A Covid-19 report from the heart of the City
The only things thriving in Tier 4 Soho are art and doughnuts.
Down the road from our apartment is a gallery featuring cherubs of varying degrees of obstreperousness:
And in the parallel street, a rather more benign display beckons the very few passers -by.
Actually, I’m not sure which is the more tempting – or the least.
If you don’t fancy either of these displays, what about this unique abstract, created only last night by “The Writer” as he tripped up the stairs carrying a glass of red wine!
It’s been hard to write for a while, mainly because things are changing so quickly . Going into Tier 4 affects “The Writer” and me hardly at all. We were having Christmas lunch on our own and will still do so – the only thing making any difference to the meal being the queues outside supermarkets and the hope that one of our kind neighbours will brave the crowds to buy us a chicken. And if that doesn’t work out, I’ll be happy with a Christmas lunch of Rogan Josh, Murgh Masala, Korma and Jalfrezi – all of which we have in the freezer.
I am back to getting up in the middle of the night to chase delivery slots as I was in the first Lockdown and, in between refreshing the “Book Delivery “page , wondering what the implications are of the accelerated spread of the new strain of this virus. For example, does it mean we should keep even further away from people than before? Or does it mean it permeates masks more easily and, most importantly of all, is the vaccine still efficient at tackling it? We listen to and watch the news constantly but I still can’t find out the answers to these questions. We are told the vaccine will still work but surely no-one be certain yet? And, if that is the case, why will it work, given that the ‘flu vaccine has to be changed every year to accommodate mutations?
Our lives seem to be standing still. All the news comes in from elsewhere: Our friends, Peter and Amy, have had their first dose of vaccine and we are envious. Not since I was six and three-quarters have I wished to be older than I am. And, in philosophical mood after a hospital visit to have more stents slid into his arteries, Tod sends this report headed “The Sadness of Covid”
Overheard at The Royal Brompton Hospital today:
“I’ve come to meet a friend’s wife. He is in the High Dependency Unit here. Can I wait for his wife here in reception. She should be here soon. She is coming to be here when they switch off her husbands life support. I have come to be here to help her … it’s going to be tough for her…”
I also learned from the Thai nurse dealing with me today that she was recently baptised and is cooking a turkey crown for Christmas.?
Life is an unending stream of such juxtapositions…
Meanwhile, helicopters buzz outside, presiding over each new wave of anti – lockdown marchers, the streets of London are emptied of life, apart from jolly knots of construction workers doffing their hard hats and taking their breaks sitting on the pavement in chatty, densely-packed groups. And I am behind 6,029,525 people on the vaccine calculator, meaning I’ll get my dose sometime in the next millennium. I don’t know whether to be elated or depressed – or just regard the calculator as the nonsense parlour game it surely is.
We had not envisaged standing in the street today, fighting with a complete stranger.
Mind you, “The Writer” has form in this area. We stopped driving in London because I feared someone he was haranguing would get out of their car, stroll over to ours and knife him.
And then there was the bank: A whole line of disgruntled customers turning on him as he complained about slow queue movement, shouting that it wasn’t the teller’s fault and threatening to manhandle him off the premises.
And ,as for his interaction with pavement cyclists, and light-jumping cyclists and speeding cyclists…………….enough said.
This incident began quite civilly:
I had stopped to photograph a poster on a wall near our apartment.
My main reason for photographing it was (a) that I have never heard anyone calling a human rights defender in the matter of Covid a “Do gooder”. I’ve heard many epithets applied to them but that isn’t one of them. And ( b) I wondered who “the Genderqueer Human Rights Deity”of the poster was and thought I might look up her/him/them when I got home.
As with most rows, I can’t quite remember how it started. But the woman passing by immediately assumed I was photographing the poster because I disagreed with it and began to berate my husband and me for wearing masks. Before long, we were standing in the street yelling at one another as passers by stared incredulously.
