It’s another warm day. When we eventually dragged ourselves out into the sunshine, the temperature had reached 26° C (79° F). We can say that spring has definitely declared itself and is already turning into summer.

No more buttercups

You may remember that a few days ago, I photographed this front garden which was full of buttercups among the uncut grass (see A longer stroll). Today, the Council gardeners came along and mowed the lawns. Their activities unfortunately destroyed the buttercups and turned this garden into a desert. I hope it will bloom again.

Snagged curtain

Because of the heat, many dwellings had their windows open. There was not a very strong breeze but, somehow, it was strong enough to blow this curtain out of the window and up the wall where it was somwhow snagged by the brickwork. What were the chances of that?

By rights, we should have done the food shopping before this but because of the heat we kept putting it off. A few weeks ago, we received an email from Sainsbury’s recommending an online shopping app called Chop Chop and today we thought to try it out.

The Chop Chop app

There is a limit of 20 items per order and you may be limited to three repeats if any one item. The prices charged the same ad you would pay in Sainsbury’s store but there is a £4.99 delivery charge.

When we placed our order, a notice flashed up warning us that the service was rather busy and that that might delay delivery. In the event, the goods reached our door within the advertised 60-minute delivery time.

Two items were missing and there was no bill with the goods. However, an email was sent which did itemise our order with prices. This indicated that the missing items were “unavailable” and that their cost had been refunded. My credit card has been charged the full amount, however, and I will be watching to see whether a refund for the missing items turns up.

While the service was commendably fast, I am suspending final judgement on it until I receive a refund for the missing items. (Why was this not applied immediately? They were quick enough to take the money when I made the order.) If I receive it soon, I will give Chop Chop my guarded approval.

Update May 22nd 2020

The refund from Chop Chop finally appeared on my credit card account yesterday evening. Until that point, the payment, like all new payments, had been marked “Pending” but once it moved out of “Pending”, the correct, reduced, amount was shown.

So, in line with what I said above, yes, I do give my approval to the Chop Chop service. We may use it from time to time though the service charge of £4.99 and the limit of 20 items precludes using it for all of our shopping.

As usual, our stroll this afternoon took us to quieter streets, away from the main roads which are becoming busier every day. The sun was shining and the temperature reached a heady 25° C (77° F).

City and Islington College

This is the City and Islington College. I always thought of it as the local sixth-form college but these days it describes itself as a college of further education, offering vocational courses for all ages along with the usual A Levels. For now, of course, it is shut pending the end of the pandemic.

Brewers Buildings

This is the main entrance of Brewers Buildings in Rawstorne Street. The massive residential block bears the date of 1876, when it was built as a charitable enterprise by the Brewers Livery Company. The company owned a considerable estate in the area of which this is part.

Brewers Buildings

As you can see, it is huge, too big to photograph in its entirety in the narrow street in which it resides. Though fairly plain, it has enough decoration to render the effect pleasant. It is Grade II listed.

Quiet byway

We walked through this pleasant byway between houses with enough greenery to give pleasant shade on a hot day. We also spotted a blackbird and some busy sparrows.

On the corner of Hermit Street is the smallest park I have ever seen.

Hermit Street Open Space

Really, though, it’s not strictly a park, despite the trees and other greenery, because it has a rather uneven brick floor. The Council is consulting with neighbourhood residents over its future and refers to it as an Open Space, which, after all, it is.

Hermit Street Open Space

The presence of discarded bottles suggests that the non-park sees some use though possibly not the kind of use the Council would prefer. It will be interesting to see how it develops.

From here, it was a short walk along Goswell Street to Jusaka where we collected our coffee before making for home.

We saw quite a few people wearing masks but many of them were wearing them incorrectly – for example, covering the mouth but not the nose – thus negating their usefulness. The false confidence they feel is increasing their risk, not reducing it.

It is another warm, sunny day today with the thermometer weighing in at 22° C (72° F).

There were quite a few people about and a sizeable fraction of them – maybe 30% – no longer maintain even the pretence of social distancing. If allowed to, they will practically brush past you. Others are wearing masks and these generally do keep their distance.

Cumberland Gardens

We walked through this passage between the fronts of a row of houses and gardens of another row of houses set at right-angles to them. It bears the name of Cumberland Gardens. It’s one of those addresses that you would never find unless you happened to know where it is.

White roses

Beside the walkway was a large rose bush – practically a tree – full of white blooms. They were bouncing in the breeze which somehow enhanced their beauty.

White lions

One of the curiosities of Islington, or, at least, the district where we live, is the number of lions you encounter here. The photo shows a pair attached to these houses. There is a matching lion on the roof next door but it was partially hidden behind scaffolding.

As well as stone lions there are plaques representing lion heads or faces while lion door-knockers are also very common. Most of these lions show their age and perhaps date from when the houses were first built. I do not know why this animal is so popular but I am rather fond of them and enjoy discovering ones I have not spotted before.

We called in at Myddelton’s as usual and collected our coffee. We will miss this little ritual once life returns to “normal”, if ever it does. We will have to find reasons for dropping in from time to time, just to maintain friendly contact.

