I don't know why more people don't see old graveyards as valued destinations for a weekend's venture out into the world. Old graveyards are a place of life and history, much more than death - especially over here, where grave sites can stretch so far back in time and crowd over each other, and where many graveyards are also wildlife reserves.
Highgate Cemetery, East Cemetary
But you try to tell someone at work about your visit to the old graveyard over the weekend (Abney Park one week, and Highgate the next): "Yeah, a good weekend thanks, we went to this old cemetery." "... Did someone die?"
Abney ladybird
Yes. Many people died. That's the point of cemeteries. "No, we were just looking around." And then I have to try and explain in a maximum of two concise casual sentences while they politely try not to flinch, without sounding like a creepy graveyard loiterer (I'm not creepy) over-defending my predilection for graveyard loitering. They're beautiful I say, and there's so much history. What I mean is this: All old graveyards I have experienced have been beautiful. They have nice grounds, with trees and flowers and all manner of flora, which in turn house little creatures like birds and insects and, over here, grey squirrels. There is a balance between careful maintenance and letting nature run its course. I love ivy. I love the way it climbs and leaves its mark. Old graveyards are peaceful places and, especially in a big city, they provide a nice place to walk and dream, either in solitude or with a companion.
Highgate
The stones and tombs themselves are works of art, testimony to human skill and design, and testimony also to human emotion. These stones represent memories and histories and beliefs. People bothered. They tell the nearly universal human story of our desire to be remembered as individuals, and to remember. They can tell histories of families, and histories of places - what kind of people lived here? Who was the population? How did they choose to represent themselves once they were gone? And of course, there are the famous people, whose tombs often attract people. These small monuments become symbols of what that person did and represented to the world in their lifetime. And they are also liminal spaces (thanks Anth 101). This is part of the reason some people tend to avoid them - they're a space to help ritualise and protect us against the mysterious, dangerous transition from life into death. But I rather like liminal spaces. I don't feel tied down to being a thing in a liminal space outdoors. I feel like I can just drift and dream in between, let my thoughts shift about in the breeze, enjoy being outside and myself. There's no one else to worry about in such a liminal space, no expectations (real or imagined, from others or myself) and no clear end to time. Time goes on in a cemetery. Or I could just play them this song by The Smiths, which has some other good points in it:
So we go inside and we gravely read the stones All those people all those lives, where are they now? With the loves and hates and passions just like mine They were born and then they lived and then they died.
Many people, though, just can't get past the corpses-skeletons-dead people thing. "They just creep me out. I even shiver going past a graveyard on the bus!"
Abney
Cripes. As many zombie movies as you watch, and ghost stories you read, and vampire thriller romances you make up in your head, the dead are not going to come back to life. Probably. Still, there are also a lot of people who do stroll through cemeteries without necessarily having a person they knew to visit. Some of them are visiting history and figures - like Karl Marx, like George Elliot, like wonderful Douglas Adams, all in Highgate Cemetery that we visited on a beautiful sunny Saturday. Others are just enjoying art and architecture.
Abney chapel
In Abney Cemetery, Stoke Newington, which I believe we also visited on a sunny Saturday, there is a beautiful old chapel somewhere in there centre. It's now old and collapsing and out of use, but it was built originally as a non-denominational for anyone to hold a service for their departed. Today there is a big wide fence around it (covered with the anti-climb paint that covers so much in London) to stop people getting in and potentially being hit on the head by crumbling bricks. There is corrugated iron over some of the entrances, and most of the glass has come out of the windows. Bits of lead curl and twist uselessly from the old windows, and a vine is climbing all over it. But is is beautiful in its disrepair, as it would have been when it was first built.
Apparently these two cemeteries are part of the Magnificent Seven. There may be more dreaded sunny days to occupy.
Douglas Adam's grave, Highgate.
People have left pens to his memory.
Highgate
A birdhouse in Highgate
Abney chapel
Highgate
Fungus in Highgate
This white lion reminds me of Henson's Storyteller... Abney Park.
On Monday 13 we went to a fantastic concert in the gorgeous old church in St Pancras (St Pancras Old Church). Shel, a female alternative-folk-rock-pop band from Colarado, filled the small space with the most incredible sounds. But first, I ate rabbits.*
We accidentally had dinner at what I like to call a Hipster Cafrestaubar. I say accidentally, because I was actually trying to get to a different eating establishment but #GoogleLedMeAstray. (Is that hashtag a thing yet?) It did, however, lead us astray in a most delightful way.