Like holocaust deniers who spend their every waking moment measuring the distance from the camp dormitories to the ovens in order to prove mass gassing was impossible, this woman knew intimately the work of every epidemiologist, virologist and immunologist in the world – except any of the experts by whom we have been guided – and quoted at length each of their theories against mask-wearing, social distancing and hand-washing. “The Writer vigorously defended our position in favour of keeping as safe as possible at increasing volume and with escalating irritation and, though she didn’t actually get as far as asserting that Bill Gates was planning to microchip us with every vaccine shot, that couldn’t have been far off.
Her arguments that she ‘didn’t believe” in Covid-19, that the whole thing was “a hoax” and that masks were of no use, were familiar to us of course, but she was the first person we’d ever heard express them at close quarters. The exchange ended when “The Writer” protested that part of his reason for wearing a mask was to protect her, and she replied that she “didn’t need his protection” and scoffed at the idea that some might be quite pleased to have it. At this, we ‘made our excuses and left’
Back home, I looked up “The Gender Queer Human Rights Deity” and discovered that the drawing was by an artist called Rachel House and was her first poster for “Flying Leaps” a collection of artists whose aims are to” Exhibit artists’ work on street poster sites to make unexpected, thought-provoking contributions to the urban spectacle“.
House’s poster is described thus:
“With her debut flyingleaps poster, House is emphasising that human rights include trans rights and genderqueer positivity. Displayed on the streets to coincide with International Human Rights Day on December 10th, House’s Genderqueer Human Rights Deity (2020) is one of a series of captivating single panel works that feature an ouroboros – a snake devouring its own tail – symbolising the endless cycle of life, death and rebirth. The sloughing of skin suggests the transmigration of souls and the tail biting snake is also a symbol of fertility.
In the void of the snake circle, House has created variously serene, always arresting faces made up of ancient glyphs, signs and figurative details. Patterned textures and further protective motifs in the design afford a distinctive character to the works so that while they all rail against assorted injustices each has its own particular expression. There’s an owl-like Minerva, goddess of wisdom, quality to them that suggests a measured, calm, righteous questioning rather than aggressive confrontation. A thoughtful approach that is something of a breath of fresh air in these febrile times”.
I wish House could have seen us standing toe-to-toe shouting at each other, heedless of the poisoned droplets passing between us, and, unlike her owl-like, Goddess Minerva figures, failing dismally to maintain the “measured, calm righteous questioning rather than aggressive confrontation” her poster depicts. Would she have been disgusted with us? Or would she just have been thrilled that her work had produced just the sort of “happening” the sixties would have been proud of – An ‘Urban spectacle” indeed.
A triumph for provocative art, then, and a sad reflection on the human condition when three reasonably intelligent human beings are unable to maintain a calm exchange of views.
In my post of June 11th, when London was like a ghost town under complete Lockdown, I featured the dramatic and perceptive portraits of Soho residents and workers by photographer, Richard Piercy, in his Someone oF Soho Exhibition, shown on the sadly boarded up- restaurants of Soho.
Today, walking down Oxford St., I was confronted, once again, by his portrayals of our neighbours and friends on the video wall of the clothing store Flannels, at number 161-167 Oxford St..
I’ve always felt that the brilliant and expensive technology of this huge video wall has never quite found anything as exciting as itself to display. The medium has always eclipsed the message. But now, on a dark and rainy December day, it has finally come into its own.
We Soho-ites spend a great deal of time complaining that the heart is being torn from our distinctive corner of London – by Crossrail, Covid and expensive developments that drive out the creative industries, music venues, fabric shops and brothels for which Soho was famous – so it’s heartwarming to see that, in these portraits, Richard Piercy has captured what looks like a bunch of interesting, distinctive people whose individuality appears, for now, to have survived the attempted homogenisation of Soho.
As Piercy says, ” A neighbourhood’s landscape may change but it’s the people who define its character.”
