On our walk today, we turned off St John Street into Chadwell Street where this building resides.

Angel Church, Chadwell Street

It is called the Angel Church but apart from its name I know nothing about it. If you want to know more, you can click on its name and visit its website. The piece of blue plastic sheet affixed to the left pillar suggests that they have a problem with damp. The door was open but I don’t know whether they hold services. Presumably not.

I should like to know more about the building which I think is quite old and was built for someone else entirely. So far I have not found any information but will keep looking.

We stopped off at Myddelton’s deli as usual for coffee and I photographed the establishment next door to it.

Gent’s barber shop

I don’t think I can be alone in noticing what seems to be an upsurge in the number of barber shops in the last few years. Two have appeared in Amwell Street alone, this one and another one further up the hill.

I don’t know whether they all manage to find enough custom. They don’t have mine: Tigger and I both have our hair cut at one of the cheapie places. Run by East Europeans with a high turnover of staff, they offer a fast, no-frills service at moderate cost. What more do you need?

I suppose firms like Gents of London cater for men who want the full works in relatively plush surroundings. At the moment, of course, none of them are open and I wonder how many will survive.

The government has announced a two-week extension of the lockdown and I suspect that even that will not see the end of it. In the meantime, we continue as best we can, keeping calm and looking forward to our daily walk and coffee.

Playing Patience

If the above view is familiar to you, it probably means that you are have played, and perhaps still play, the one-person game called Solitaire or, as I was taught to call it, Patience. You may, like me, even have an electronic version of it on one or more of your devices.

I was introduced to this pastime by my mother. She was a devotee of the game though she, of course, played it with a deck of real playing cards. I don’t think that electronic versions of the game were ever available in her lifetime.

When I was very young, we would even play Patience together, my mother dealing out the cards and going through the pack (always in threes) and I turning over the cards as they were revealed.

Later, I played Patience by myself. When I eventually acquired a smartphone, it seemed quite natural to download an app of the game and play with that.

I play Patience often – probably much too often. There is something addictive about the game. It requires a minimum of intellectual effort but needs a certain amount of attention or you start missing possible moves.

I sometimes awake in the night with some trouble or other on my mind and find it hard to sleep again. Then I play Patience. As it’s on my iPhone, it has its own illumination so I don’t need to disturb Tigger by turning on the light.

Playing Patience usually does the trick: it calms me down and I start feeling sleepy again.

I also play Patience sometimes during the day but I try to limit it to times when I have a few minutes to spare between other activities otherwise I risk spending scandalous amounts of time on it. Addictive, as I said!

Do you also have a pastime that helps to calm you?