You somehow are
every step on fallen leaf
each rumbling car
and crosswalk
every corner pub
coffeeshop bench
and football ground at dusk
the sound of approaching trains
and unplayed gigs.
Every colour of London is you.
The Fifth of November
Category: London
remember, remember
red dust glimmer
night frosted in smoke and
november sulfur
crackle, pop over the
east london line
fingers frigid
heart burning
over old coals
so here we are again, playing with fire
winter solstice, greenwich park
rain. the kind that feels like it will never let up, except it does and then starts again in another bucketing shower that sounds like someone put their thumb over the end of the garden hose and pointed it at at the roof. it’s been raining, mostly, since i arrived back from the desert a week ago – a fitting gush of englishness to counter-end a short new mexico stint, where every day was lizard-dry skin and ice-blue skies.
the shortest day of the longest year of the decade, and waking alone in a welcome sadness – polishing off bits of work, then nothing to do. christmas looms.
the rain is in fits and starts. sometimes it really gushes for awhile; a pool forms at my door and – oh those nights spent in the mudhouse last week remind me how possible a leak could be, but one does not spring forth and i marvel still at a roof which holds sway against this kind of downpour.
anyway, the rain is in fits and starts. in one of the starts, which i guess is when it’s not raining, i toss on a pair of gola trainers (remarkable shoes in water – i’ll always own a pair), an olive-green scarf and a corduroy coat and make for greenwich, not really aware of what is taking me there.
a pass through waterstones on greenwich church street yields a haul of books on nordic myth, darkness and the history of mysticism entirely appropriate for the winter solstice, which is lately my favourite day of the year.
it’s only just past one but the air is darkening like a dying candle – big grey clouds tell the weak, faraway sun where to go, and the wet, shiny street is full of people carrying overloaded shopping bags and unhinged umbrellas, rushing to get into the pub before another downpour.
i’m going uphill, into greenwich park, where a sandwich board reminds tourists the park closes at 6pm, though whole crowds are already descending the path from the observatory now under the dimming sky, as the sun inches toward 2pm. it will properly set at 3:53 today.
i pause to let the lingering feverish sweat of a recent cold level off next to the meridian line at the top of the hill, under the statue of general james wolfe. an odd icon here, i always thought. the 1930s gift of the canadians to commemorate wolfe’s victory against the french at quebec stands a sentinel overlooking the park, the stately royal naval college and all a moment from the home of time, navigation, astronomy, the grave of edmund halley. weird.
rain picks up. the view is immense – visitors here reap, after a little steep climb, an expanse of river thames and skyscraper, but i turn my back on all that and walk deeper into the park, bracing my umbrella up against another sideways rain starting to fall fast out of pink and orange cloudburst signalling the lingering rays of this abbreviated day.
it doesn’t last long. the rain. i cut across a small patch of grass, past a man walking a whippet in a puffy coat (the dog not the man) and onto a walkway away from tourists and baby buggies with their plastic partitions pulled down against the rain, which has already stopped again.
clouds move fast. the sun cuts in a slice of yellow across a path leading to the park’s west exit, in the direction of the last light. it’s lined with ancient, gnarled, horny oak trees, whose black bulbous trunks rise to block the salmon sky into a mosaic of branches that resemble witches fingers.
i walk slow. let my umbrella drag a little on the ground. take pictures of piles of wet leaves and loiter while a couple passes loudly discussing what wine to buy at marks & spencer for a christmas party tomorrow. then the park gate is before me, and afterwards a small laneway where puddles reflect the pink sky.
i duck down wellington grove and continue west, chasing the thin last sunlight through an unmarked footpath that leads steeply toward the georgian mansions on hyde vale, decorated for the season in pine wreaths and already lit for the evening by the warm amber glow of victorian porch lights.
this is how winter night falls on a solstice afternoon.
the mouse
it was after work some weeks ago, and i’d skipped out at 4.45pm on friday with plans to meet my cousin and her daughter for a special dinner at the oxo tower. they were visiting from california, and it is a rare treat when a member of my family is both wonderful and kindred enough to warrant meeting up with…and also passing through london.