Given that the landscapes of our High Streets are already undergoing great change, Piercy’s work carries an optimistic message.
The exhibition is on 24 hours a day up to and including December 13th.
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A quick catch – up to my post of November 29th about trees being planted along London’s Regent Street. Most of the planters are already filled and by Christmas the tress have reached the full length of the street.
Shame there won’t be a job for this jaunty scarecrow we spotted almost at the entrance to Queen Mary’s Rose Garden in Regents’ Park.
We’re unlocked and out and about once more . However, we still won’t go indoors.
“The Writer” has this nightmare that he has been called up for his vaccination and goes down with Covid on his way to have the jabs, so we continue to be obsessively careful.
Our first trip was to our favourite Dean St. Town House restaurant for lunch.
They have been meticulous about the regulations throughout, using only every alternate one of the tables shown here.When we come with Tod and Trish, they let us have two tables so we can sit far enough away from our great friends to satisfy even my husband and shout intimacies to one another across the space. We ate fish and chips in the rain and cold today, unsurprisingly the only people outside, and received stares of amused wonderment from passers-by. But, oh the bliss of not having to load the dishwasher!! And, yes, I am aware what a First World complaint that is.
During our brief tour of Soho after luch in an effort to walk off about half of one chip, I noticed once again, that, despite the joyous unlocking, Berwick St., site of a food market since the eighteenth century, had only one trader throughout its entire length.
OK. it was a dreary day but there used to be at least 20 stalls here, come rain or shine.
The single remaining stall is The Soho Dairy
Robin Smith, the owner, looked cheerful enough but that was a brave face. He complains that the council increased the pitch fees for stallholders by twenty percent in the middle of July and backdated them three months, at a time when most Soho workers are working from home so there is hardly any footfall. He is convinced that the only reason the council could have behaved in this way is that they want to get rid of the market. I hope they don’t. We don’t shop there much because the truth is that the produce, particularly the fruit and veg., is of pretty variable quality but surely improving such an historic market is the solution, not getting rid of it?
I am currently conducting a survey:
Why is it that every man I have ever known removes his sweater by the following method?
1. lift both arms over the head, then bending at the elbow, reach down behind the back (how far down is a matter of age and fitness) and grab a handful of sweater . (Fig. 1)
2. Drag the handful of wool (or whatever) over the top of the head, employing both hands in order to force its progress (Fig.2)
3. Continue dragging (increasing the degree of force as required) until the sweater is free of the head.
4. Exit the sleeves in a flurry.
Where as every woman I know removes a jumper so:
1.Cross arms in front and, with arms still crossed, place each hand just below the middle of the sweater and gently take hold of a handful of fabric on each side.
(Fig.1)
2. Pull the sweater upwards, uncrossing the arms as you go while keeping the hands in position.
(Fig.2)
3. Just before the sweater reaches the head, exit the sleeves, one at a time, to make head-clearance smoother.
Why this difference?
Is it because women spend more money on clothes and so take care of them better?
Is it that Mummies don’t bother to teach boys how to remove a sweater without damaging it?
Or is it just that I have encountered peculiar men?
Walking down Hernrietta Place off Regent St. this morning, “The Writer” and I were surprised to see a tree advancing towards us on the pavement After we had made and laughed at our own jokes about seeing that Birnam Wood had come to Dunsinane, and having ascertained that it was actually being transported by a digger, we rounded the corner into Regent St. thinking no more about it.
It was then we noticed more trees being carried by diggers and inserted into large oddly-shaped planters.
Being incurably nosy, and spotting that the man on the right of this picture, aside from trying to eat a sandwich, was also giving instructions, I crossed the road to find out what was happening.
He told me that trees are being planted the length of Regent St. by The Crown Estate “as a response to Covid -19” They are an 18-month experiment in helping to improve air quality and boost biodiversity. Each planter will be filled with flowers, seating will be built in and, eventually, there will be artwork on the pavement around each tree.
