City University building

I photographed this fine old building in St John Street, currently occupied by City University, as we were on the way to the launderette.

Frieze over the doorway

Since the arrival of Covid-19, we have been taking our laundry for a service wash instead of doing it ourselves. This may seem lazy (well, it is!) but it’s arguably safer than spending an hour and a half shut up in warm and humid conditions in close contact with other people.

It was fairly cold (8°C) and cloudy but with the sun breaking through from time to time to make the world look a little more cheerful.

After dumping the laden trolley at the launderette, we went for a little ramble, working our way back to the Angel crossroads where we intended to buy coffee.

Butterfly

In Percival Street we spotted this butterfly perched on a drainpipe. It’s a handmade one, of course, but rather lovely. It adds a cheerful note to the surroundings. Oh that all art were as immediate and appealing as this butterfly!

Children’s playground with standing figure

Also in Percival Street is this children’s playground, today still and silent. It will probably wake up again when school ends for the day and at weekends. Slightly unusual is the figure, done as a flat silhouette atop the swing.

Gateway – closed

In the same street is this gate in front of a block of flats. Small but imposing snd with a touch of character, it is closed for the foreseeable future, as the notice says “to keep everyone safe”. Such are the changes, both big and small, brought about by an enemy so small that it needs an electron microscope to see it.

Small houses

We walked through the housing estate and saw this pair of small houses or bungalows. They are of unusual design and I haven’t seen any others like them. Tigger hazarded a guess that they might be homes for resident caretakers, a reasonable hypothesis.

Northampton Square

We walked out along the short Tompion Street, named after the famous clockmaker, Thomas Tompion (1639–1713), into Northampton Square. I have already mentioned (and photographed) this quiet and pleasant square with its central garden graced by a bandstand. Today, perhaps because the autumn had stripped the branches and left them bare, I was struck by the age and size of the garden’s arboreal residents.

Mature trees in Northampton Square

I don’t know how old these trees are but they are perhaps the original trees planted when the square was first laid out. If so, then they could be over 180 years old. (See here.) Imagine what momentous times and events they have lived through!

Number 7 Wynyatt Street

The photo shows part of Wynyatt Street, which contains a row of modest Georgian-style houses dating from the beginning of the 19th century. Some of the houses have been rebuilt, including one that is of modern design and stands out like a sore thumb. The reason for a least some of the rebuilding is that Wynyatt Street and adjoining Spencer Street in June 1944 suffered Islington’s first hit by V-1 flying bomb, leading to 13 deaths and 83 injured.

Plaque to William Arling (?)

The reason why I photographed number 7 is because it has a plaque on the wall. This is damaged and hard to read but we think it celebrates a William Arling, clockmaker, who allegedly lived and had his shop here from 1820. The second letter of the surname is damaged and we may have misinterpreted it. I cannot find any mention of a clockmaker of that name but that may simply mean that he did not achieve fame. Nor do I know who placed the plaque or how authoritative their information might be. It remains, therefore, as a touching but mysterious memorial to a skilled artisan of a past age.

Sign no longer spinning

Back in St John Street, I photographed this barber’s shop. I had previously photographed it during the first lockdown when it had a different name. What had attracted my attention then was that the red and white sign had been left spinning, whether by accident or as a sign of hope for the future, I don’t know. At the end of the lockdown, it had changed ownership and had operated until hit by Lockdown v 2. Then it closed, of course, but this time, the sign is still. I hope that is not an omen…

Naked ambition at Andrew Majtenyi’s

I spotted this naked dummy in the window of Andrew Majtenyi, a purveyor of designer garments for women. Despite having a small premises in a relatively obscure part of town, Andrew Majtenyi seems to be fairly well known as a designer. The unclothed dummy strikes a strange note and might almost be regarded as an ikon of the pandemic… Though we ourselves will never be in a position to be customers of the business, I hope the time soon comes for it to reopen and thrive again. So many businesses have shrunk or closed entirely because of the pandemic and we have yet to count the cost of this.

Missing letters

I already showed you the shop in Pentonville Road with missing letters. (See Missing letters.) Here is another one, this time in St John Street. Have the letters fallen off or been removed? Will they be replaced? Let’s hope so and that the disappearance of letters is not an omen of yet another disappearing business.

From here, we went to Jusaka and bought our coffee. For those who were kind enough to wish me well after my root extraction (see Roots), I will say yes, I am again taking hot drinks though still with a degree of caution!