Author: coronet22

November 17

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Looking at this laden apple tree, you may think “The Writer” and I have been venturing into the countryside, walking through charming villages, visiting the Manor House before feeding the ducks on the pond and and sipping tea from china cups accompanied by WI lemon drizzle cake served on gingham table cloths in the local teashop.(Sorry, got carried away with that last bit). It may surprise you to learn that this sight is actually in the heart of Soho, only a few hundred yards from our front door.

This extraordinary Georgian house is owned by one, David Bieda, who bought it, derelict, in 1993 and lived in it for three years without a bath or indoor lavatory and with only coal fires for heating. The original wooden panelling and shutters were the only things still in reasonable condition

The house was originally owned and lived in by John Meard Junior, Master of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters, who worked with Sir Chrisopher Wren on the wood carvings in St. Paul’s.

Taking on its restoration wasn’t quite a leap in the dark for Bieda, as he had presided over a great deal of restoration work in and around Covent Garden as chairman of the Seven Dials Trust. But the house has 18 rooms and he surely didn’t reckon on the work taking nearly 20 years to complete, even with the grants from English Heritage and Westminster Council.

The house is unique in the area and has yielded some important pieces of architectural information. David and London archeologists were particularly excited to discover two cesspits in the house. This might not sound particularly thrilling, until you read this on his Website, “68 Dean St. A Short History“.

“ Early 18c town houses rarely had sewers and little is known about water and waste management. 68 Dean Street has now provided the first example of a complete waste + water management system of the period. The cesspit for ‘upstairs’ was discovered in the rear vault. A combined servants’ cesspit and soakaway was discovered in one of the front vaults (with a frog hibernating in it). Objects retrieved include a number of long ‘scent’ bottles probably used for washing, a make up set with make up still inside one pot, an early 19c ‘solid rouge’ and in the front an intact port or stout bottle c.1760.”

Nowadays, David lets out the house for film shoots and conducts small tours to help with its upkeep. He’s a familiar figure in Soho and we often encounter him keeping a beady eye on what’s going on. His preferred uniform in recent weeks has been a visor rather than a mask and he and my husband have an ongoing dispute as to whose social distancing is correct. A couple of weeks ago spotting us having breakfast outside a local hotel, he even nipped home for a tape measure to make sure he and “The Writer” were chatting at the correct distance.

The tree has yielded up to 80 apples in the past and, amazingly – and wonderfully – passers-by seem more inclined to smile at such an unexpected sight than to steal them. Last year, he held a Dean Street apple pie party. No chance of one this year, of course and, though he has offered us some apples, they look so beautiful on the tree, I can’t bear to accept.

November 13

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When I was young, along with many other North London children, I used to look forward ,excitedly, to the conkers ripening on one particular Horse Chestnut tree in Regent’s Park. I was taken there by my Mother most days and kept close watch so I could be first to pounce as they fell. Windy days were best and the thrill of seeing the prickly green casing fall to the ground and opening it to find the chestnut glowing inside, like a jewel in a jewel box, is still with me over 60 years later.

Baking them in the oven, threading the string, marinading them in vinegar and actually fighting with them came an unsatisfactory second to the joy of discovery and ownership.

I visited that same tree in that same park a few days ago and there, to my surprise, long after the appointed time for them to have fallen and been gathered, was a trove of conkers scattered, neglected and mouldering, in the grass.

Where were the children fighting over the best and the biggest and the ones with a flat edge that would make stringing so much easier? Where were the mothers cautioning their younger siblings “Don’t you dare put that in your mouth!”

I knew there had been much fuss in the recent past over the safety of conker fights but had assumed the newspaper stories merely myths. But they were myths with power – to such an extent that, when the story took hold in the early 2000s that conker fights had been officially banned unless goggles were worn, the Health and Safety Executive felt called upon to issue an official denial.

Some schools did insist on goggles, then, but, according to a teacher from one of those same schools years later, it appears that neither warnings nor safety gear are required as children have simply lost interest in games that aren’t either organised or on the computer.

Some people have revived and organised conker fighting, even to the extent of Northampton running a World Championships, raising large amounts for charity. Inevitably it has had to be called off this year.

I guess scenes like this will never be repeated (Maybe if they were, some girls would be allowed in!).

As we leave the park, I can’t help collecting some of the unwanted conkers. They are by now hard and wrinkled. These burnished seeds that were once so prized are shrunken and dry.

As they sit on my desk in front of me, I feel sorry for them and try hard not to draw depressing human parallels.

November 11

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And so it has finally happened – We have a vaccine. And, unless the government changes its mind, my husband and I will be high up in the third tranche of people eligible for it.

