The last time we saw Ari was on February 4th (see Spider Ari moves fast – sometimes). Since then, though we regularly scanned the walls, there were no more sightings. I began to think that she had moved to fresh pastures or… but I didn’t like to dwell on more morbid speculations.

This morning, Tigger suddenly emerged excitedly from the bedroom. She had news: Ari was in the bedroom!

I went to take a look and there she was, in a corner high up near the ceiling. Corners on the line between wall and ceiling seem to be her preferred resting places.

Our ceilings are quite high and photos taken by me standing on the floor showed a tiny image which was fuzzy when enlarged. So… I had recourse to a stepladder, risking life and limb to bring you the latest picture!

Ari in her “pilates” pose

As you see, she was resting in her characteristic “pilates” pose with legs (all eight of them) stretched out before and behind her.

How Ari came to this location is rather a mystery. Unless she has discovered a secret passage, she must have negotiated two doorways and the hallway. How and when she performed this trek, I do not know. Or why. But she did so and there she is until she decides to make another move.

See also the composite version of the adventures of Ari: Ari, the spider.

With the sun shining and the temperature up at 13°C, it certainly felt as if spring was on its way in today.

Daffodils in the window

The occupants of this house added to the impression by displaying daffodils in their window.

St Mark’s Church

St Mark’s Church seemed to be cheerfully basking in the warm sunshine.

“Don’t knock – ring!”

We were amused by this front door or, rather, by the shocking pink notices. They instruct callers not to bang on the door with the knocker but to ring the bell. I don’t whether this is because they don’t hear the knocker or because they prefer the more euphonious sound of the bell.

Preparing the coffee

Today, we went straight to Myddelton’s deli because Tigger had proposed that, instead of going home with our coffee as we usually do, we take it to Percy Circus and drink it there, sitting in the sun. It sounded like a good idea to me.

Flower
Photo by Tigger

On the way, we saw some flowers making a pretty display in a garden. As I was carrying the coffee, Tigger took the photo for me. The flowers added to the spring feeling un the air.

In Percy Circus Gardens

I thought the coffee might go cold while we were walking to the gardens but I need not have worried. It was still hot when we arrived. We found a bench in the sun and enjoyed our coffee!

There were other people in the gardens so I preferred to be discreet and not include them in any pictures.

Another view of Percy Circus Gardens

Although it is situated among houses, Percy Circus is one of our favourite local places. It is very quiet and peaceful and there are rarely more than one or two people beside ourselves in the garden and, more often than not, we are the only ones there.

The old Police Station

To continue our walk, we went down to the main Kings Cross Road where we stopped to photograph the old Police Station. The notice indicates that it is now a centre for traffic wardens and that anyone requiring the police should go to the next nearest station which is in Tolpuddle Street. That’s bad news for anyone in a hurry because that street is quite a walk away, near our branch of Sainsbury’s. This is an example of how government saves money by cutting precisely those services which should least be cut. Likewise, fire stations are being closed in many districts. Too bad if you house or workplace catches fire and you need rescuing.

An optician with a sense of humour

I noticed this optician’s shop. The owner obviously has a sense of humour and has come up with a pun as a name for his shop. Trying to make a spectacle of himself, perhaps…

St Andrew’s Gardens

We went for a stroll in St Andrew’s Gardens. If the name doesn’t betray the park’s origins, the gravestones placed along the wall certainly do. This was once the burial ground of St Andrew’s Church but has been landscaped as a public park, as have many old cemeteries in town. Others have been left as they are with minimal upkeep so that they have entered a new existence as wildlife refuges.

In St Andrew’s Gardens

This burial ground is now a tidy park with walks and benches. Though not everyone approves of this rearranging of old burial grounds they add to the number of green spaces in town and are generally popular.

Tombs left in place

A few of the larger tombs have been left in place. I don’t know whether this is to add atmosphere or provide points o interest or whether it is because these tombs are big and have complex structure below the surface, making them difficult to remove.

Pigeons enjoying food

Some of the resident pigeons were tucking into food left for them by some kind-hearted person. They looked happy and that made me feel happy too.

Victorian drinking fountain

We found this broken and sad-looking drinking fountain. There was originally something on the top which has been broken off and there is now no way to know what it might have been. We eventually found an inscription on the column (on the side away from the photo) but it was so weathered as to be virtually impossible to read though I managed to make out a date that I think is 1883.

Curious structure

Walking around the outside of the garden, we found this curious structure inside the garden, closed off from the street by railings. There is a gate but it was chained up long ago.

What was it?

Leaning the camera over the railings provides this view of what almost looks like a pathway between railings except that the “pathway” is closed off by railings at the end. Could this possibly have once been an underground toilet? The “pathway” then would have been steps going down to the toilets. If so, it has been filled in and covered over.