i wandered out of work into a blaze of april sunshine – a treat of a warm, dry day at this time of year – sun peeking through a few fast-moving clouds interrupting bright blue sky. with an hour until i was meant to meet them for our sitting, i thought about a gin and tonic, and given i was due to fly to asia for five weeks in just under 24 hours, a little celebratory sunshine tipple seemed just the thing.
i crossed blackfriars road at the busy southwark street crossing, battling the brisk wind that constantly blows down then up again from the huge glass building where i work. and then the raft of militant cyclists pouring up and down the cycle lane. i skipped past the mad hatter (the only victorian hotel pub within striking distance still standing in the midst of a glass uprising) and a mini-waitrose supermarket and found myself on marigold alley: a small, brick-lane pedestrian alley that connects upper ground to the thames path.
there was a dark-haired man wearing a messenger satchel slung over one shoulder, stopped just ahead, peering at the ground, and below him, a small creature barely moving. approaching, it became clear this was an injured rodent – a tiny field mouse with a broken leg.
the tiny mouse, which may have been a baby – note to self: brush up on murine anatomy and life cycle – was attempting to crawl helplessly across a small patch of the brick. above, yet another modern glass office building and in front a sliver of ‘garden’ consisting in the main of pebbles intersown with a handful of tufty sweeps of urban feathergrass.
the gentleman says he thinks the mouse’s leg might be broken, but it seems ok if not for being on the hot bricks. maybe if we could get it into the landscaped bit, it would fare better.
i don’t want to touch him though, the man says gently, with a tinge of guilt.
no, maybe for the best not to handle him, i agree.
simultaneously, and without speaking, the man begins rummaging in his messenger bag and i flick through the assortment of books, headphones, papers and printed travel documents in my canvas work tote, finding a couple papers i deem unnecessary in comparison to the mouse’s life.
here, it’s a script but it should work. the man points a messy staple of papers at me and i wonder if he must be an actor on his way to a reading at the national theatre or somewhere in soho. maybe, like me, he’d taken a detour to walk along the riverside for a few glorious minutes in the london sun, and here we’d found ourselves, caring for a despised animal.
we work in tandem, putting the mess of script and papers down in front of the frightened creature, trying to delicately coax it onto its life raft. finally, the mouse aboard, we hover in a silently coordinated dance, each holding a ream of papers, the mouse at the centre, walking quickly but unmovingly to the strip of landscaped pebble garden.
we gently lay the mouse down in the shade of the glass high-rise and breathe a paired sigh of some kind of relief. maybe it would be ok. then we stand there awkwardly for a couple of minutes, watching the mouse inhale, nose around and then and bobble carefully along the rockery.
well, hopefully he’ll be alright, i say and i am really hopeful.
yeah….well…thanks. sorry, and…thanks for your help, he says, pushing the mouse script back into his satchel.
it was nice being a saviour with you.
on margate sands
On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken finger-nails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.
la la
To Carthage then I came
there is a victorian pavilion in margate where ts eliot wrote the third section of his most famous poem, ‘the waste land’. it’s the sort of poem that seems to draw people to it, although it is also among the most complex and least understandable poems ever written. i was certainly taken in by it when i first read it during a high school british lit class i won’t say how many decades ago and have been trying to understand it since. i mostly still don’t.
my time in london has got me closer, for much of ‘the waste land’ is about life in london. like me, ts was a yank in london – a fact many seem not to realise about him – and lived long in this city; long enough to have absorbed the futile shuffle of city workers across blustering london bridge every morning and how, somehow, there is still beauty in that.
london also drove ts mad, as it will do any person who lives here long enough. he captures the sort of love-hate that every londoner feels at some point, almost alluringly referring to the city’s ‘violet hour’ just before vitriolic adjectives about ‘the human engine’ and the river thames ‘spewing’ oil and tar and drifting logs. like most londoners, ts loved this city, and yet he sometimes felt it was killing his soul.
margate is a seaside town on the southeast coast of england in kent, which had its heyday during the victorian era just before the turn of the 20th century. queen victoria thought open-air bathing and sea-salty oxygen were good for the health (which…obviously). until rather recently, margate was on a mostly downhill trajectory since that time.
ts went to margate in 1921 to recover from a ‘nervous breakdown’; as far as i can tell, this just means he just went a bit mad for awhile, and haven’t we all. when ts arrived there, it likely would’ve still been busy with cafe-goers, electric trams and swimmers polka-dotting its crescent beach. over the decades, these were replaced by gaming arcades, greggs and wetherspoons.