The man with the sandwich turned out to be Chris Stanton, designer of the whole project.
He told me he was having the most exciting day, seeing the trees planted and his project come to fruition.
“There will be different kinds of trees and at the end of the experiment, Londoners will be asked what they think about the scheme, which trees they prefer and so on”.
This is how it will look when it’s finished.
The pavements have already been widened so there is only one lane in each direction. Not sure how drivers are coping with this. It’s eight months since “The Writer” and I have been in any form of transport so I haven’t had the chance to hear bus passengers or taxi drivers complaining and there’s hardly any traffic at the moment so it would be hard to tell the effect..
Anyway, I think the scheme looks extremely attractive and welcome it. I can’t help thinking, though, about the response to Rory Stewart, when he suggested exactly this when he was standing as Mayor of London in January.
“Rory Stewart prompts backlash after suggesting Regent Street should be lined with trees to tackle climate change” bellowed The Evening Standard
“Backlash” was over-egging it a bit as it seems to have been a Twitter storm (Actually, not even a storm, more of a shower) mainly from people complaining that “trees would spoil the sweeping view that Nash had designed” and that the street is “an elegant and uplifting architectural achievement just as it is”.
Let’s see if they change their minds.
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It has turned out to be a day of trees. On arriving home, “The Writer”, having “appeared” by Zoom at the recent Mumbai Literature Festival, received an emailed certificate announcing that each writer who contributed to the festival has had a tree planted in his or her name and that, as one of them, he had been “honoured with. bountiful tree”.
Lovely idea.
So exciting is our life during Lockdown that one of the highlights of yesterday was my husband shouting to me to come into the kitchen to see that, having left his glasses on the worktop next to the apple corer, he’d accidentally made Groucho Marks!
Regular readers of this blog may remember
that on November 13th I wrote about the
fun of playing conkers in my youth,
having first baked them in the oven to harden them.
My reminiscences provoked this outrage from Warwick Charlesworth
in Australia.
"It is not often that I am driven to rage
by anything you have written in your blogs
but I felt that you had gone way beyond
decency in your latest conker effort.
It was with horror that I discovered
you were an oven roaster.
That was sooooo cheating
I cannot believe you did such a thing.
The windowsill was allowed,
but ovens were for those who had to win at
all costs which I would never have thought
you would be.
It was always obvious at school
when someone had done the dirty
and artificially hardened their nut.
Of course it was always denied
but you don't get to be a "sixer"
without some sort of intervention.
I think my knuckles still have the scars
from others who couldn't get their aim right.
What a wonderful memory to revive though.
I had completely forgotten the humble conker
as it's not something you see here very much.
Just up the road from our house in Southend,
there was an old hospital, on the corner of Chalkwell avenue,
and it had the most magnificent tree
which always produced a wonderful crop
of those golden brown wonders.
To walk home from the bus stop
and find one always made a bad day so much better.
To then polish them until they glowed
was a boyhood delight, such simple pleasures
in such a less complicated time.
I shall give thought to forgiving you
I just hope all you opponents have".
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A great example of inventiveness during lockdown was this makeshift gym I noticed on the Duke of York steps leading down from Carlton House Terrace to The Mall.
I’ve often said that, for me, serendipity is one of the most important things Lockdown has stolen. Outings (when they are allowed at all) have to be planned according to the weather as we won’t go indoors, restaurants have to be recce’d to make sure outside tables are the right distance apart, meals have to be scheduled so that deliveries produce the necessary ingredients and not unusable substitutions. Friends can’t turn up unexpectedly and drop in for a cup of tea.
