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!

Today’s stroll took us a little further than we have been accustomed to going in recent days. It gave us a chance to stretch our legs and see some new scenery. The sky was cloudy but it was dry and fairly warm (a couple of degrees cooler than yesterday).

Buttercups

The grass in this front garden has not been cut for quite a while and is quite deep. This has allowed buttercups to grow and to flower, making a vivid show.

Rainbows continue to decorate windows and sometimes railings but as the pandemic and our response to it continue to evolve, new elements appear.

Teddy bear with face mask

In the window of this basement, for example, we can see, beside the usual rainbow, a teddy bear… wearing a face mask!

There was noticeably more traffic on the roads and people walking, jogging and cycling. We saw someone riding a stand-up electric scooter and I expect we shall see more such machines on the roads (and, annoyingly, on the pavement) as people seek ways to travel to and from work avoiding public transport.

Myddelton Square Gardens

We are now allowed to sit in the public parks and this view of Myddelton Square Gardens shows that people are taking advantage of the new rule. For the most part, they were keeping to small groups, well separated from one another.

Chestnut blossom

In Rosebery Avenue, the chestnut trees were in blossom and there were even some, as yet tiny, spiky green balls: future conkers!

There were people sitting here too, in Spa Green Gardens. On the gate was this notice:

Social distancing rules for the park

It sets out the social distancing rules that must be followed if the park is to stay open. I hope that a time will come when this be no more than a historical curiosity but for now, it is a part of our lives.

Smith & Sons Clock

We made our way through side streets back to Goswell Road and walked up towards the crossroads and Jusaka, where we bought coffee (just for a change 🙂 ).

I photographed the Smith & Sons clock, something I have not been able to do for a while. The clock may have been installed to advertise the Smiths’ business but this is long gone and the clock is now a much loved part of the scenery of the Angel. The original clockwork mechanism has been replaced with a modern electrical one but apart from that, the clock is as it was when first installed. It is one of my favourite landmarks of home.

In one of those sudden reversals so typical of our beloved British climate, the temperature today “soared” to 18° C (64° F). The sunshine made it feel even warmer.

Our walk took us over familiar territory but there is always something to notice, either because it is new or because it is something familiar that has sparked a new thought.

For those of you who like cat photos (and according to Facebook that’s near enough everyone!) here are a couple I took en route.

Both are of the same cat but, then, fashion photographers see nothing wrong with taking multiple shots of the same subject and you can only photograph what is there, unlike the artist who can produce pictures from memory.

We went down Arlington Way, which I mentioned yesterday, trying to spot the listed buildings, and then turned into Myddelton Passage.

This starts as an alley to the left of the Shakespeare’s Head pub and then broadens out into a cul de sac road in front of some dwellings. What is famous about this otherwise unprepossessing by-way is its ancient brick wall or, rather, the inscriptions this bears.

Inscriptions

I admit that they are a little hard to distinguish (which is presumably why other photographers have outlined some of them to make them stand out) but you can probably see enough to have an idea of what they are like.

Here is one in close-up:

Dated 1850

In case you are wondering, yes, the date is undoubtedly genuine and all of the inscriptions date from the middle of the 19th century.

So what are they? A typical inscription consists of a set of initials, a badge number and the year. Research has been able to identify some of the inscribers: all were police constables on whose beat the passage found itself.

The curious thing is that they spent enough time here to complete the often deeply carved characters, even allowing for the fact that they might have spent several sessions completing an inscription.

One theory is that PCs on night rounds might prefer to lurk here than face possibly dangerous encounters with nocturnal criminals. Less salubrious ideas have been mooted such as that this was perhaps a “love alley”, a hang-out for ladies of the night. If that were true, though, would the bobbies have had time to carve their initials…?

Whatever the reason for their presence here, the policemen have left a record of their lives that has so far lasted some 120 years and will presumably last until the wall eventually collapses or is demolished.