In the churchyard. Not at Grain. We did not eat here.
We wandered around and through the crazed complex that is St Pancras Kings Cross station, picking our way around the back and across a bridge, paused at another of London's many water features spewing chlorine from the ground, then circled a large building before ending right back at the front of it before Grain Store.
Here is how Grain describes itself on the Google advertising panel on the right side of the page:
Spacious, industrial-chic restaurant with expanded kitchen and a creative, vegetable-based menu.
So yeah, hipster food. That's clear enough from the description, but what's not clear is that the food it serves is truly delicious - truly delicious - and is served sustainably. Although I admit sustainability isn't the primary thing I look for when I'm out eating, it is something I value and want to pay more attention to. And when you can get such fantastic food from a company that puts an effort it, it's definitely worthwhile. Now I'm going to tell you what I ate because it was an important meal for me.
We had bread and dukka for starters - perfect organic olive oil, the kind that's smooth when it goes down and doesn't burn the throat - with some grilled aubergine (one of my favourites). Michael had the flaked sea bass, tasty enough that I remembered the description and breed (yes, I am one of those who will sample all plates if given the chance). I had homemade rabbit sausage on a bed of delicious and varied peas and pulses, and they were two of the best sausages I've ever eaten. Rabbits, I have decided, are delicious. Then we had chocolate and beetroot brownie - a small, tantalising portion, only imperfect in that they should really have given us more.
Me wandering my winding way in St Pancras Old
Church grounds
We wandered our winding way around the station and up, to St Pancras Old Church. It had been a slightly overcast day, and it was twilight just after 7. The church itself is small, another example of a beautiful English brick church, and its grounds were wonderful. I suppose they weren't anything particularly special, although they were reasonably sized, but it felt beautiful to be walking in there, underneath large leafy trees whispering in the breeze. It is also the home to the Hardy Tree, a large ash with old rescued tomb stones cluttered around its base. In the 1860s the graveyard went under excavation as a railway terminus was built (something which happens often in the UK; the thousands of years' worth of carefully laid out dead have to make way for the transport and housing needs of the thousands of multiplying living). Thomas Hardy, an architect before he became better known as a writer, was working on the churchyard excavations and was determined to save some of the headstones. They were put around the ash, and there they stayed as the tree grew. Today the roots and the stones are entwined. They obviously mean something to the ash.
The Hardy Tree
On a literary note, it's probably also worth noting that Mary Wollstonecraft was buried in the Old Church yard, and her daughter Mary met and planned her elopement with Percy Bysshe Shelley. Then Mary (the living one) wrote Frankenstein. There was a figure sitting near the Hardy Tree, on a bench seat, in a dark waistcoat and a black hat, smoking a pipe with hair falling over her face. That figure can sing and play music like a charm. Shel are a band of four sisters from Colarado. Their name is an acronym of all their names, and their music is bright and folky and quirky and sometimes a little dark. It's really my kind of thing. They use a range of different instruments, fiddle, mandolin, guitar, keyboard, beat-box, and all four of their voices at perfect times. I'm not very good at describing music styles, so I recommend you look them up to find out more about genre and definitions.
Their performance was fantastic. The venue was small but completely filled (with hipsters - hipsters with things like waistcoats and hats and pipes) and it set the perfect tone. Shel had a great stage presence, building on each other and performing together fantastically. One of the best things about a live band is seeing how they work together, how they make the music come alive not just with their instruments but with each other. Shel do it well. There was also some great interaction with the audience - they clearly have a few fans and friends over here.
Highlights:
Their song Rooftop, which I hadn't heard before, and which was even more filled with sound and energy than their recorded version. In addition to the other instruments there was some impressive beat-boxing going on.
Fantastic cover of The Battle of Evermore. Led Zeppelin were a huge part of their childhood, and I think they do the original justice.
Lost at Sea, which they sneakily filmed a video for in Ireland...
Thanks to my brother, who let me know they were coming to play in London. It was a really great night night. And I managed to talk to two of the band, who were both really friendly and kind enough to write messages for him which I will post all the way to the other side of the world when I remember.
Some of you, reading my description and looking at the pictures and hearing about the audience may begin to have suspicions about me. Is it possible that I could be a hipster? Why do I mock hipsters so? Do I protest too much?
~ Fin ~
*Then weeks later I wrote about it, and finally posted it.
There's no way around it. Opera in English does not sound nearly as good as Opera in French, Italian, Russian, German, Spanish, or pretty much any other language.