Inglebert Street and St Mark’s Church
Photo by Tigger

Tigger took this photo looking along Inglebert Street towards a sunlit St Mark’s Church. This street, when first built, was called Upper Chadwell Street but it was renamed in 1935 to commemorate William Chadwell, one of the engineers involved in the New River project.

Chadwell Street itself was named after the Chadwell Spring which, along with the Amwell Spring, provided the water that the New River brought – and still brings – to an ever thirsty London.

We should perhaps think of Hugh Myddelton whenever we turn on the tap!

Finally, we come to the second of only two days that celebrate feminine, as opposed to masculine, deities. The first was the moon, which is considered feminine in Babylonian, Latin and French but masculine in Anglo-Saxon, while in modern English, it has no gender though is sometimes treated as feminine in poetry. In contrast, the deity we are considering now, is feminine in all five of our languages.

Here is a reminder of the day names in those languages:

The goddess Ishtar enjoyed great popularity among the Babylonians. She was a fertility figure and was alo associated with the planet Venus, making her the goddess of sexual love. She was the patron of prostitutes and the alehouse and her cult may have included ritual prostitution. She was a complex figure, though, and was also associated with death and disaster. For more details, see the Encyclopædia Britannica’s article Ishtar.

The Romans acquired Venus as a gooddess relatively late but she had been worshipped among the Latin peoples from ancient times. Originally a fertility goddess, she became identified by the Romans with the Greek Astarte, the goddess of love, and as the latter was considered the daughter of Zeus, so Venus came to be regarded as the daughter of Jupiter, a fact that enormously increased her importance. She was also renowned as the mother of Cupid. There is a lot more to her than this, however, and for more information, see the Encyclopædia Britannica’s article Venus.

In Latin, as in modern English, this goddess and her planet were called Venus. The Latin genitive (possessive case) is Veneris and so her day was called dies Veneris or Veneris dies.

The Latin Veneris dies formed the basis of the modern French name for that day of the week. As in other cases, such as mercredi and jeudi, the two ‘s’ sounds were lost and so was the unstressed second ‘e’. The resulting putative word *ven’redi is quite hard to pronounce (try it!) without a “virtual” ‘d’ creeping in, especially by attraction with the ‘d’ later in the word. Whatever the reason, the ‘d’ did come in and Veneris dies eventually mutated to vendredi in modern French.

The goddess called Frigg was widely known and worshipped among other Germanic and Norse peoples. The wife of Odin, she was a goddess of the earth and could be petitioned for a good harvest. She was, of course, also the goddess of love, as well as of the home. For more details, see the Wikipedia article Frigg.

The genitive of her name is Frige and so her day was called Frigedæg. Remembering that in Anglo-Saxon, ‘g’ often became a sound like the ‘y’ in “yes”, it is easy to see how Frigedæg could mutate into the modern Friday.

Today’s walk had a watery theme. It was warm and sunny with an estimated temperature of 19° C (66° F) though it felt warmer than that. I took a few photos but the air was rather hazy, softening outlines.

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

We passed by the famous Sadler’s Wells Theatre which is currently closed like other public venues.

The name “Sadler” comes down to the modern age from the original founder, Richard Sadler, who opened his “Musick House” here in 1683. The present theatre, which opened in 1998, is the sixth to occupy the site and to bear the name.

The “Wells” part of the name refers to the old monastic wells originally belonging to St John’s Priory, which somehow became covered over and were rediscovered and reopened around the time the Musick House was built.

It was soon decided that the water from the wells had beneficial medicinal qualities, attracting visitors from far and wide to sample the supposedly health-giving liquid.

Water also played an important part in the theatre’s productions when a water tank was installed on stage in the 18th century and spectacular shows involving ships were mounted.

In the last decade of that century and the first decades of the 19th, probably the most important star of the theatre was Joseph Grimaldi (1778-1837), considered by many to be the father of clowns. Grimaldi’s grave can still be visited in Grimaldi Park in Islington.

Not content with performing just at Sadler’s Wells, Grimaldi also performed at the Drury Lane Theatre on the same days and would sprint from one to the other to be in time to appear on their respective stages.

Pub sunbather

Turning into Arlinton Way, we spied a figure perched on the projecting ground-floor roof of the Shakespeare’s Head, taking the sun. A nice and private sunbathing station for someone, presumably the pub manager

Plaque, Claremont Close

We passed through Claremont Close which contains apartment blocks built, not in Georgian style but in a modern style intended to be sympathetic to the prevailing style of the district. On the building are two plaques, both exactly the same.

The picture on the plaque shows a city within walls, above which a hand is emerging from the clouds. Around this image is a Latin motto: ET PLUI SUPER UNAM CIVITATEM.

This somewhat strange motto has been translated as “I rained upon one city” and the whole thing was the seal of the New River Company which owned the land in this area. The Company was eventually absorbed into the Metropolitan Water Board which took the motto as its own but not the rest of the design.

From Claremont Close it is but a short walk to Myddelton’s deli but on arrival we were disappointed: it was closed! That was our fault, however, as we had forgotten that on Sunday they close at 3 pm.

Nothing daunted, we turned on our respective heels and made our way to St John Street and Jusaka. We were not to be so easily done out of our coffee!