park stories::3

I wanted to visit the memorial for the victims of the 7/7 bombing on Tuesday, so I asked a park colleague where I could find it. She sent me off in the direction of the Serpentine: west then south then east again to the other side of the water.

I followed her instructions. It started to rain. Damp joggers and tourists under umbrellas and plastic ponchos passed me by. I marched on looking out for the memorial. It was not bad weather for everyone - the deck chair attendant relaxed happily under a tree in a hammock like position between two deck chairs. The wildfowl -geese, coots, moorhens, pochards - preened and groomed in the drizzle. I marched on, back over the bridge to the north side of the Serpentine. No memorial. After a while I gave up looking and went back to work.

It was a wild goose chase - I had been misdirected and the memorial was in another part of the park altogether.

By mid afternoon, the predicted rains had started. Within a few minutes, there was thunder and lightning and hailstones and a pond on the rooftop outside my window. I waited as long as I could before leaving for home, weaving my way tentatively through the lusciously scented lime trees. Nobody mentioned that the rain would run off towards the Serpentine, the dammed river Westbourne, in such volume that I would have to leap and ford the water to reach the park gates.

My shoes were soaked by the time I reached Piccadilly but even I was not as bedraggled as the women making their way home from the Queen's garden party. Silly geese.

park stories::2

Thank you so much for your park stories. They make poignant reading, with their sense of aloneness while being in a public space, an observation made by someone at the Adam Thorpe reading.

The fact is that even after just a week of walking daily through Hyde Park, you begin to notice that it is full of stories. On Friday morning, after the first Blur concert, I came across one young man, smart enough to be wearing proper black leather shoes, asleep under a tree with a blue sweater covering his head. What was his story? An early morning shower had freshened up the air after the heat of the day before and further along, where the paths criss-cross, people were walking more purposefully than they had been, even one weather worn gentleman of the road marched along with his orange carrier bag. I was curious -where to? By late afternoon the mood had changed again and the park was filling up with groups of people and their boozy picnics, waiting to hear the music. It was a good end to my first week.

Now my appetite is whetted, I want to see more park stories. Walking back through Mile End Park on Saturday with my shopping, there were more celebrations, Independence Day bunting, deck chairs, canal boats, coot chicks, young men punting, a pair of swans.

I snuck through the pathways cut through the long grass and eyed up the chicory. Very tempting, if you are a tortoise.

park stories::1

You may have heard William Boyd on the radio this morning talking about the short stories set in the Royal Parks, written by him and others. I'm lucky enough to be working in Hyde Park for the next few months (this is very exciting fo) and this lunchtime I went to hear Adam Thorpe read his Hyde Park short story "Direct Hit" in the garden of Ranger's Lodge. It was a delight to sit under the trees having someone read you a story. I could have stayed there all afternoon.

I now have a copy of Direct Hit, signed by the author, to give away. It's a modest, but pretty little booklet and the story is very English. Uncharacteristically, I thought a competition was in order. All you have to do is write your own park story, mini-saga style, fifty words exactly if you can manage it but definitely no more than that. Post it on your own blog leaving a comment here with the link, or just post it in my comments box by 15th July. I'll find someone to judge.

Here is my park story from today.

Turning left, she walked past the sheep trough alongside the meadow, hugging the shade of the trees. It was late and she was unsure of the path, but people passing by were not speaking her language. Then, at last, she saw the sign, a gate, a staircase. The Central Line.

father's day

I'm afraid we don't normally celebrate father's day. This year though I found a present which needed an occasion. It was at Prick Your Finger's exhibition of Meiko's knitted lizards.
John's sister always used to say he reminded her of Mr Jeremy Fisher and, thinking of that and the wonderful Laughing Marsh Frogs near Yantlet Creek, this beautiful anatomically correct frog seemed like the perfect present.

As if waking up to an exquisitely knitted frog was not enough pleasure, the rest of the day heaped one delight on another. He had a cup of tea and found a new hankie at Paradise Gardens, visited the Wall of Death (freakin' fantastic!), saw a giant robot puppet made out of recycling bins, and drew a picture of his favourite book to hang on a book tree.

Later, dear readers, I presented him with the first new potatoes of the year.

And, swoon, he then found a yucca thrown on the manure heap.

A lesser man might be intoxicated with delight, but selfless to the last, he did not forget his friend Mario Panzer. For he remembered how Mr Jeremy Fisher's friend, Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise, had brought for lunch a salad in a string bag . Unfortunately the house guest had retreated to his lodgings under the ivy by the time we got home. What a literary inspired treat he has in store for tomorrow.

house guest

We have a house guest. Well, more of a garden guest as he has brought his own house with him. He's called Tank, though we are already beginning to think of him as Mario Panzer.

What exactly do you think a tortoise would like to do while he is on holiday?

legacy walk home

Going back a week or so, this was the next stage of my (picture heavy) homeward journey, turning south off Whitechapel Road and into Assembly Passage. If I were describing this legacy trail by scent, I would have mentioned the time when Whitechapel smelled of malt from the local brewery - there was a line of breweries dating back hundreds of years along a spring line . I can clearly remember cycling through the malty haze on my way to work in Hackney Wick. Assembly Passage on the other hand was full of picklers, only recently disappeared.

Assembly Passage was a good short cut to drop south when my journey to work took me across the river. It runs under the old assembly rooms where, John tells me, on the authority of no less a person than the Bishop of London, political clubs used to meet in the late eighteenth century. You can even find ghost houses.