The news I had been waiting for for so long hit me oddly when it came on Monday 9th. My first response was elation, then came a flood of anxieties in its wake:

Has it been sufficiently tested?

Would the Astrozenica one be better?

Is 90% efficacy enough?

Will I not feel safe until everyone has had it?

Will the Anti-Vaxxers ruin things for the rest of us?

After the anxieties came a slight pang of what I can only call sorrow. We have enjoyed our Lockdown. As I’ve reiterated so many times in this blog, we are constantly aware that we are the lucky ones. We have enough living space – both inside and out, a comfortable lifestyle, few job/money worries and no children to be anxious about or grandchildren near enough to hug. Above all, we have enjoyed each other’s company. We have both been able to continue working without inconvenience, I have loved slopping about in tracksuit bottoms without make up, not worrying about whether my stomach will stick out in what I’ve chosen to wear for the social events we used to attend at least twice – and sometimes up to four times – a week. (Nigella Lawson has been reported as saying she will be going on the 5:2 diet after Covid – not a food diet but a socialising one – 5 days alone and only 2 in company. I don’t for a moment suppose she meant it but I find it a most attractive idea – except that maybe 2 is too many.)

We have been pretty severe in our Lockdown. For two months, the only exercise we took was walking up and down our terrace or the hallway of our apartment. Shopping was entirely on line, apart from a kind neighbour who’d help out in an emergency. and the wonderful manager of our block. For months we saw no friends and still have only done so at a rigid social distance, and only two people have been in the apartment since March. Neither of us has had a haircut, been in a vehicle or travelled anywhere for eight months. The parks have been a Godsend. We love them and inhabit them almost daily. . We have watched far too much TV and read far too few books but have enjoyed even that. We have exercised to a reasonable extent and even cooked together on occasion.

How will re-entry be? What am I looking forward to? Foremost is laughing and arguing with friends in the flesh, rather than in their Zoom cages, eating out with them in rowdy groups in restaurants all over London.

Then there’s travelling. Pre-covid, I had convinced myself I’d had enough of travelling. Security measures had made the airports too uncomfortable to bother negotiating., I insisted. (Mind you, we did make 11 foreign trips last year.) Weirdly, however, the first fantasy to enter my head when our impending freedom was announced, was of eating bacon rolls in Heathrow Airport at breakfast time, waiting to board a ‘plane. Any ‘plane to anywhere. The second was of a week in a luxurious hotel, not having to make a bed, cook, clean or bag an Ocado delivery. The rest is only friends, friends, friends.

Now we have to bide our time, patiently stick to the rules of masking, hand-washing and social distancing we have so painstakingly learned, remember what life was like before and decide which parts of it we want back and which to discard. It could be the chance to press a re-set button for those of us fortunate enough not to have lost our jobs, or a loved one, or seen our businesses go bust.

For myself, I think it will be quite a time before I feel confident enough to ditch the masks, or embrace a distant acquaintance. And it will be even longer before I will be prepared to wear a non-elasticated waistband.

Our Soho surroundings are already altered. Everywhere, communal workspaces have sprung up. They look inviting and efficiently equipped but will they become instantly redundant if everyone continues to work from home? Restaurants, cafes and shops we used to frequent have gone, construction work has continued unhindered and the landscape boasts vast new buildings filling what were empty spaces pre-Covid.

The vaccine and possible end to the dangers of Covid is a subject which will occupy all our thoughts over the coming months, I imagine, and to which I will return in this blog. In the meantime, I’d love to know how other people felt when the news was announced. Do tell me .

One of the joys of travelling – meeting the locals.

November 8

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Well, I can never say outings with “The Writer” aren’t exciting. Today, we walk towards the cenotaph, hoping to see whatever curtailed Rememberance Day activity might be visible around it. In the event, we are met by a line of police blocking entry to Whitehall, backed up by several armed units, rifles at the ready.

We acknowledge ourselves beaten (unlike someon I could mention today) and opt for our usual park walk instead. Now you might think that was enough excitement for one Lockdown morning but I have to tell you, the real drama hadn’t even begun.

It was on our way home, nearing our apartment, that we embarked on a fairly regular homecoming conversation that goes something like this.

Me : “Salad for lunch, then?”

The Writer ” Yes, that’s what we planned this morning. Why, is there something else you’d rather have?”

Me: (vaguely) “No”

The Writer: “Are you sure?”

Me: (faintly) “Yes. Why, is there something you’d rather have”

The Writer: “Not really”

then after a pause

” There is the salt beef place”

Me: “Mmm”

The Writer “We could have a salt beef sandwich?”

Me: “Mmm”

The Writer: “Salt beef now and salad for supper?”

By this time we have drawn level with the salt beef bar and slowed, nonchalantly, to an amble, as though by accident. The writer stoops to re-tie his shoelace, then stands and we both happen to glance inside at the succulent beef, lined with ribbons of ivory fat, sitting in its tray.