Albert Herring, courtesy Planet Hugill, photo: Chris Christoudoulou
It's definitely Opera, but it takes some time to sink into it, to recognise it as a genuine Opera. Perhaps part of the problem is that you actually know what they're saying - or, at least, you know you should know what they're saying. Sometimes you can't, especially if you're me and have trouble understanding what people say in the first place (ooh, look at that hawk flying through the Black Forests deep in the recesses of my mind - sorry, what?) and then they start singing in a particularly high pitch that isn't always flattering to the English language. I went to two Operas in a row, so now I am an expert. On the Tuesday night I went to Albert Herring, one of Britten's Britain pieces, and executed rather nicely by students of the Royal College of Music. On Wednesday we went to Lakme as part of the Opera season at Holland Park, with perhaps more widely known performers, and sat beneath a large marque while the peacocks added their own drama to some of the scenes.
Lakme, courtesy this review. Photo: Robert Workman
Both have recognisable story lines. Lakme is the tale of an English man who falls in love with an Indian princess (of the rebel Indians), told by the French and portraying the English as obsessed with the honour of being a solider and slightly bewildered and brainwashed by the noisy charms of India. It is a star-crossed lovers story. Herring is the tale of the loss of innocence / awakening of a shy young man, after he is crowned May King (all the girls in the village are too skanky; Albert is the only one exhibiting the virtue necessary for the role of May Queen). Tales we all know well, with different variations. One thing I enjoy about Operas - or ballets, or any other similar performances that are difficult to watch on the telly but can be magical to watch in person - is the staging, set and costume. Herrings' was spectacular. In the centre of the stage was a city hall room, which turned for changes of set or movements in the story, exposing a wall, and then the other side of the set which was the shop in which our innocent, mummy's-boy Albert worked. All the colours were bright, perfectly setting the tone for a friendly, fun and comic opera. The set was used to fantastic effect, especially in the final acts when Albert has been crowned at an official ceremony and things become a little wonky (picture a drunken Vicar sneaking behind the curtains with his school teacher finance, moving out of shot while a leather-jacketed bad-boy type skulks his way past the hall, through the street, and stops by at the grocers - now perfectly center stage).
Dude, so glad he's not my dad. (Telegraph) Photo: Robert Workman
Lakme also had a beautiful set, though more spare and sober as befitted its more sombre tale. It was gorgeous shades of blue and grey and green, pale golden-browns, white for the English. It was smooth and clean, with an Oriental centrepiece that opened flower-like to reveal Lakme and other characters. It began with two long lengths of blue stretched smooth from the highest peaks of the petals. The costumes were likewise beautiful, in that same subtle and effective way. It complimented and set the tone. I found the Britten much easier to follow, and not so much because of the language (like I said, Sopranos in English...) but because - I think - of the acting. I was further from the stage in the Delibes, but I still don't know what happened at the end - did that Pom stab her dead lover's Dad, or did they embrace? Was he just melodramatically distressed about everything, or did he have a terrible case of nits? I also still struggle with the story lines of some of these operas, or old stories, where romantic attachments are crammed into a small period of time - to enhance the drama and intensity of the love perhaps, but for me, in this production at least, actions did not make sense. Put a piece of soap in front of that opera and sing it. But the singing - that was fantastic. The flower duet at the beginning, which is a very famous piece of music, was wonderful to listen to. It was better than this I give you here. There were some truly skilled and beautiful voices involved. And there was also a dancer who deserves note, winding and weaving her way around the stage in the performance of a goddess, standing en pointe perfectly, reaching for the sky.
Spot the vicar! (Planet Huggill) photo Chris Christoudoulou
In Herring the plot was clear (well, once I got used to listening to Opera in English) and it was funny. What made it funny, though, was the acting. Interactions between the characters, facial expressions at just the right time, made it hilarious. A ridiculous story like this can easily flop or be overdone, and this was cooked just right, and injected with just the right amount of sauciness. I particularly liked the singers who played Sid and Nancy, full of innuendo, Lady Billows and her bustling housekeeper Florence Pike, and the do-right Vicar with his curtain exit. All excellent voices. The whole show, though, was excellent and I found myself "LOLing," as you youngin's call it, at least eight and a half times. I enjoyed this performance very much. The vicar, Kieran Rayner, is also one of my good friends, but it didn't colour my perception. Every time I see him sing I judge him as harshly as I am able to judge (I am good at judging harshly) and he always comes out all right. Fantastic baritone. Excellent actor. Shame about the English.