In London, there are many such old toilets that have been closed or reassigned to other duties such as subterranean bars or clubs. This could be one that has simply been blocked up or filled in.

Once the Fakenham Arms

According to the sign that is still in place, this is, or was, the Fakenham Arms Ale and Cider House. It looks as if it is now closed as a pub and has been converted to residential use. It must have been a substantial establishment in its day. Was it missed by its regulars?

Islington is quite a hilly borough though the slopes are, for the most part, gentle. Our walk had been consistently down-slope and for the return, we had, like yesterday, a long uphill drag. Though not as tiring as yesterday, it still conjured up pleasant thoughts of sitting down at home with a nice cup of tea!

Lloyd Square Gardens

We reached Lloyd Square, one of the few whose central garden is still private and accessible only to residents of the square. It is well looked after and I took this picture, somewhat enviously, from one of the gates.

Recharging the car

Vehicles parked connected to an electrical charging point are becoming a common sight in the UK. The typical arrangement consists of special posts with lights on top showing green for available, blue for in use and red for out of order. At some point, in addition to these dedicated charging points, street lamps have been modified in some places to also allow charging. Electric only and hybrid vehicles are also more and more common, including vans, cars and the famous London black cabs.

Looking around me in today’s world, I sometimes feel like an inadvertent time-traveller who, without knowing how, has been thrust forward into an unexpected future! It is sometimes puzzling but also fascinating!

I like my tea and have written about tea many times on my blog. While I do not consider myself by any means an expert or connoisseur on the subject, I do have preferences and certain opinions about tea. A few of these are the following.

Tea should be of good quality and carefully chosen, according to your preferences. This is all the more important if, like me, you take your tea without milk or any other additives. Loose leaf tea should be used, not tea bags. If you like a blended tea, as I do, then don’t buy it blended (as with tea bags there’s no knowing what rubbish may be put into ready blended tea), buy the ingredients and mix them yourself. Use clean water at the correct temperature (100°C/212°F or just below that). Though water in the UK is generally wholesome, when coming straight from the tap it may contain substances inimical to good tea and using water filtered by, for example, a Brita filter jug, improves the result. Finally, choose your teapot very carefully!

Teapot design is a whole subject on its own, but I will be brief. Tea needs room to move in the pot in order to brew properly. This means using a tea pot with a large infuser or no infuser at all. An infuser is useful, because without one you will need to pour out the tea through a strainer. Some teapots have a built-in strainer rather than an infuser. That’s quite a good design too but I had one that caused the tea to dribble and miss the cup! I have avoided them since.

For quite some time now, I have used a Forlife Stump Teapot. This is quite a good pot and I don’t have any grounds for criticism of it. However, I did have ideas in mind of a still better design and would periodically surf the Web to see whether such a paragon of teapots actually existed. This received an impetus when Tigger acquired a glass teapot (yes, we have different tastes in tea as in some other things!) and I admired it and wished to have something similar.

After many fruitless searches – looking for a glass teapot with a well designed infuser or strainer and of the right size – I suddenly struck gold. Here is what I found.

Hario Chacha Kyusu Maru Teapot

What appealed to me were the following features. The teapot is glass and I wanted a glass teapot! The infuser is wire mesh, the best sort, except perhaps for nylon infusers. The pot has a wide opening which makes it easy to clean (there’s no hard-to-clean spout) and to access the infuser. The jug design means that it pours cleanly without drips and dribbles.

There is just one small disadvantage: because of its round shape, you have to tip it right up to empty it into your cup and so you have to hold the lid on to stop it falling off. However, because round is the best shape for a teapot – a globe is the solid figure with the smallest surface area, meaning that round pots retain the heat better than other shapes – I am willing to put up with holding onto the lid.

The tea I use is a blend of three kinds: two parts Formosa Oolong, one part Keemun and one part Lapsang Souchong. The latter adds a – to me, agreeable – touch of smokey flavour to the tea. I currently order my tea online from a company I have dealt with for a long time: The Howdah Tea & Coffee Company. They respond very quickly and the tea often reaches me the next day after I place the order.

Finally, I may as well complete the story by saying that I like to pour all my tea into the cup or mug at one go, so the choice of cup is critical. My favourite is this one:

Le Creuset 350ml mug

It is a stoneware coffee mug made by Le Creuset and holds 350ml. The capacity of my new teapot is 300ml, which fits into the cup nicely with a little extra room to avoid spillage.

Le Creuset make a range of kitchen and dining ware that have proved popular in the UK. Perhaps you have some yourself or intend buying some. If so beware: because of dratted Brexit, Le Creuset products are becoming difficult to source and UK retailers are running out of stocks – buy while you still can!

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.