This morning turned out to be a thrilling exception. We decided we’d walk in Marylenone for a change, neither of us being in the mood to commune with nature in a park. We left a dismal, deserted Soho and, behold, as we approached Marylebone High St. ,we were transported to a different world. People scurried along the streets, Crowds queued outside Waitrose – apparently open long before Sunday’s legal 12pm. More crowds queued outside the Ginger Pig butcher, whose huge sausage rolls my husband has been known to buy when supposedly out shopping for groceries, and sit munching in the nearby little park, pubs were open, serving beer to drink on the pavement.We gazed around us as though woken from a dream It was then we came upon the largest queue of all. It snaked round the block and down the road and ended in a Farmer’s Market that used to take place every Sunday in a large car park now too valuable for cars or markets and currently the foundation for a vast block of luxury flats.
But the market had refused to be beaten and had stubbornly migrated into the surrounding area. Stalls thronged side streets, barriers had been erected, marshalls controlled the crowds , letting in only safe numbers for social distancing and families were actually enjoying a day out.
After a brief altercation – or should I say discussion? – “The Writer” gives in to my curiosity and agrees to join the queue. (Normally, he would forgo that which he wants most in the world if the penalty for obtaining it is even five minutes spent queueing. Today, though, even he is forced to admit there is nothing urgent on which he needs to spend his time). And so we join the queue, not sure where it’s heading or how long it will take to get there, not really wanting to shop but wanting to be part of it all, part of the fun. And this once-ordinary, everyday experience has become, because of its scarcity in Lockdown, just that – fun.
We stroll among the stalls, buy some Bramley apples to satisfy our current baked apple craze, gaze at honey-coloured croissants, olive-studded loaves and palely -glimmering cheeses. Despite only recently having finished breakfast, we know we were not going to resist an unexpected food treat. I station myself at a stall laden with slices of cold pizza. Surely this would be perfect?.
“The Writer” joins me but at once his customary market caution kicks in, born of many disappointments, over many years, in markets up and down the Kingdom. Never buy something at the first stall, is his Mantra. You will rue it before you reach the last, as something better will always turn up and you’ll be too full to enjoy it.
And so, we peer into every stall, inching our way down the street, like detectives seeking a fugitive – until we reach the last one where all his prognostications are justified. We smell it before we see it, The Parson’s Nose, serving fragrant sausages, succulent hamburgers and glistening fried onions, all nestled in soft, white, pillowy rolls. We eat them leaning on some scaffolding with a pile of cladding for a table.
Replete, or should I say stuffed , we head home but only yards from the market, are hit by the thirst that only hot dogs and hamburgers can engender. We pause at the 20-50 coffee shop in Marylebone Lane, buy coffees and sit on a convenient bench nearby, to drink them.
We have walked down this lane a hundred times, sat through evenings and lunches in several of the restaurants that line its streets but as my husband looks down, he spots an extraordinary piece of history that we had managed never to notice, being always intent on the destination and ignoring the journey.
I knew of Tyburn only as London’s grim place of execution, established when Henry V111 was on the throne, to which convicts were brought on carts down what is now Oxford st. through crowds of jeering onlookers who would eagerly follow the cart to Tyburn and stay on to party while enjoying the execution.
Back home and back at my computer, John Roger’s website “Walking London’s Lost Rivers” reveals to me that, to my great surprise, the execution site was named after the Tyburn river, which flowed through the parts of London I love most and in which I have lived for most of my life, completely ignorant of its course.
“The name (of the execution site) is derived from a brook called Tyburn, which flowed down from Hampstead into the Thames, supplying in its way a large pond in the Green Park, and also the celebrated Rosamond’s Pond in St James’s Park. Oxford Street was, at an earlier period, known as Tyburn Road, and the now aristocratic locality of Park Lane, bore formerly the name of Tyburn Lane, whilst an iron tablet attached to the railings of Hyde Park,opposite the entrance of the Edgeware Road, informs the passer-by that here stood Tyburn turnpike-gate, so well known in old times as a landmark by travellers to and from London.”
– The Book of Days Edited by R. Chambers pub. 1888
And there is an unexpected bonus of Lockdown – time “to stand and stare” and explore things we have previously rushed past, busy cramming still more into our already too- crammed lives.
Locked down in London 