In 1815 George IV, newly minted Prince Regent and lover of opulence, decadence and extravagance, commissioned the transformation of his modest Brighton villa to a lavish Oriental palace.
It is one of the most fantastical, extravagant buildings I have ever seen. It was like stepping into a fantasy. The outside is impressive enough, a large building with impressive domes and decorations that seem to have come from a Disney-India. The inside is even more wonderful. I use that in the old sense - wonder full, full of wonder.
All the colours are bright and fresh - Regency colours, and Oriental colours as perceived by the regency. The walls are painted with vines and birds and fruit, or in the pattern of bamboo, or in single shades gilded with gold. There is so much detail, and no detail is spared. Stepping into the banquet room, everything opens up - a giant dragon hangs above with a phoenix at every corner, ready to pour light down over the guests and banquet tables. There are painted panels of Asian people - detailed, beautiful, based on artwork imported from China, but all slightly Westernised. It is all the West's brightest daydreams of Oriental wealth and culture, an odd grab-bag of elements based on perceptions and ideals and imagination.
The kitchen is huge. Of course it is - George ate a lot, and often. Four huge stylisied palm tree pillars reach from floor to the high ceiling, and in between are large wooden tables for preparing the food. Around the edge is copper - all the copper vessels for preparation, cauldrons, pots, pans, a hundred jelly moulds in different shapes and sizes, each one perfect and shiny. I have never seen so much copper in my life. All the rooms are marvelous, but I was also quite take by the music room, from the hand-woven carpet made by modern volunteers helping with the building's restoration and preservation, to the wonderful chandelier and other lamps, each decorated with panels of stained glass showing different flowers, different moths, all designed individually but so carefully as to be impossible to imagine apart from each other. You cannot take photographs inside - quite understandably. But even I could, there is no way they could do justice to it - these images here only capture a fragment. It is stepping into a fantasy, full of dim light and bright colours and wonders.
George had moved to Brighton in the 1870s because it was becoming a fashionable seaside retreat (they were all the rage in Regency England) and because he was a vain gouty git and the fresh air and salt water would offer him many health benefits. George loved all the fine things in life - food, gaming, art, architecture, drinking, women, spending lots of money that he didn't really have. After persuading the House of Commons to not only clear his debts but raise his income - how, I am not sure, especially at this time he was merely Prince of Wales - he commissioned Henry Holland to transform his lodgings into a villa, which became known as the Marine Pavillion. It was a nice building. I have seen pictures of it. I would have been quite happy to have the large, beautifully designed Marine Pavillion. George was not. The villa could not house the many social events and entertainments he so enjoyed, and so John Nash was summoned to add minarets, pinnacles, domes, galleries, extensions, and exquisite interior design work. On the outside it looks Indian, on the inside for the most part Chinese with other Asian influences. The transformation took several years, and was really a rather impressive feat of architecture - Nash built a cast iron frame over the original building to support the new extravagances. This hadn't been done before.
You can see traces of this today, as they begin to restore the building. After George's death it stayed in Royal hands, but Queen Victoria did not like Brighton - the people were "very indiscreet and troublesome." It was bought by the city of Brighton, who began work to restore it. This was put on hold for a short period during the World War II, when it served as the most incredible war hospital ever for soliders of the Indian Army, and then restoration continued - and continues to this very day. So clearly I was fond of the Pavillion, but Brighton itself was not quite as I had expected. The British seaside retreat is not my idea of a seaside retreat. It's stony for a start - which isn't a problem for me, as I like stony beaches, but it's not very retreaty. There should be less of a slope, smaller stones, less of a feeling that pollution is lurking just under the surface. When I did sit on the stones my legs came up marked with black. I don't know if it was just the spot I was sitting on, but I didn't really want to go swimming in the water after that. I did test the temperature though, and it was chilly. There were a few braves souls out swimming in wetsuits, or on boards.
Brighton Pier was fascinating - a perpetual fair on stilts above the sea. It was built solely for the purpose of entertaining Victorians and has continued and kept up with the latest entertainments. There is a haunted house, a water ride, bumper cars, target practice games (all the prizes are cheaply, badly made Disney and Pixar characters - especially minions and Elsas). There are chips and donuts and pancakes and waffles and churros, hot dogs, burgers, and stands selling all kinds of shiny marvellous-for-a-moment junk. I found it rather exciting, just for the vibe of the place - I'm not wasting my money on stupid rides (instead I wasted it on a terrible lunch at the pub - word of warning, 2 fish and chips for £10 is not a good idea).
