After lunch, even though we had been out to do the shopping, Tigger proposed we go for another walk, a proposal I was quite ready to agree to.

Intermittent sun

It was quite warm (around 11°C if the Met Office is to be believed), perhaps because the sun put in intermittent appearances and there was no wind.

We started off on the main road, in the direction of King’s Cross but let ourselves by tempted away by the gate of Joseph Grimaldi Park. This, you may recall, is an old burial ground, later landscaped as a park but in which the grave of actor, comedian and clown, Joseph Grimaldi, is still extant.

Curious amusements

On entering the park by the upper gate, one of the first sights to greet you is this pair of rather lugubrious objects. Perhaps you can guess their purpose. They are meant as amusements: stamp on the different sections snd each emits a chime like a bell. (Yes, that is Tigger’s skirt and toes that you see on the right of the picture.)

Trying to make it ring
Video by Tigger

At least, that’s the theory. When I tried it out (and Tigger sneakily videoed me!) it hardly produced any sound other than that of my feet stamping on it. It has no doubt been worn out by long use.

Taking a look st Joey’s grave

The grave is naturally an object of interest and there is a plaque explaining who in occupant was.

Joey’s grave

As you can see by the decorations, the grave is still visited by people who, despite never having seen him for themselves, admire JosephGrimaldi and revere his memory. For more about him, see here.

Old drinking fountain

I was almost equally curious about this object. It is obviously an old drinking fountain or, rather, part of one. The spouts and, more interestingly, any inscription, were missing. Was it originally sited here or has the Council dumped it here, having no better place for it? If, as it looks to be, it is Victorian, then it would have had an inscription of some sort but that is now missing. Pity.

Tapered block of flats

All around here are blocks of flats of various modern designs. Some awful and some not too bad. We were intrigued by this block because, as you can perhaps see, it’s wider at the bottom and tapers as it rises. Does this mean that the lower flats are larger than the upper ones and, if so, by how much? Curious.

Tall chimney

What attracted my attention here was less the apartment building than the tall chimney right next to it. What’s it for? We speculated that it might be the chimney of a boiler house for heating the flats but that could be quite wrong. Another curiosity.

An unusual abbreviation

The building’s main entrance bears a plaque giving its name as Grimaldi House and indicating that it was built under the aegis of the old Borough of Finsbury which was later absorbed into the present Borough of Islington. But what surprised me was that the inscription reads as “Finsbury Boro’ Council”. I have never seen such an abbreviation used in official signage before. Was I surprised? Yes, indeed I was.

Free table and lampshade

Someone has left what looks like a bedside table and a lampshade in the street for anyone to “own”. It seems that this method of disposing of surplus property is used beyond the boundaries of our immediate neighbourhood where I first became aware of it. How useful is a table with a missing drawer, though?

How old are these houses?

We found that we had reached the famed Caledonian Road, known to its inhabitants and fans as the Cally Road. Why is it famous? To be honest, I don’t really know. Maybe you have to live in it to discover its magic. This row of houses is obviously quite old but how old are they? You might be able to see the white plaque between first-floor windows. This was affixed as a boundary marker by the Parish of Clerkenwell (“parishes” and “vestries” were the forerunners of the modern boroughs) and bears a date of 1845. So the houses are at least as old as that that may be older, perhaps going back to the beginning of the 19th or even the end if the 18th century. How much history have they seen?

Al-Nehar Mosque

This building, nicely sited on a corner, was obviously originally a pub. Its destiny has changed radically and today it is the Al-Nehar Mosque. Quite a few local mosques occupy what were once pubs as many of these go out of business for various reasons.

Typical decoration of an old pub

In this case, though, we spotted an unusual detail. The pub has decorative elements, resembling the capitals found at the tops of columns. This is quite usual in what was probably a Victorian pub. But look more closely.

Calligraphy

I don’t know how well it shows up in the photo but in the round feature in each capital there is Arabic calligraphy. That was obviously not there originally but has been added as part of the conversion to a mosque.

Keystone Credcent

We walked through (or should I say “round”?) this picturesque crescent. As crescents go, this one, with both ends in the Cally Road, evinces a very tight curve. We speculated on whether the rooms in the houses were wedge-shaped to fit the bend. We know that houses in the corners of squares do sometimes have odd-shaped rooms.

Parish boundary markers

As to age, there are a couple of parish boundary markers to give us a “no later than” date. The lower metal plate bears the date 1855. The upper one is eroded and hard to read but I think it is dated 1845. These houses are therefore early Victorian or even older.

Housman’s bookshop

A notable inhabitant of the Cally Road is Housman’s bookshop. They are famous as sellers of radical and progressive political books and periodicals.

Within sight of King’s Cross

We reached our furthest point at the bottom end of the Cally Road where it meets the main road where the Euston Road (ahead in the photo) mutates into Pentonville Road (behind us in the photo).

We started our return but chose again to take to the back streets rather than the noisy, and in places crowded, main road.

The sunset from Donegal Street

We could follow side roads running more or less in parallel to the main road and these gave s quieter and more interesting walk. In Donegal Street, we stopped to look back and photograph the sinking sun with its mottled blanket of clouds.

