. It sits somewhere between my paternal grandmother, Sophie’s (and therefore my dad’s and my own childhood) home and my maternal grandmother, Charlotte/Lottie’s (and therefore my mum’s childhood) home. Both of these houses were pulled down many years ago now. The factory is still there.

I can’t really remember particularly noticing it when I was a child. I did, of course, but thought nothing of it. Just another factory, even if a massive one. It’s good to see it again as an adult – through older and more appreciative eyes. But what came first was the matchstick girls’ story. I’ll tell it in short form.

From the mid 1850s this was London’s largest factory, making candles, crinolines and rope. William Bryant and Francis May bought it in 1861 when it was in disrepair. In their match factory the workforce, mostly Irish women and girls, worked fourteen-hour days at poor pay and faced excessive fines for things such as going to the toilet without permission. They also faced a far more serious situation. The white phosphorous that the sticks were dipped in caused ‘phossy jaw.’ This was necrosis that destroyed the jaw, leading to other medical problems.

In the summer of 1888, middle-class activist Annie Besant and her friend Herbert Burrows got involved and exposed the factory conditions in their weekly paper. Management weren’t happy and tried to get their workforce to sign a paper saying it was untrue. They refused and one worker was fired, leading to the now-famous strike. 1,400 women and girls refused to work by the end of the first day. Management quickly said that they would take the fired woman back but the damage was done and the women began to demand more, including the withdrawal of the fining policy. Within a short while the whole factory had stopped work and a deputation of women went to see Annie Besant to ask her to help. She apparently advised them not to strike, but the women were determined and took their plight to parliament. Fearful of the publicity, management agreed to concessions, including a fairer grievance procedure and that meals would be taken away from where they could be contaminated by the dangerous phosphorus . The women’s actions led to the establishment of the first British trade union for women. Many feel that it was Annie Besant who was responsible for the success of this campaign, but she was rather the conduit through which these very brave women were able to get their voices and needs heard. They would have had very little power in their day. The Strike Committee: Mrs Mary Naulls, Mrs Mary Cummings, Sarah Chapman, Alice Francis, Kate Sclater, Mary Driscoll, Jane Wakeling, Eliza Martin…

You might enjoy the Matchgirls Memorial site, which includes a short video about the strike by a young American who was captured by the story and stories about the committee members from their descendents.

It wasn’t until 1901, after the Salvation Army opened its own match factory nearby using less toxic red phosphorus and paying better wages, that Bryant and May stopped using white phosphorous.

Some of the first welfare institutions in Britain for industrial workers began on this site and the factory finally closed in 1979, when it still employed 275 people. At its height more than 3,000 women and girls worked here. In 1988 the site was redeveloped, one of east London’s first urban renewal projects. It’s now a gated community of apartments. Most of them are in the former factory and office buildings dating from 1874. The beautiful Victorian cottages near the entrance were originally homes for the company directors. There are now modern buildings inside the gates. All of the buildings have American names: Arlington, Manhattan, Staten…

We were walking down to the back of the factory. The flats behind us were called Matchsticks Apartments

Colourful — I was struck by how modern and colourful this street was – we are heading towards the A12

Clayhall Tea House plaque — “On the front wall of 50 Blondin Street. In the 18th century, Londoners wanting to go for a jaunt into the country, often used to visit this tea house, which was situated to the east of the plaque. Some time before this, Samuel Pepys described in his diary how he visited Bow and had eaten a memorable dish of cherries and cream here.” (Into the country? Hard to imagine now.)

A12 — Who knows how many homes were destroyed to create this motorway? At first there were trees shielding against the sight and noise of it, then just a metal fence…

First glimpses — I had my first glimpses through the gate at the back, then there was a delivery area. Not much of a clue at this point what the whole would look like

Boundary moved plaque — It’s not clear why the boundary was moved at the back. There was a nice plaque that explained the strange ‘platform’ or curb that seemed without purpose. In this area all the lampposts were made to look like gaslights

It was a hot day, hotter than expected. We walked pretty slowly around from the back towards the side of the factory boundary. First we had to go under the railway bridge. It wasn’t very pretty. Underneath, the area was fenced off with signs of construction and new lampposts stacked up ready to be installed. I wondered if there’d be anything else there. Once you got past it and headed up towards the factory site, there were houses that must have been old but I’d never seen them before. They were completely out of old Bow character.

We were on Wrexham Road. The factory was to my right but you couldn’t see anything from this street. We walked up until we got to a low wall. From here I could see one turret from the original building, but also along the wall, some stone plaques. The wall seems to be much newer than the plaques.

I felt pretty excited to see the factory on Fairfield Road, but first we passed Bow Garage. It’s a huge hangar for London transport buses and, since it was daytime, there weren’t too many buses parked in there.

Houses opposite the garage — To understand this, you have to know that I grew up in a slum area in a ‘two up, two down’ (although it was actually more than two) terraced house where the door opened directly to the street. As a child I thought these houses were for rich people…

Finally, after going under the railway arch again, the red brick wall and buildings were in full sight. For more photos, you have to click More. Continue reading “Catching up and matchstick girls – Bryant and May”