Circling back again to Stepney Green through the backroads, one end is lined with grand restored houses. Forty years ago they were rather less grand - one of them, possibly this one, was the local careers office where I went to get my first national insurance card.

I've always liked this little neck of the woods. It lives up to it's name - it is greener and quieter away from the mayhem of the main road. And it has probably the best bit of road paving in the whole borough, lovely faded blue crackled bricks


Further along is Stepping Stones farm, probably the least glam of our local city farms, constantly struggling to stay solvent or, most recently, holding off threats to take over the land as a dump for waste from the CrossRail project. One corner of the farm still has ruins from the old school and, all round the edge, shoehorned into the tiniest spaces, are little vegetable gardens, admired longingly by the young goats in the field beyond.

I decided to walk back to Mile End Park through the Ocean Estate, what would once have been called a "council estate", the oldest blocks of flats similar to the ones I was brought up as a child, but rather more romantically names after seafarers, seas and oceans - Pacific,Arabian, Ionian, Barents, Bengal, Bothnia, Bantry, Solway. Bits of it are run down and waiting improvement, even so, people have made little gardens and grown tomatoes on back balconies. And leave little signs of hope.

For the last bit of my walk, I snuck into Mile End Park and went in the sense garden, just tucked away from the main road. There are little nooks and crannies, with people taking the chance of a bit of peace and quiet, young couples and older people enjoying the rather luscious planting.

And on the pond, look closely, a moorhen nesting and her mate bringing her food.

After that, over the green bridge and home for me too.

legacy

When my dad died 22 years ago, he left an envelope on top of the sideboard with the savings he put aside while he was off work sick, with instructions that some of this was to buy the pram for the baby I was expecting. He was a man who lived for the present. There was no pension, no other savings.

When I started to get little knots in the palm of my hand and wonky little fingers I realised that he had left me another legacy - Dupuytrens Contracture or "Vikings Disease". And it made me laugh and feel close to him.

On the walk back from the hospital at Whitechapel today to check out my hands- no need for surgery yet, keep doing the down dogs -I broke with habit and walked on the south side of the road. That's where I found this coade stone face. As a child, I was fascinated by the coade stone faces on the terraced houses on the walk to Whitchapel but I'd never come across this one because it was off our beat. What a jolly looking chap he is with his twinkly eyes.

I zigzagged my way home down streets I liked, and less familiar ones, and found lots of other stuff. To follow.

cider and roses

I had to meet someone in Hyde Park yesterday. It's not my favourite park. It's big and I can never get my bearings. Trying to find the building I was looking for and puzzled by the criss-crossing paths, I felt like I was out on the Steppes waiting for some apocalyptic horsemen to come and find me. I'd already been waylaid by the the Rose Garden. Roses aren't a favourite either. But the enclosed space and the sheer volume of flowers harboured the most wonderful scent. I was standing there like a fool breathing it all in (did I have time to take a snap, no! too late already) and a man with a brolly came towards me. "Isn't the scent wonderful?" I said, hoping this would make me look less like a loony. "Mmm" replied Bill Nighy. Not love actually.

I eventually found my quarry. Tried to head back to Victoria, ended up at the wrong end of the park (this with a map, too). An eye test, dilated eyeballs, a taxi ride to meet a friend (extravagance the result of great tardiness and fuzzy eyesight), a sprint through Tate Britain, and then my reward.

Sheeps Nose, Yarlington Mill, Brown Snout and Foxwhelp. Cider and Poetry. Almost love, actually.

holiday romance

So it's the end of the holiday, not all spent at home. We spent a couple of days on the estuarine beaches of the North Kent coast (on this particular day, Graveney Marshes o). I love the sound of these spaces, They're not silent, but gently quiet, the water and mud sissing softly and oystercatchers piping. The smell of the beach changes from place to place, seaweedy in place and in others sweet from the crop of crambe maritima.

There were scatterings of yellow horned poppies.

And here, and further along the coast, cloudlets of Painted Ladies, on the beach and in the tea gardens above it.

We stopped off on the way home and collected a bag of seaweed for the asparagus. I'm not sure how much good it really does. As we were planting the leeks late this afternoon with only a few people around, parakeets screeching above us, and a gentle breeze taking the edge off the still hot sun, the smell of the sea drifted across from the asparagus bed every now and again. Even if it doesn't really do that much for the asparagus, it at least makes me feel that all is well with the world.

holidays at home: the plot

I realise that I have not mentioned the plot much lately. This was down to my general pissed-offness with the inconsistency of various collective decisions made and some unnecessary unpleasantness related to over-loud radios - all too boring and irritating as only allotments can be. I'm over it, at least for the time being, and in fact everything is coming along very nicely, despite a late start due to my bad mood. For the record, and at the risk of tempting the allotment gods, it seems that we may have escaped the dreaded curling potato haulms; the culprit according to the RHS may well be the manure from the farm, either too fresh or laced with something unpleasant.

There's a healthy showing of sugar snap peas, the beans are in, and various tomatoes. The outdoor sown courgettes and pumpkins are showing. The beetroot are pathetically patchy (should I soak the seeds before sowing perhaps?), the garlic only mildly rusty, the birds have ignored the cabbages, and the cut and come again lettuce are not only doing well, but taste good too. With great restraint, we stopped cutting the asparagus a little while back as it's only in its second year. It's looking lovely and ferny and, so far, only a handful (literally, now squashed) have been seen.

I've given up on onions - too much space for too little reward last year. But the sputnicky allium christophii - ahh!!!! Out of this world.