Wuv, twoo wuv. And the Pier in the background.
What is a good idea is reading in Queen's Park, under a tree on a hot day. Try John Scalzi. He's got some very catchy stories. There's a mansion out on the edge of Brighton, near the ocean's edge. You can see it from the Pier. I don't know who owns it, but I would like to go there. There's also an aquarium in Brighton - the oldest aquarium, legend tells, that is still up and running today. I want to go back to Brighton in winter, when the people are thinner on the ground, and have a look around. It appears to mostly be underneath the road. The English do like building there things into the ground.
It's David Gray sort of weather. David Gray is perfect for these days - hot, breeze blowing, walking along the canal with brown leaves scattered on the sidewalk even as the trees send out more and more green, parks and streets that feel familiar as the same time they are new. It's perfect for walking in the sun as a stranger. Not all his songs of course - there are a few that don't quite fit the mood. But songs like "Tidal Wave," "Real Love," "Tidal Wave," "From Here You Can Almost See the Sea," and my all-time favourite, "Please Forgive Me."
I listened to a lot of David Gray when I was at Uni - White Ladder, A Century Ends, A New Day at Midnight, Lost Songs. And White Ladder is of course still one of my favourite albums of all time. Some of it is quite strongly linked to a time/feeling/personal zeitgeist, but listening to it over here has a new flavour. I enjoy it. And perhaps it's my history with the music that adds to its appropriateness. So listen to David Gray - you know you want to - and look at some of my instagram pictures. Some of them are not high quality - I need a new phone. But that's the authentic joys of instagram, right?
On July 1, a Wednesday, it reached 37 'C. This is hot. The sun starts at 4.15am and doesn't leave til well after 9. We were sweating.
It sounds odd to English folk, but when I've woken up the last few mornings it's felt like those last few mornings before Christmas day. It's bright already, and hot, and the air is full of energy. It feels like summer before I ever left home, like the depths of summer holidays in Hawke's Bay (but when Dad had given us a pardon from helping out in the woolshed). It feels like anticipation and small, perfectly-formed adventures.
My new trees.
Outside are the tall trees planted at the edge of the little square gated garden, and they are so green and so leafy. Even the flowers are green and leafy, paler shades dripping with long golden-brown stamens that fall off in the breeze and scatter on the road and the paths and lawn in the garden. There are roses in the garden too, a whole variety all going through their cycles at different stages, from bud to blown. The bird calls are all the same as our garden, enough that I don't always notice those that are missing - we always had very loud and aggressive thrushes and blackbirds on our lawn. The only difference is the calling of crows, who live everywhere and are seen everywhere. Their call is harsh but I rather like them, and I like hearing their call. They keep making me get 'Murder of One' by the Counting Crows in my head, as I stand there counting crows:
There's a bird that nests inside you,
Sleeping underneath your skin.
When you open up your wings to speak
I wish you'd let me in.
I am in a terraced house. When I was little, I hated the idea of living in a house that had stairs. I didn't like the idea of being so far from the ground, and was probably also a little afraid of falling down them. Now I am staying in a terraced house temporarily in a row of houses that are actually just one building, despite all the coloured front doors and separating walls, and the stairs are thin and steep and I actually near did fall down them (maybe more than once). But I really like this house.
One view one way, clearly not of my trees.
Tree and street.
I like sleeping on the top level, up all the thin steep stairs, above the street and nearly at the same height as the trees. I like going to the bottom level and seeing feet walk past as I look up out of the kitchen, and then out the back to the small garden where the brick walls are covered in creepers and ferns. I like the evenings up there especially - there's always a breeze in the evenings, living so near the canal, and with the days so hot, and it comes rushing in over my face as I lie on the bed and write or read or pretend to write and read while I'm actually daydreaming about things I could be writing or reading. I love hearing the trees. There was a thunder storm over the weekend, thunder and lightning and a moment of sudden wonderful heavy rain pelting down onto the roof and the street. I pulled up the blinds so we could watch the flashes better as they burst on the clouds. We lowered the sliding windows a little, just enough to stop the rain coming in but keep letting air come in - it was still warm. There are still months to go before Christmas, before those days before Christmas that are sometimes better than Christmas itself, and when it comes the likelihood of it being hot is quite low. And I kind of hope it snows. If it snows, it will feel like Christmas anyway. It's never sunny at Christmas on TV.