The route took us up a slope, a fairly gentle slope, indeed, but a slope nonetheless. I have to confess that I was beginning to feel tired and found myself concentrating mainly on putting one foot in front of the other. Whatever other effects derive from our months of restricted movement, they have left us badly out of condition.

Former White Lion Street School

We cut along White Lion Street which contains several interesting sights, including this, the former White Lion Street School, built by the long defunct London School Board and proudly dated 1900. As I have noted before, you can see a familiar sight many times before one day spotting a hitherto unnoticed detail.

Bell house

Today’s noticed detail was the little shelter for the school bell. I cannot see a bell in it now. Was there ever one and was it used? It’s quite possible. It would have been useful for calling pupils to school in an age before there was a watch on every wrist, let alone a mobile phone in every pocket.

Mount Zion Chapel

My last photo of the day was also in White Lion Street and was of this mysterious little building labelled Mount Zion Chapel. It possesses two foundation stones which are dated 1896. Whether it still serves as a place of worship and and a Sunday school, as the plaque says, I do not know.

I was glad to reach home and to enjoy a cup of tea kindly made by Tigger. It had been a good walk in a neighbourhood about which I learn more each day but about which I shall never know everything!

Lockdown, like any human experience, affects different people in different ways. I read many complaints of boredom and the slow passage of time but that is not how it has affected me. For me, time continues rushing quickly past – much too quickly for comfort.

Admittedly, I have a companion with whom to share my life and my time. Were I living on my own, it would be a different story. I have lived through periods of loneliness – mercifully, they were relatively short – and do not care much for my chances should I ever find myself on my own once more.

Boredom comes, I think, from a lack of variety in life, when the hours and the days stream past all apparently identical and indistinguishable. Life becomes a desert of sameness.

Paused bus holding up the traffic

Lockdown, and being for the most part confined to a relatively small area of town, has taught me something. It is that the faster we live, the broader our gaze and the less detail we see. When life slows, we have the chance to narrow our gaze and to see detail that escaped us before. Depending on your outlook, such detail will either be exciting or it will bore you witless! Happily, I have found it exciting.

I have learned about my immediate neighbourhood as never before. Streets that once simply provided the way to the shops or the doctor’s surgery have come to have an identity of their own, to be fascinating in their own right. Anonymous streets now have names and the houses in those streets, once just a blur of doors and windows seen in passing, have individual personalities, their differences and quirks now features to be noticed and enjoyed. Christmas, and the gradual transformation of houses, shops and streets with decorations was fun and exciting. Almost as much fun was watching the decorations disappear, and the world return to its previous condition.

Every week, usually on Sunday, we do our food shopping. We drag the shopping trolley round to Sainsbury’s in Liverpool Road, crossing through Chapel Market to the store where we queue, if we are early, or go straight in if we are later. I hurry ahead, pound coin in hand, to claim a supermarket trolley. Inside, we each collect our list of items and meet to combine them and pay at the checkout. Always the same and pretty boring, eh?

Well, actually, no. Every Sunday is different. Activity in Chapel Market is different, the scene in the supermarket is different. Funny things happen, annoying things happen, but they are all different. Different, that is, if you look deeper than the blur of the usual and see what is really happening. That family arguing over what desserts to buy, that customer lost in thought standing just in front of the shelf you need to reach, the empty space where what you were looking for is missing, that elderly gent trying to jump the queue and being shouted at by other customers, the tub of yogurt that suddenly leaks as you pick it up.

In Sainsbury’s

Trivial? Maybe from some perspective but these are the fine details in the tapestry of life which, without them, would be static and colourless.

On the way home from the supermarket, we again pass through Chapel Market, much busier now than on our way in. The stalls are just the same as usual… Oh, no they are not: I’ve never seen that one before and where’s the fast food tent that’s usually just here? I hold my breath as I pass the fishmonger’s stall because I find the smell disgusting after 30 years or so of being a vegetarian.

In Chapel Market

I hurry on ahead of Tigger to reach the coffee shop. Who’s serving today? They greet me because they have become used to seeing me. Coffee comes forward and I reach for it but – oops! – it’s not for me but for that customer longing in the corner. There is chatter between staff and customers but with my poor hearing it just washes over me, a sort of music of odd words and intonations.

Coffee in hand, I rejoin Tigger, patiently waiting outside. She tells me that wherever she chooses to stand, people come and stand beside her. Maybe they think she is queueing for the coffee shop.

In the coffee shop

We have to wait before crossing the main road. It was quieter when we came but is now busy with an apparently unending, slow drift of passing traffic. I step off the kerb and…

“Motorbike!” says Tigger and I jump back onto the pavement with a half-embarrassed, half-amused giggle.

So the days pass, quickly, too quickly. They are all the same and yet all different. I sometimes wish I could rewind them, relive them, check the details and catch what I missed the first time around. Next time I’ll look more carefully and not miss what I suspect I missed this time. But of course, there will always be new details to take in, so many that the jug of memory overflows and spills half of what’s on offer.

There is plenty of time but there is never enough.