a friend of mine – a self-described london dilettante and the sort of person who can be relied upon to think up these kinds of odd and wonderful excursions – suggested a day out in margate recently, and we happily obliged, thinking first of the sea air and rumours of a revival of pubs, particularly the ‘micro’ variety, selling good ale and nothing else. yes please.
it wasn’t until i started reading about margate that i discovered the ts connection, in particular, the seaside pavilion where he sat writing ‘the fire sermon’ (drawing on saint augustine at some length) and looking at the sea. i expected to feel something special here, or at least see what ts saw when he penned such mighty and difficult-to-comprehend language.
the sun was dropping to the west and we were almost to running late for our train back to london when we paused at the pavilion, after a day on the ales following a rather random group of morris dancers around margate’s excellent selection of small pubs. the sky was an ethereal grey-blue of the sort where the colour is washed out by a brilliant, dusky almost-evening light. the sea was steely and shimmering, but calm.
inside, the pavilion has a bunch of fold-down, cinema-style seats facing the water, where i imagine ts must’ve sat during his long days recovering and writing. but that day, in one corner, stacks of stained cardboard boxes, used tesco bags, grubby blankets and empty bottles surrounded a small group of homeless people holding cans of cider and looking menacingly at anyone daring near their makeshift residence.
what of that. i am not sure. the pavilion was designated a grade II listed building by english heritage in 2009. because of that it still stands, and it is indeed magnificent with wide views out over the north sea. add a high salt breeze and it seems almost anyone would be penning poetry under its latticed gables. too, it would be easy to compare the state of things there now to ts’s uneasy state of mind as he embarked on writing ‘the waste land’s’ tumultuous part III – downtrodden and eroded by too many days in london (a condition most londoners will still report with semi-regularity today). but even that metaphor seems too forthcoming for such a work as ‘the waste land’.
what i can say is go to margate. drink some ales. if you are unafraid of the cold, have a swim.
look at the sea from ts’s vantage, and you will feel something – possibly inexplicable. i did.
a walk to the chislehurst caves
in an effort to get my blogging chops back up (obviously, it’s been awhile), i want to talk about bill’s and my recent walk to the chislehurst caves. chislehurst is a leafy suburb of southeast london that is, incidentally, not all that far from where we live in hither green.
now, those of you who know me know two very important things about me: i love exploring my local area and i also love google maps. the latter possibly to a troubling, or at the very least obsessive, degree.
when we first moved to london, i spent hours looking at google maps trying to orient myself to the local area, see what was nearby (translation: find the pubs) and generally figure out what the place looked like. one thing kept popping up in my searches of google maps: the chislehurst caves. now, i love anything cavey or geological or eerie historical, so i immediately asked bill if we could go. he was rather less enthusiastic than i was about spending time in dank, dark caves.
after almost two years, i finally convinced him to go last weekend (a testament that nagging works), and we decided to combine it into what turned out to be a fairly long walk from hither green to chislehurst (some 9.5k). to be honest, we’ve done a lot of walking in london – especially around the southeast – and this was not one i’d be likely to repeat, as there was a dearth of green spaces and also pubs or cafes at which to stop along the way and rest our feet (i mean, what is a walk without pubs?).
but finally, we arrived to the caves in time for the last tour of the day at 4pm. our guide was a funny older chap (bill said he looked like a scout who never stopped being a scout) who kept using cockney slang (“dustbin lids” = children, “elephants” = drunk).
the chislehurst caves are actually a man-made series of tunnels and caves that were ancient mines and have since been used for all sorts of purposes, most notably as air raid shelters during the blitz on london in world war II. incredibly, at one time it’s estimated there were 15,000 people living full-time in the chislehurst caves – there was a hospital, a chapel, two canteens, numerous toilets and thousands of bunk beds down there.
the tour takes you through the tunnels and offers a glimpse into the caves’ history, with a special focus on their role as a bomb shelter. each pair or group is given an oil burning lamp, which adds to the spooky effect. our guide’s cheeky sense of humour gave a lift to some of the drier history (like when he took away the lamps and left us standing in total darkness and then banged a massive gong) and he was also full of ghost stories and local historical anecdotes, many of which (i can only imagine) he was personally privvy to.
