What a gift to a love of places blog, is a workplace called The Heart Hospital, under the small arrow. So much love for many of the people I worked with there, who are now spread around the world. Love for Marylebone the London village where it was located. Love also for Selfridge’s on Oxford Street which was always on the way home. A corner shop to beat all corner shops. The big arrow is Barts Hospital. The location of my seventeen-year-old self starting a career and also where I finished my professional life 43 years later. An unplanned circularity which is strangely satisfying.
The next picture is looking south to our London ‘home’s’. Dulwich Village, Brixton,Gipsy Hill and Crystal Palace. The greige makes them impossible to point out, but trust me they are there.
Similarly, on a greige day my daughter’s home village of Wimbledon is lost in the mist.
As is the destination of Harrow-on-the-Hill where my son began his international teaching career below the red arrow.
The large green space which is also below the red arrow on the north riverbank is the Chelsea Hospital, home of the Chelsea Flower Show.
And so to conclude my day trip to London. The Shard and the man we surprised there, photographed from Lift 109 at Battersea Power Station. The Shard is on the horizon above his head.
Farewell London Day trip.
Fortunately art can create colour out of greige.
And our friends got giddy and bright after we left. An evening with Abba while we sat on a train.
I found this lone Californian Poppy yesterday. He was growing in an inhospitable space. Caught between Tarmac and an old concrete wall. A brutal, liminal space for something as fragile as a poppy.
My head was in a bit of a liminal space at the time, as I was fresh from attending a London work colleague’s online funeral. Always sad affairs funerals are moments to pause and reflect.
One of my ponderings in that reflective space was when we had last met and last communicated.
I’ve just about nailed down the last meeting which was by accident in a gloriously beautiful old pub in Marylebone in London. Close to where we had worked together.
Our last, long, on-line natter was four years ago when we discussed this cookbook.
Both about 4 years ago.
In that time we have had occasional exchanges on Facebook, but essentially we had lost touch. Which is the nature of work relationships. And a measure of my sorrow yesterday. I’ve not lost a huge relationship, but one of those small complicated mosaic pieces that make up life’s rich pattern.
Obviously, yesterday, so many people in the room at the Crematorium had lost a much bigger piece of their lives.
Although,in truth, a good description of her is, small and complicated.
What was not small or complicated was the massive amount of love in the room. Visible because family and friends ran the whole service. No religion or non-religious celebrant. Just swirling love. Fabulous.
One day after Valentines Day is the right time to say that I have never been a fan of the whole, commercial, overload of pressure that is imposed by the notion of a special day for expressing romantic love. The root of my dislike is almost certainly rooted in my adolescent years when acne made my face look like a cheap pizza. No cards, signed or otherwise found their way to my home. The acne and possibly the experience of being a spotty teenager shaped me, not necessarily in a bad way.
Love Locks at St Ives.
Obviously I am not averse to romantic love but I don’t quite get why it has a day to itself when other forms of love are equally satisfying and beneficial.
Love for Life, Family and Friends are just as valuable. I’ve used another love to illustrate this little love rant. The love of rust. Not always metallic, sometimes just a rust colour. Add rust to verdigris and the love just magnifies.
Ceramic pot, weathered in a garden
Not too far from home this lovely door with added graffiti always makes me stop to appreciate the colours and industrial strength.
Cold War bunker Richmond Walk
In complete contrast these naturally occuring barnacles are rich with colour and texture.
My love for rust is obsessive, as obsessive as my dislike for the commercialisation of the 14th February. A proper Valentines Grinch and proud of it.
Cafe seat, Toronto Island.
And finally one that was taken close to home a few years ago. I have no idea what it is. I love it!
Social media has been a way for us all to be connected even though we can’t currently be together. I have a friend who has not only had to cancel her wedding but is also shielding . During Lockdown she is experimenting with home grown flowers for her re- arranged wedding arrangements. The results appear on Instagram or Facebook. I commented that as a family we always do our own funeral flowers picked from family gardens or hedgerows nearby.
It is not as difficult as you think in any season.
My shielding friends asked me when this tradition started. This pondering is that story, I hope I have the sensitivity to tell it well.
My dad was an ordinary Essex chap. Educated until the age of fifteen and then apprenticed to become an electrician, after a spell in the RAF, cut short by Tuberculosis, he moved on to medical electrical engineering and then ultimately to medical physics.
What was less ordinary about him was his love of Shakespeare and his membership of a well thought of band of Shakespearean Actors who performed at Stratford upon Avon occasionally, I think he continued this until my birth.
My mum and dad had concurrent terminal illnesses , when he beat her to it she suggested that an old school friend and fellow thespian should do his funeral flowers, as he was also a well respected amateur florist.
The village we lived in had several same sex households and it was not considered anything but normal in all the time my family lived there during the 60’s to early 90’s.
Dad’s old school friend and fellow thespian was half of one of those couples and their garden was a village highlight every summer.
I dutifully popped along to see the gentleman, who was thrilled to be asked to do a families floral tributes. He scrambled around to find some paper and a pencil and asked for my details. His reaction when I gave him my dad’s name was not what I could have anticipated. The horror, on his face, as he wailed ” My Star, oh no, my star. I’ve loved him since we were at school” will live with me forever. He collapsed into a well upholstered chair and started to rock and weep. Unsure really what to do under such circumstances I offered him my condolences and apologies for the shock. Tea seemed appropriate so I made my way to the kitchen and managed to both make us tea and find cups to drink it from.
He was more composed on my return and we talked about my dad and the acting and other stuff. The paper and pencil were never used. The floral tribute would be a tour de force of floristry, created from his own garden and delivered to the undertaker free of charge. His sorrow was intense and he assured me as I left that the flowers would be great, his partner would be both understanding and a reliable assistant.
My Dad attended his own funeral weighed down by the largest, campest wreath imaginable. Made entirely of garden flowers and foliage it was a thing of beauty that trembled with the unexpected and unusual addition of hundreds of fuschia heads.
theoldmortuary.design 