The countdown to tomorrow’s Great Unlock is under way. Soho’s roads are cleared for tables and chairs, paintwork is spruced and on every corner, restaurant staff, excited to see one another again, are being briefed and handed PPE.
We look forward to the re-opening with hope and trepidation. Hope that the restaurants in which we have enjoyed such good times will thrive once more and trepidation that drunkenness and lack of toilet facilities will drive desperate punters to urinate – and worse – in the quiet street onto which our front door opens.
For the moment, it feels as though Soho is holding its breath.
As we near July 4th – the day of The Great Unlocking – there are sprouting on walls and any other available vertical surface in Soho, homilies? exhortations? aphorisms? I’m not sure what to call them. It seems that locked down people have an urge to give public advice – mostly fridge- magnet mawkish, occasionally witty and, sometimes intriguing. It’s surprising, given the ubiquity of social media, that this sort of thing isn’t taking place exclusively on line but maybe there’s something about the ghost – town atmosphere of boarded up restaurants and featureless streets where once was so much energy, that suggests such decoration is not vandalism but improvement. Perhaps it’s one way of re-introducing just a little life and conversation while we’re waiting for the real thing to return.
Well, I promised no more pigeons but I have learned from a certain government we all know, that promises are made to be broken. So, I am going to introduce you to Harriet the Hawk.
I have on our terrace three, thriving, gooseberry bushes, bearing hundreds of berries ripening nicely. Imagine my surprise (as they say) when I opened the blinds a few mornings ago, glanced out at the glorious sunshine we have now come to expect – and stood rooted to the spot. Until that moment, I had thought that “eyes widening” was an uninformative literary cliche , that was until I actually felt my eyelids touch my eyebrows.
I had gone to bed safe in the knowledge that it wouldn’t long before I could make my signature gooseberry fool. (I think the idea of “signature”carries the assumption that, although it is the speciality of one expert, other people might be clamouring to eat it. However, in the case of gooseberry fool, I don’t care. I’m happy to eat the lot)
Anyway, beyond the open blinds, this is what greeted me:
Looks OK, you might think. Perfectly healthy. But what you can’t see is that IT WAS THE ONLY ONE LEFT!!!!! The pigeons had plundered them all in the night.
I phone the trusty Mark,our gardener, worried about losing the tomatoes next. He suggests a bird scarer – simple, to rig up, he says, and very effective. How I managed to stop myself wondering aloud why, then, he hadn’t suggested it before the pigeons ate the gooseberries, I don’t know.
Harriet arrived yesterday- two grotty pieces of plastic that wouldn’t fool a pet budgerigar, let alone a feral pigeon, we thought. “The writer” jammed the wings onto the body , then removed them and jammed them on the right way round with the crudely painted feathers on the top. We were then presented with the dilemma of where and how to hang it. It has to move, apparently, as a plastic hawk, stationary over a load of tomato plants for six months seemingly fools no-one.
A mechanism for attaching it was the first problem. I have a belief that the wire coat hanger is the greatest aid to man and woman ever invented. I have them all over the house stretched out into long implements with the hook on the end for fishing out things kicked under the bed and dropped behind cupboards, for lowering the blinds whose cord I can’t reach, and pulling jars towards me from the back of too- high shelves. Sure enough, “the writer” had only to exert massive force to twist one into a serviceable hook.
and now, the time had come to launch Harriet:
Safely ensconced on her hook, swinging languidly in the faint breeze she refused to look anywhere other than at us instead of fixing the pigeons on the roof behind her with her plastic glare. So unconvinced was “the writer” that Harriet would fool anything, he suggested it would be just as effective to prop up a copy of Helen Macdonald’s beautiful book, H is for Hawk, on the table in front of the tomatoes, the jacket illustration knocking Harriet into a cocked hat for fearsomeness.
Anyway, we agreed to give Harriet a go, mainly on account of our reluctance to untwist the coat hanger.
And I have amazing news to report. NOT ONE PIGEON has been within at least 100 metres of our terrace. So unless they are all socially distancing to excess, Harriet is doing the job!
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As though to mock us, on our early morning walk this morning, we again encounter the Hawk Patrol, ridding Trafalgar Square of pigeons.
Creativity of all kinds is flourishing amid what’s left of Lockdown in London.
On our walk today we were surprised to come across groups of people outside a nearby pub, swigging what appeared to be beer from plastic milk containers.
On investigation, I discovered this was not the isolated incident I had taken it to be but an actual movement, aimed at enabling fans of craft beers, only available on draft, to drink them at home. The containers – sometimes they can be collectors’ items in earthenware or pewter – are called “growlers” because the nineteenth – century punter would carry his or her beer home from the local pub in a small, galvanised bucket and the sound of gas escaping from the lid was said to sound like a growl. Apparently, there are quite a few London pubs where you can take your growler to be refilled and The States boasts actual filling stations in some grocery stores.