the tour lasts about an hour (ours a bit longer, as it was the end of the day and Scout Guide was feeling particularly verbose) and traverses about a mile of tunnels. at £6, it’s a serious bargain considering the amount of history and geology you learn, not to mention the interesting anecdotes. this is a must for anyone with an interest in london history or anyone looking for a quirky day out of the city.
this promo video offers a good glimpse into what the tour is like:
the chislehurst caves
old hill
chislehurst
chislehurstcaves.co.uk
transport: regular trains from charing cross and london bridge to chislehurst railway station. the caves are a 5-minute walk.
things i want to tell londoners
as i roll into nearly a year of working full time in central london, i have come to understand – and in some cases loathe – my commute. actually, most of the time my commute works like a well oiled machine, but there are still aspects of it that baffle, confound and annoy the shit out of me.
don’t get me wrong. i am incredibly grateful to have the access to public transportation that i do. to have the chance to gripe about my daily tube journey. but still. sometimes londoners do some weird things.
some things i want to tell londoners:
-if you don’t have your oyster card or ticket ready, don’t stand in front of the gates and rifle through your bag to find it. that is just annoying as shit.
-that whole “but i just topped it up” bit doesn’t work on the underground staff. i think they have probably heard it before once or twice.
-your agenda/schedule/day/mustn’tmissit appointment is no more important or urgent or life-threatening than mine, or anyone else’s. and huffing at me about it won’t hurry me up.
-walking fast and loudly behind me also won’t hurry me up. nor will your clackity heels (that goes for you too, boys).
-and also speaking to the boys, there are some of you who have chosen to wear a “cologne” that could also double as oven cleaner. mosquitos won’t go within a 10-metre radius of you and everytime i sit down next to you on the tube, my eyes begin to water. i am pretty sure that your dried up sex lives will attest to the fact that this scent is not, does not and will not ever get you laid.
-get a pair of decent headphones and turn the sound down. showing the world in no uncertain terms that you like justin beiber or that chick with the $ in her name is not doing you any favours.
and finally…
-jogging is just never a good use for a saturday afternoon. go out and get some culture, for gawd’s sake.
photo by brownincs
on 2012 and things to come
i don’t often get sentimental about new year’s eve. i rarely, if ever, make resolutions. in our house, this night is more about hunkering down, having a nice glass of champagne and going to bed early, resting in the knowledge that tomorrow is just another day.
this year, however, things are a little different. yes, we are hunkering down for a homemade dinner and the compulsory glass (or three) of champers and an all-night movie fest.
but this year, i am in a reflective mood. i have been thinking a lot about the past 12 months and a lot about the 12 months to come. in january, i will be starting a new job with what is perhaps my dream company. the MOTHER SHIP, as it were, and since this change is also marking a new year, it’s easy to reflect on the past and future.
2012 was, in many ways, a year of financial health, for me. it was a year in which i transitioned from freelancing to full-time work and it was the first year in too many to count that i’ve actually not had to worry about money.
with it, though, came a creeping realisation that i was, in some ways, sacrificing my physical health (2011 was my year of kick-ass health) for my financial health. long hours, lack of a proper place to eat lunch (hence eating crap for lunch) and zero exercise have not been good to my body. it was a sacrifice i made very willingly, knowing that 2012 was my year of financial health.
i want 2013 to be my year of freedom. a year where i can have both financial and physical health. a year where i have the time to do things i love in addition to my work. things like updating this blog (the single post from 2012 can attest to how dry my writing life has been) and writing irishjaunt. a year to regain connections and rediscover my creativity, but this time, without sacrificing financial health.
2013 is going to be a year of travel. bill and i have already begun planning and dreaming the many city breaks we hope to take, which may or may not include galicia in northern spain, croatia, mexico and boston. we’ll see.
also, we are so happy in london, we’re staying. can you believe it? 18 months and counting in the same place. i think that’s a record.
finally, friends, i will leave you with this photo i snapped on grafton street in dublin over christmas. i want to be as inspired and in awe of the world and life as this little boy.
the photos in this post are a selection of my favourites that i snapped in 2012. you can see them all at my flickr photostream.
Megan Eaves 