London Lives

The clocks have gone forward, there is a definite sniff of spring in the air today. It’s one of those beautiful soft sunny days that never appear to really blossom, but remain fat with promise. The neighbourhood cats are sitting nonchalantly on the pavements (and stalking the nearby woodland). I have been the good citizen this morning and filled in my Census form.

March has been reasonably prolific for me: I’ve completed a short story, a piece of flash fiction and a piece of micro-fiction. I’ll see how these do in competitions. Meanwhile, I’ll focus on some new work. I’m carrying around plenty of ideas in my head, jostling for space. I need to carry on getting them down, honing them until they feel something like complete.

Today is the loveliest day for ages; possibly more than a month. Brilliant sky and soft chilly breeze. Even though the snow looked lovely (and was here for seemingly ages), there were very few brilliant blue days.

Walking to the supermarket. Domestic stuff, not very exciting really. Coffee, rosemary, goat’s cheese and so on. It’s about 25 minutes or so away and there are others that are nearer. I could get the bus, but sometimes it’s good to trundle through the streets. Particularly today.

Today I take a different route on the way there, zig-zagging along the quiet afternoon streets. The bare trees are starkly outlined against the brilliant blue above, while the streets below lay in shadow. Planes slip idly across the horizon.

On the way home, I move along streets I’ve never walked along before. There are whole sets of lovely roads with sleek rows of old houses with white paintwork, glistening in the lowering sun.  Barely a soul around. A beautiful black Scottish Terrier passes, looking like a brush carefully sniffing its way along the path.

And home now, where a soft yellow glow is beginning to meet the brilliant blue. All over my flat, I find shards of sunlight in unexpected corners. Even at this hour, there is a sharp sliver of moon high in the winter sky.

Christmas trees just never quite lose their magic, do they?

on the Number 13 bus…

I met up with a good friend today (yes, you know who you are) to mooch to Muswell Hill for food and natter. It was fairly blustery walking weather and he suggested walking there instead of getting the bus (it’s probably about two miles).

It was indeed good walking weather as we made our way over Crouch Hill and into Crouch End, only to find our path halted by the large Oxfam bookshop there just past the church tower.  Our plan to get there in half an hour was immediately cast aside in favour of a browse among the sections. This place manages to be neatly organised while offering promise in each section. Philosophy, thrillers and contemporary fiction all reside here. And there are vinyl albums with lurid covers and singles for fifty pence. What’s not to love? A charity shop hasn’t been this seductive for a long time.

Now, one of my reasons for increased use of public libraries is to borrow all the books I want and to avoid coming home with armfuls of them from charity shops. I didn’t come out with armfuls, but did manage to spend a fiver on two of them: Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine is always a good read (and a great study for plotting and psychological characterisation for other writers). I’ve also been looking out for Andrew O’Hagan’s The Missing for some time; I enjoyed reading his related articles in The Guardian in the nineties.

In truth, I could have spent at least twenty pounds on books from there today, but managed to restrain myself. My friend bought some books too and we continued on our way, ambling on up to the higher ground of Muswell Hill. Nice food in the restaurant and a small jaunt in another bookshop (just minutes from early Sunday closing, saving us from being led even further astray…)

Then the bus home and a drink in the sprawling pub nearby. Real ale in a proper speckled glass with a handle for him and a lush Rioja for me.

There’s a good sniff of Autumn in the air now.

For it was written that There Must Be Hares at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. It’s the law. These are by the late Barry Flanagan RA and are wonderful.

Lots of splendid stuff as usual (the Weston Rooms are my favourite; packed with smaller pictures of all kinds). Familiar favourites were there too (Bill Jacklin and Ken Howard), along with loads of new people to look up. In one of the main rooms, David Mach RA exhibited a piece called Silver Streak: a fabulous gorilla made of wire coat hangers. Stunning and clever.

Afterwards I wandered through Shepherd Market, a smart little enclave of restaurants in Mayfair. The area was still waking up at 12.30. These shabby old buildings (below) are nearby. An amazing contrast.

Later, I walked from Maida Vale to Paddington. Not in a very ordered or direct way, but along streets of mansion blocks overlooking Paddington Recreation Ground and others with semi-detached houses and smart cars outside. There was almost no one about. I’ve said this before, but sometimes London’s silence is astounding. It was like a silent suburban street from another time.