This normally rather gloomily dark restaurant on Dean St.It looks inviting and cheerful in its new incarnation and is at least managing to do some takeaway business and there was evidence of creativity at an open air birthday party yesterday afternoon in the park. This party was as festive as any with guests socially distanced on a rug with cake and candles, flowers in the trees and balloons on their Boris bikes.
Soho is awash with creative ways of getting custom back into the area . It’s going to be Hell for residents for at least three months if restaurateurs succeed in getting the area pedestrianised and licensed to serve food in the street. But we have to just grin and bear it. We live here because we love Soho’s vibrancy and buzz. No matter that the Bohemianism which drew us here has now mostly transmuted into bourgeoise comfort. It’s partly our fault so I reckon we have a responsibility to resuscitate what’s left.
I thought we had stopped doing what we were told by the government. It looks as though I was wrong. Today, we were told to shop, the shops threw open their doors and, lo – we shopped!
The empty streets are once again, crowded. The roads we crossed last week without
glancing left or right are once again jammed, the air is once again foul.
Of everything I saw, the strangest was the queue outside JD Sports stretching down Oxford Street. Has everyone worn out their trainers during their hour’s daily exercise?
Hamley’s
Apple Store
I wasn’t out to shop. I was out to report back to you, fellow Lockdowners, and what I have to report is that people are out buying, not in vast numbers, rarely in masks, hardly social distancing – except in shops that are carefully monitoring their entrances-and the streets don’t look that different, despite the three-month hiatus.
The only physical sign of Covid-19 were the hand sanitising – points along the pavement and the occasional sign emphasising the need for 2-metre social distancing.
But then today is only the first day of the rest of our lives.
Hard to decide whether our first purchase in the real world, last night, was a comedy or a tragedy.
Having recce’d the day before, we ordered fish and chips on line from our nearest and most savoury-looking chippie on the grounds that it would be quicker and therefore hotter, by the time we ate it, than the same meal brought by Deliveroo.
We discovered from the news that, despite a 5pm curfew, the streets were still awash with protesters claiming to be guarding Churchill’s statue and the Cenotaph, both of which were guarded already by having been comprehensively boarded up.
Fearful the protesters might have headed our way, we geared ourselves up in masks and gloves and ventured into the street.
We discover that Poppies, our local chippie, has a system whereby you pay for your meal in one part of what was the restaurant and collect it from another. There is a queue outside and several young men waiting for food inside, who don’t even think of moving to put a bit of space between us.
We decide to wait for our meal, freshly prepared in the fryers, out in the street.
And that’s when the rain starts – not gentle Summer rain but a tropical downpour that leaves us dripping before the manager even manages to roll out the blinds.
Our massive Haddock arrives with an equally massive portion of chips , two cartons of mushy peas and a gherkin and we set out for home, not quite running but definitely keeping up a good pace while the carrier bag holding our food gets more sodden by the minute.
“The writer” is carrying the bag, heavy with its huge cargo, when it succumbs to the rain and the sodden bottom falls out, scattering cardboard cartons of fish and chips in the road. We gather it frantically together, run home, wahs our hands, throw off our wet clothes, towel ourselves dry, sanitise the cardboard boxes , wash our hands again and put the food on plates.
It is delicious- and, miraculously, still hot!! So ends our first purchase in person since March 12th.
I feel we are on our own now. The government has proved ill-prepared and untrustworthy. The country is, understandably, worried about the dire economic situation, so getting back to work is the new mantra. It seems that saving lives and protecting the NHS are no longer the priority. Instead, we are exhorted – begged- to shop for unnecessary items, get children back to school and return to work, while our Prime Minister concentrates on what really matters – getting Brexit even more “done”.
We are told the “R” number is between .7 and .9 and so the gentle easing of lockdown is on track. But we have been given this same figure for more than two weeks. Has it really not moved in this time and why is it no longer being talked about every day as the grail towards which we are heading? Test and Trace, whose “world -beating” system was touted as vital before release of lockdown was safe, is not yet fully-functioning, the contact app. seems to be marooned on the Isle of Wight and the absolutely essential two-metre social distancing rule will soon be disposed of without ado.
In truth, many of us have been making up our own rules for some time. We made our own decision to lock ourselves down two weeks before it became mandatory and not to go out at all for exercise or food shopping, We made our own decision about when it was time to start going out for walks. We know at least two families who have amalgamated their households with their children’s and have been moving freely between them for weeks. When we walk in the park, we pass large clusters of people – mostly young men – lying on the grass drinking and chatting and every night we watch on the news thousands of people marching through our cities, crammed together and heedless of the consequences. We have friends who have shopped throughout, friends who have taken taxis to forbidden meetings and friends who have not set foot outside the door. This is the Covid Continuum, at one end of which are the truly cautious, among whom I number ourselves, and at the other, the utterly reckless. Most people seem to fall somewhere in the middle.
Meanwhile, even we are unlocking ourselves gradually. Tonight, for the first time, we will be collecting fish and chips booked in advance at a nearby restaurant. Such excitement!
Of course, logically, there is no completely safe exit from Lockdown until we have been vaccinated or there is some new medical intervention that makes the likelihood of dying from the virus less than negligible
So, tortoise-like, we will poke our heads out from our shells, and take slow, tentative steps in the world unless – or until- a spike drives us back into the dark.
