Tigger has been required to go in to the office today. This is our first separation since just before Christmas and it consequently feels odd. Added to the cold weather, her absence acts as a disincentive to bestir myself and go out.

Happily, there are some chores that I have to attend to and that will require me to visit Amwell Street.

I have to fetch the laundry from the dry cleaner’s (see Lockdown and laundry). Also, I have to post a letter and call in at the chemist’s to pick up our repeat prescriptions. I could also call in at Myddelton’s for a coffee but, as I will have my hands occupied with the laundry and what I collect from the chemist’s, I don’t think I can manage it all without spilling coffee over myself and everything else!

It’s supposed to be a couple of degrees warmer later so I will have an early lunch first and foray forth after that.

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As planned, I set out after lunch. To my surprise, it actually felt warmer than the advertised temperature. It was quite pleasant in fact, just a pity that I couldn’t simply go for a stroll.

Chimneys

The winter sun was just at the right angle to illuminate the chimneys of this row of Georgian style houses on the far side of Claremont Square. These are some of the larger houses with four floors and consequently, a lot of rooms. When these houses were built, electricity and central heating were still in the future. If you wanted to warm your house, you had to do so room by room by lighting coal fires. Hence the impressive rows of chimneys above each house.

Nowadays, the clean air laws forbid coal fires but I can remember, when I was a child, how in winter the streets would be filled with acrid smell of burning coal, wafted down from chimneys by the breeze.

And, of course, where there are chimneys in use there are chimney sweeps. That too, I remember, and my mother fetching me to touch the chimney sweep’s sooty shoulder “for luck” as he knelt at a fireplace with his brushes and canes.

Nowadays, if I’m feeling the cold, I just twiddle the thermostat which controls the gas central heating. The fireplaces that once warmed the rooms that are now our little flat have disappeared, their locations concealed by plaster.

Amwell Street

I turned down Amwell Street, our local “village high street”, though it is becoming ever less villagey as time passes. Shops where you can do your daily or weekly shopping have all but disappeared. Myddelton’s deli is the noble exception, thriving because of the quality of its wares and its sideline of providing catering for offices, conferences, etc. It also delivers to a wide area including that legendary world where London cabbies are said never to venture: South London!

My first task was to post my letter. Amwell Street does at least still provide facilities for that!

The pillar box at the post office

I posted my letter in the pillar box outside the post office. Did you say “What post office?” Quite so: it was here, its premised now occupied by this rather anonymous-looking property office, snatched away from us, protests notwithstanding. Fortunately, the pillar box remains in use.

The chemist’s

Then I called at the lovely old chemist’s shop. I don’t know how old it is but its sign and, more importantly, its range of small drawers, each labelled in gold paint with the abbreviated Latin name of its contents, suggest the Victorian era.

The interior, apart from the drawers, has been remodelled many times. Most recently, of course, this has been to add transparent safety screens.

Carrying my bag of medicines, I went to collect the laundry. I then had a long (well, it seemed long!) journey uphill dragging a heavy trolley. I couldn’t summon up the necessary nervous energy to take any more photos or to think about possibly buying coffee. For that I will wait until Tigger and I are out walking together again.

That may be on Saturday when we have an important appointment. Perhaps you remember what it is for. If not, all shall be revealed on Saturday!