Back in Paddington, I ambled around some streets getting background for my novel. It’s not enough to look at maps on the internet or wade through archives (useful those these are). It’s important to walk it and to feel it. My brother said recently that I was having a big love affair with London. He’s right.

Maps are rarely just about geography…

So says the pamphlet for this is free exhibition at the British Library and – even sweeter – I had the afternoon off work to have lunch with a pal and to see it.

There are plenty of early maps of the world with beautifully-inscribed  names and others which were displayed to convey their owners’ power. There were re-imagined maps of London as well as UK county and parish maps and a lovely Victorian schoolroom map of Europe with the names of countries and places carefully picked out in clear font. Some of those names and places shifted in early 20th Century Europe and then shifted right back again as the century closed. There were great propaganda maps, too.

The BL has a splendid philatelic collection too, displayed in pull-out glass cases. I could do with some of those at home to put things in.

On the way home I see  a woman on the bench outside Tesco’s clutching a can of Special Brew and carefully writing inside a birthday card.  In the next street to mine, the kids from the flats rush out into the road (no checking for traffic – they rush fearlessly out). Chasing and chasing one another, bikes flung down in the road as they rush along the pavements with sticks. I’m listening to The Smiths’ How Soon is Now.

The man who lives opposite took his dog out for a walk yesterday evening. It was not yet dark but the day was still blustery. The Springer Spaniel strained at the leash, pulling him along, then stopped suddenly to sniff at something on the pavement. I haven’t seen the man very often; he is thin with glasses, perhaps in his seventies. He waited patiently until the dog finished its explorations. Then the pair moved on. Seconds later, the dog stopped to sniff at something on a wall. Again the man waited patiently, the strong breeze blustering around him. And on they walked, stopping along the road as far as I could see.

I wondered what he was like as a young man and whether he’d always had such patience or if it had arrived with age.

This man is all our fathers.

Over the last few weeks I’ve expanded my living room by looking for other spaces in which to write. This has led me to those apparently unsung heroes: libraries. All the boroughs have a number of libraries, with a couple of larger ones in each of them. You used to have to live or work in the relevant borough to get a membership card, but no more! Now you only need a UK address to join any of them.

I have mentioned earlier the lovely reference libraries and writing spaces at Marylebone, Paddington and Westminster Reference Library (all part of City of Westminster Libraries). Now, I have added City of London Libraries to my list of Spaces. I spent some time at the Guildhall Library, which has a brilliant and extensive specialist collection about the history of London and is a great space in which to write: modernity among so much history. Lovely bookshop too; I bought a postcard of Fleet Street from c1905.

Similarly, the Barbican Library has a splendid London collection and a huge range of books covering hundreds of other subjects. The Barbican itself is intriguing (an iconic 1960s living space and arts centre built on the ruins of the bombed area of Cripplegate). You wander along the Moorgate Highwalk  to get to the arts centre and are entering a special concrete space.

The thing that’s struck me about all the different libraries is just how well-used they are. Westminster’s are busy on Sundays with teenagers doing homework and noodling on laptops. The City’s libraries have a broader range of people there at any given time than I had anticipated. So, you might need to wait for that desk or one of the computers. But this is a good thing, right? These are important public spaces that are being well-used by, well, the public. Long live it. It seems the libraries are not such unsung heroes after all.

I plan to investigate the Bishopsgate Institute next. These spaces are important.

Anyway, it’s nearly Easter. The weather is (inevitably) somewhat blustery and rainy. And the libraries are closed for four days now.

Now that I’ve been bitten again by the writing bug, it’s good to explore other writing spaces and to research ideas. So this week I joined Westminster Libraries (one of them is a good research library too). Off to lovely Marylebone to  collect my card and explore the facilities. The upstairs has an extensive research collection and study area and I sat for a while reading up on John Dickson Carr and locked room mysteries.

Then I hopped on the bus to Paddington to look in another of the borough’s libraries. All fab again. Both are in lovely old buildings. I shall look in the Charing Cross one and the Westminster Research Library this coming week or at the weekend (although I have an LSE lecture and a friend’s play on Saturday).

This is intriguing, too: Westminster’s Archives Centre is serialising an 1846 diary written by Nathaniel Bryceson, a Victorian clerk in Pimlico. His mother was born in 1797 and Nathaniel himself died in 1911. That’s just two generations crossing a very significant period of time. Incredible. I look forward to reading the entries.

When I left the library in Paddington, the day had become suddenly spring-like.

Gloucester Terrace, London W2

Porchester Square, London W2