We took another walk round Soho yesterday observing increasing signs of optimism. The sadly boarded up Dean St. Town House, one of our most favourite haunts, has become the site for an open air photographic Exhibition, #someoneofsoho, featuring portraits of local residents and workers by photographer Richard Piercy.
Kettners and Bistro 1 also provide a backdrop for his dramatic and insightful work.
Richard’s pharmacy, Zest, used to be one of the delights of living in Soho, as did Richard himself. Who needed a doctor when you had him as your pharmacist?
Today, his premises wouldn’t be much use for dispensing the Covid-19 vaccine we pray is on the way:
Richard moved out, put pharmacy behind him and turned what used to be his passionate hobby into a photographic career.
He says of this exhibition,
“It’s people who make places,”
A neighbourhood’s landscape may change, but it’s humanity that defines its character.
A deserted Soho due to the pandemic lockdown has only served to heighten this. I want to re-install some humanity and positivity back to an area I have been heavily involved in for 30 years. The people featured here are just a few of the many who contribute to the character and soul of this unique pocket of London.”
I’ve decided it’s time to share with you the latest doings of my oldest friend – longest time, since primary school – not actually the oldest. In celebration of her birthday, yesterday, I present to you you ‘Cooking with Frannie” and “Woodwork with Frannie”
This, sadly, is the latest picture of our bird feeder, reposing in the rubbish on top of a mass of plastic fruit containers. Ironic that we were all just getting used to the idea of avoiding plastic at all costs and now, in the face of Covid, such ecological niceties have been completely disregarded.
These are the bags in which our big Waitrose order was delivered on Monday. In case you’re wondering why they are still sitting in a heap on the floor, they’re waiting for the 24-hour/48-hour/9-day period ( Take your pick of all the available estimates) that it will take for them to be Covid -free and safe to put away.
I had just got used to the Greenfinches flitting round our terrace and was wondering how long it would be before I could tame them to take seed from my hand – when I saw it.
I wasn’t sure I had seen it at first. Maybe it was a floater in my eye or a blackbird heading for the feeder. But then I saw another – or the same one again – scurrying back the other way . A small black mouse – definitely not a rat – that shot across the terrace and vanished into our thicket of plants.
It’s always fascinating to wonder why we have the fears we do. Unless we can ascribe a fear to a particular incident – a dog bite or a wasp sting – the things in the natural world that disturb us seem so random. For example, I think mice are sweet, cuddly creatures but “The Writer” can’t bear them anywhere in his vicinity. I’m terrified of spiders and will stand trembling outside the room in which one has taken up residence, whereas he sweeps in, bristling with machismo, and disposes of it. (I don’t care to ask how). I’m not especially frightened of snakes and was happy to tramp through the Australian desert or bush banging the ground with a stick in front of me or singing at the top of my voice. (I found the latter an excellent deterrent). We were told by rangers that the best way to deal with a poisonous snake indoors is to throw a towel over it and call the appropriate authority to dispose of it humanely. I do admit to being relieved at never having had to test that advice.
In Italy some years ago, Trisha, having been dozing barefoot under a tree, slipped her foot back inside her shoe, only to be bitten by what was later identified as a viper which ,we were told, live in trees and obviously drop down occasionally into available footwear. What followed was like a bad farce except to Trish, whose foot was blackening by the minute. All of us being of an age to have read Swallows and Amazons, Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson, we decided a tourniquet was vital and lashed it round Trish’s knee as tightly as we could manage. Tod bashed the snake to death and remembered you were supposed to take it with you to the hospital. Someone else found a bottle of snake venom antidote buried on a shelf in the house, which, luckily, we didn’t use ,as we discovered later it was for horses and would probably have done a lot more harm than good. There followed a dash to Pronto Socorso at the tiny local hospital where the patients had to bring their own soap and lavatory paper. They dealt with it efficiently, warning us that tourniquets were so last decade and should never be considered and Trish – mysteriously- that she must never again eat water melon.
(As I said, this was many years ago and checking now, I can find no evidence for Italian vipers living or giving birth in trees and I may have got all sorts of other details wrong. If you read this, Trish and Tod, do let me know how you remember it).
Anyway, back to the bird feeder in the dustbin. Having seen the mouse and talked to our efficient House Manager, we were warned that bird-seed is definitely an inducement to mice and offered the choice of mouse traps or a sinister black box euphemistically called a “Mouse Bait Station” to help get rid of them. (In an apartment block it’s considered unneighbourly to let them just roam about).The idea of the bait station is that the mouse pops into the hole in the box, attracted by the smell of its favourite food, infused into a block of poison. The box has to be opened with a key so it’s safe from children and other animals.
I must say the idea of either device is upsetting. At present, I favour the crossed fingers solution, hoping that perhaps they’ll just go away now there is no bird feeder to attract them. But if “The Writer” sees the mouse again, I’m afraid it’s black box time.
Locked down in London 