Time passes…………

Both: “Go on then, let’s have a salt beef sandwich now and salad for supper”

The writer dives into the salt beef bar, then dives straight out again.

“One of them’s not wearing a mask”

“Oh”, I say, “Does that mean we’re not having the sandwich then?”

I witness a struggle of Biblical proportions going on behind the writer’s eyes until he turns on his heel and strides back into the shop.

Peering through the window I see him waving his arms about vigorously in the direction of an alarmed-looking shop assistant. The other assistants adopt the sort of firm stance – feet planted wide apart and arms crossed in front of them – that tells me they are not going to be messed with by an old, masked, man, who, for all they know, might be about to rob the till.

After what seems like an hour, I see the unmasked girl gingerly move her mask from its fetching position under her chin to its more useful one over her face and “The Writer” emerges, triumphant, with his carrier bag of sandwiches.

As we sit at the kitchen table enjoying the delectable salt beef, a little cold after we have disinfected the door handle, then the door keys, then the carrier bag, then the greaseproof wrapping around the sandwiches, then our ‘phones and spectacles and, lastly, our hands, “The Writer” pauses his chewing and grows pensive.

“Do you think I’ve caught it from staying so long in there persuading her to put her mask on?”.

Nov 7th

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A reader of this blog asked me yesterday whether it was going to be photographs only during this Lockdown. It isn’t, I promise, but I have to share these from our apartment terrace of yesterday’s dawn. “The writer”,who was making our early-morning tea at the time, called me in to look and I wonder if this is the new dawn we’ve been waiting for since the U.S elections?

Nov 5th

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There’s nothing much to add to these pictures really. We chose to live in the centre of the city but not in the kind of maelstrom that swirled around us last night. Van loads of police cluttered the streets, helicopters dinned overhead and The Million Mask march kicked off the first day of Lockdown, protesting against it until the early hours.

October 24

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Don’t eat an apple in St. James’s Park unless you’re happy to be mobbed by iridescent -green, loudly-screeching, ring-necked parakeets.

At the last official count in 2012, there were over 32,000 of them all over London. Goodness knows what the tally is now.

The parrots are the subject of almost as many urban myths as there are birds, the choicest being that;

Jimi Hendrix released a breeding pair after a wild night in the 60s.

They escaped from the set of The African Queen- never mind that there are no Parakeets in the film.

They escaped from Victorian aviaries.

Burglars let them out of a secret aviary when they burgled Georgs Michael’s flat in 1990.

They escaped during a drunken argument between Boy George and George Michael in a flat they once shared in Hampstead.

They seem to have increased in number and tameness recently. In St. James’s Park crowds of visitors gather under the Parakeets’ favourite tree (I don’t know and can’t seem to find out, what type of tree it is) and vie to see how many birds they can attract, those having brought only birdseed coming a miserable second to anyone with an apple. A sign appeared close to the tree a while ago advising visitors not to feed them as the droppings from the handfuls of seed were attracting vermin. But this morning, the sign had gone, and the feeders flocked as enthusiastically as ever.

As with everything everywhere , there are dissenters. Some feel they will wipe out our native birds, others that they will strip bare any tree they inhabit. There has even been talk of culling, though seemingly without any enthusiasm. Whatever their crimes (If any) they’re glorious to see – with the brightest green plumage and vivid red beaks. You can hear their piercing shrieks from the entrance to the park, far from their favourite tree and I must admit, beautiful and bold though they are, I wouldn’t fancy them screeching outside my window.

There’s even a book about them” The Parakeeting of London:an adventure in Gonzo Ornithology” by Nick Hunt.

October 17

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Helicopter noise is driving me INSANE. As the cacophony of building work dies away at lunchtime on Saturdays, the helicopter racket takes over. We don’t find out what’s going on in central London the way most people do, by Googling – we find out by being subjected to hour after hour of helicopters hovering almost directly overhead and THEN Googling, in desperation to discover whether/when whatever they are watching might be over.

Last night, it was the crowds just down the street from our apartment celebrating the beginning of a Tier 2 Lockdown by gathering in large crowds, hugging, kissing and enjoying a mask-less fiesta, having decided that, since from today they would not be able to mix two households, they would mix as many as possible while they still had the opportunity.

And today, the helicopters were back – this time patrolling the anti-lockdown march virtually on our doorstep:

OK, I admit it’s not exactly Apocalypse Now but, believe me, the noise is horrendous,even from this dot in the sky.

I love the city and I love Soho and, even as I read every day that people are flocking to buy houses in the country, I know I’d rather be where the buzz is – even if at times, it’s a buzz I can’t bear.